Insensitive

At the course of spoken French at Alliance Française de Bombay, we were discussing about a controversy in France.
Let me give you the background: an advertisement had created a furore because of the idea it presented. The French public had very strong reactions towards it. However real and actually gruesome events like civil war in former Yugoslavia and massacres in Croatia and Kosovo were not even paid heed to.
It is true even for India. Think into the past and try and see which event actually touched your heart or something that made you cry. As far as I am concerned, 26/11 was the last event that made me cry. I didn’t realise how serious was the earthquake in Haiti till Roger Federer donated a chunk of his winnings at the Australian Open for the victims! We create a huge ruckus if a certain movie talks about sex in a liberal manner, but we fail to see the real problem, that India has one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates in the world. It doesn’t shock us, doesn’t even evoke a reaction!
Let’s try and see why we have become so insensitive to all the dreadful events that happen every day:
1. Sensationalisation by the media: the media today has any news titled as ‘Breaking News’. Every mundane issue is given so much importance that rarely do significant events force us to think. I remember how the boy ‘Prince’ became the national hero after he fell down the drain. Following which, every time a boy fell down, the coverage provided was better than a live cricket match! And the sad part is we didn’t even feel anything for the poor kid...
2. The penetration of television: television today is a medium that has a reach rivalled only by radio. Every event happens at the switch of a remote and has to a large extent we’ve become used to the run of the mill channels. It hardly troubles us that child marriages are still a tradition, complete with pomp and splendour, in Rajasthan... ‘No Anandi is cute’ is what most housewives will reply. What is our expression for any event... the same old ‘couch potato’
3. Hyper connectivity: it takes merely seconds for us to know if something has gone wrong in any other corner of the world. The kind of information processed by human brains today is just enormous. And expecting a reaction for each incident that occurs is asking too much from him.

What disturbs me here is that people regard these fake things more important than the real events that can shake the world. We just don’t want to discuss Iraq or Afghanistan or even the Maoists and Naxalites! We would rather be better off reliving Sachin Tendulkar’s epic 200 innings (no offense, even I consider him nothing less than God!!), than trying to see how will Mamta Banerjee ever find the funds for funding all the new projects she’s promised.
The worrying fact is that we’ve become so insensitive to reality that we’ve started reacting to fiction. Things like films, music and advertisements are the issues where people willingly speak and give their opinions. The reality doesn’t touch them...Fiction does! We seek refuge in the imaginary world rather than choosing to face the reality. It is disturbing, but true and true for the majority of the population.
It is our decision now whether to live in denial or not... Live in reality or not. I know that the choice is unfair, but whoever said life is fair...

En Français:
Les gens aujourd’hui ne réagissent plus. Pour les événements qui font parti de la vie fictionelle, on a toujours des reactions fortes: les publicités, la cinema ou bien la litérature. Ce qui ne fait parti de l’actualité est bien discuté et debaté, mais la réalité n’évoque rien. Aucun reaction! C’est tellement triste que la humanité aujourd’hui ne comprend bien un autre être humain. Nous sommes devenus INSENSIBLE! C’est à cause de la média, la télévision et meme la hyper connectivité fait possible par l’internet. L’information est beaucoup plus que les reactions possible. Il faut qu’on voit la situation en totalité et réevalue nos réponses à bien comprendre nos vies et les choix qu’on a, à ce moment.