Tragedy Thrills Us!!!!!!

Coz out there, someone really dies. Someone really cries!

How often do we find ourselves immobilized by a footage showing how brutally a man was run away by a truck. Or when they show a cover story of a mother who, out of poverty and misery, drowns her own baby. Or about the horrifying plight of Afgan Women who burn themselves to the point when the pink flesh reveals itself. What about when the evening news describes every savage part of a story that ended in death? Quoting the lines from one of my favorite songs, "It ain't fun till someone dies!"

Right from the first beam in the morning till the late night scuffle with the spouse, we struggle to thrive under cobwebs spun within the societal parameters. We face thick skinned colleagues at work. Threadbare jokes on the cellphones. The under qualified subordinates. Indolent children at home.That nagging wife who can't get enough out of it. That prehensile landlord who eats up more of our calories than a 4 hour workout at gym. Bills, over-dues, liabilities render us dangling at the the cusp of being broke. What fun do we have then? What thrill do we we have then?

That's right! Under so much pressure, tragedy seems to be the only element at rescue. Of course not the tragedy we face. What's thrilling to us is the tragedy others face. We, like junkies, sit back poked to our televisions and enjoy those tragedies vicariously. A wife kills her own husband. A husband rapes and stabs own wife, may be even daughter, depending upon the atrocious mind he has. A son shoots his own honest father. A farmer is found dead in a grave he himself dug.

Moving up a level, a 7.6 Richter scale shakes the very fabric of humanity rendering lakhs dead and millions homeless. The havoc of the rain Gods that flood us to the nostrils. When happening market places, with mothers bargaining with fruit sellers and children playing gleefully, are rocked by earsplitting explosions leaving several dead and thousands doomed for life.

What do we, the mango people, do when all this shit happens? Yes and I am sorry to say, we sit back locked to our idiot boxes and savor those crunchy chips with our evening tea. Sure, we feel sad watching all this displayed on the news under the captions, 'Breaking News'. Still, and painfully putting it, it helps chill out a bit after all our marathons for life. Thanks to the ever advancing internet and media, that's the only way we relax now. We need to watch things destroy themselves from a distance.

We express condolences at deaths. We send flowers to the plagued. We treat the disabled with care. That's good. But our basic instinct has been transformed from creating something into deriving pleasure from witnessing anarchy, commotion, disorder. Chaos, unless it's in our lives, is always a bite to catch. Sadly, that pizza become even more crispy and anodyne with a tragic incident shown on some news channel or during a gossip with friend. Why has our fabric transformed into a vicarious entity that enjoys badness from a distance?

Of course there is nothing we can do about it. We can at least not let death and destruction become our evening snack partner. Bad things do happen. We lament only when we get chosen. Till that time comes, someone else's tragedy thrills us. Lets try not to let that happen. May be it's the only thing we can do. But it's one good thing we can do.

Coz out there, someone really dies. Someone really cries!