Monday, April 6, 2009

The Existential Crisis

My father came back after job at 8 O’clock at night. He brought the day’s newspaper. The English newspaper, which was the only one subscribed in my home, allotted a very scant commission to the newspaper's agent, said he and thus it was destined for me and my family to get the newspaper from his shop, at about one kilometer distance from my home, either in the evening or at night; not at any cost in the morning! The agent distributed newspapers at every door in the morning except ours. For his commission, Rs: 18 /- per month, for the English newspaper, never enabled him to shun the temptation of Rs: 24 /- from the Malayalam newspapers.

The newspaper, somewhat like a cold coffee now, merely made its routine journey through my eyes. Suddenly, I was shocked. Terrorist attacks in Assam! Indian soil had been again rocked by the sinister intentions of the terror. The elections are imminent. And so the time when this attack took place made it really a high concern. The intention of the terrorists is very clear--to destroy the political stability of the country.

My eyes stuck on another page in another news and my brain connected the news with the previous one. This news was that, about 43 species of mammals, reached close to extinction. I felt the same thing in both the cases. The common thing, in the terror attack and the news about extinction of 43 species of mammals, is that both deals with annihilation. The terrorist slaughter humans and human societies for their own existence, we slaughter poor animals for our own selfish pleasures embellished with the phrase, ‘for use’ .

Where is the difference? And what?

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