Emotional Accidents

Please do not read this post if you are easily offended.

The death of a 10-day old in a stone pelting incident in Baramulla is definitely disturbing. No doubt, it was an accident, but the media coverage would make one wonder whether the protesters meant to commit a cold-blooded murder. We have all seen and been in situations, where the rush of adrenalin makes us lose our bearings. A great office party with one witty joke after another might suddenly turn sour when someone goes overboard with a risque comment. Or a game of cricket where the batsman tries to hit one too many ball out of the park and gets out. We all get carried away. But there was a cold-blooded murder in the valley recently. Although the matter was as widely publicized, the sympathy appeared muted, even polite, in comparison to the current outrage. I refer to the BSF's killing of a 16-year old schoolboy. If you detach yourself from the emotions, the reaction is devoid of logic.

A youth or a middle-aged person has responsibilities toward parents, spouse and children. Having lived much longer in the world, he is bound to have stronger emotional ties with people around him. The loss of such a life often leaves a humongous void within the family that is often impossible to fill. Sometimes, the family simply crumbles after such an incident. Whereas a 10-day old has hardly spent any time here and is free of any emotional connects. The damage is limited to the parents, and the immediate family to an extent. Every other factor - be it shattered dreams, parental love, loss of innocent life - applies to both cases. Logically, the magnitude of loss has to be much smaller compared to losing a 10-year old child and even smaller compared to losing 20-year child and so on (a bell curve, with the magnitude of loss falling after 50 or 60 I guess). I am not even talking about selling this logic to the young couple who lost their kid. With their expectations and dreams shattered, to them, it might as well be the end of the world. I am only questioning our reaction - people not directly impacted by such incidents.

So why does our emotion run high when infants and kids are robbed of their lives? Why do accidents involving school buses evoke an outrage, but a bus with a marriage party, albeit overloaded, that falls into a ravine doesnt evoke the same sense of shock? I can only conjecture that when we see helpless people hurt or killed, we react much more strongly because we see the situation as completely unfair. When the people involved are grown up adults, we assume they have some control of the situation regardless of how helpless they actually might be. Subconsciously, we patronize the weak and detest the strong.

Say a truck has run over an animal on the highway. Will we feel more sorry if it was a cat than if it were a tiger? I'd say yes.