Monday, February 12, 2007

The Unholy Crusades

Scene one: A party. Huge, open air, bar, drinks, music and dance. Soft yellow glow of lights. People, loads of people. Drunk, dancing, high- on everything from the music to the liquor, to dope. People having a good time in a paradise, born out of utopia.

A few minutes later. The bartender is lying inert, with blood oozing out of a hole in his head. A building, blazing like a gigantic bon fire. Lights, but this time the blaze of fire. Music, dancing, liquor. People, high- on music, to liquor, to dope, to blood. People having a good time- this time swinging half head people by their toes like a pendulum. Dragging them on the ground, like rag dolls. All in the name of fighting to free a country from slavery. A paradise, born out of utopia.

The human race has this one amazing ability. To get used to almost anything. Pain, misery, death, bullets, torture. We can distance ourselves from anything. There are people who can drink, dance, and have a good time in a country that is raging with civil war. You go out to buy vegetables and you cannot be sure if you will come back safe, or a stray bullet is gonna head your way. There are no citizens there- only soldiers, rebels, the refugees. If you are not any of these, you are dead.

I thought I wouldn’t write about Blood Diamond. When I first read about it in Id’s blog, I was vaguely interested- maybe I should catch this movie. Then Prick decided he needs to take a stance on, again, I was hardly surprised, but didn’t feel the need to take a stance still. Then I saw the movie. By I knew what to expect, but yeah it still makes you sit up and take notice. But there is a whole lot of difference between sitting up and taking notice as opposed to standing up and taking action. There is only so much that a movie can do after all. Maybe it will make a few half virtuous people to stop fancying that stupid piece of rock(ah well, old rant really, I always felt that diamonds, after male superiority, are singularly the most over rated thing in this world).

But as I sat in the theatre watching that movie…none of Id’s or Prick’s words came to my head. The only thing that kept playing is, why are they killing all these people? Most, almost all, were killed just for the fun of watching them die- women, children, old people, young me. Entire villages wiped out, torched in a mad frenzy. A bunch of blindfolded kids, who are made to shoot down a gagged man. Then to ease the pain of the horrific realisation of what they did, they shoot some more. Till they reach a point where they don’t need that blindfold anymore. Till they can look into the eyes of their own fathers and point a gun at him without flinching. These people, rebels, soldiers, they were not fighting a war, they were not making a point, unless the point was “We stop at nothing, we are dead inside”

But in the middle of this madness, there still are people, who run around fighting to get their story out. There are people who dream of making their son a doctor. There are people, who have known it all, seen it all, and who dream of getting out of it all one day. And who’d give anything for that. And try and desperately rationalise that with, “It’s not war, it’s just business”. Then some, who don’t feel the need to rationalise. They sell the guns to the rebels, along with cds of Baywatch. Diamonds for guns. The “service providers”. “The world wants what we have to offer, we just get it to them”. The big guys in big cities, who walk around in crisp suites and fancy cars. The ones who buy these diamonds and store them away in deep coffers, knowing it stinks of blood. Then the puppet masters, who convince little kids that this is a crusade, and that in this world that does not give them the respect they deserve, but you need to take that. And how do you do that? With guns.

As long as guns and money are a part of somebody’s business, as long as terrorism is an industry, it will survive. As long as there are takers, there will be service providers. This is no holy war. There never has been such a thing. Its just simple rules of the market. Demand and supply. The “A” of TIA can be easily replaced with Is and Ps and Vs. Its all the same.

7 comments:

Id it is said...

I sense your frustration at being a bystander to this human massacre you term 'Unholy Crusade.' I think the entire world can very easily be divided into three categories of people: those with a working conscience (a fast dwindling minority), those with sleeping conscience (constituting a whacking majority of this world, and unfortunately it would take a cataclysmic event to wake some of them), and finally those with a dead conscience (who unleash inhuman atrocities on their own kind in gleeful abandon).
We, in the meanwhile, can only wait and hope for that cataclysmic event to happen.

Sh'shank said...

End defines means...
Killing with emotion is difficult not without it...
we can never know what possesses a son to hold a gun to his father's head but sickeningly and with utmost difficulty what matters to any person is their own life...
Your questions arent difficult to answer, to accept the answers they are...
it would like freuds theory...

Anonymous said...

I cannot agree more with id it is.
Basically there has to be something this drastic to transform this world completely..cleanse this world of the third type of people and revive the second type of people

crumbs said...

@ id,
where would u put those who have a rebel of a conscious?those who write about it, talk about it, but do nothing about it?sleeping?working?or just dozing?
@prick,
end defines means...but does it always?sometimes the end just loses its meaning because of the means.the question of was it finally worth all that.
@shariqu,
i'm not sure there will be one such event that can make the entire world stand up and do something

Me Thinks.. said...

i haven seen the movie, But i do agree with what you are saying, all of us here obviously wanna put an end to it, seee it dead and gone..

But as id said we are silent spectators to an extremely horrendous and vicious circle that they term business....

A word that has become a n excuse for exploitation...

Id it is said...

That's the first category, the dwindling minority, where there's still a spark of life left in the conscience that makes some of us speak out against injustice. However, I don't see that as a 'rebelling' conscience, merely an ember that splutters every now and again (an image I probably borrow from T. S. eliot's Hollow Men)

"i'm not sure there will be one such event that can make the entire world stand up and do something" Well wouldn't you agree that the Holocaust, in itself a horrific example of human brutality, did perhaps awaken the conscience of many a generations that followed.

crumbs said...

@ id,
I agree with your point about the Holocaust awakening many generations the followed.but to what result?
the dark side of this is that the generations of Jews that came later now live under the weight of the terrific tortures that their ancestors went through, to preserve their faith. A faith, that they perhaps do not identity at the same level. and there are others, who escaped those concentration camps only half dead...and who cant forgive themselves for being alive while others they know succumbed.
the question is, generations awakened, but at what cost? did this end justify the means? and there still are people that deny that it all happened...even those, who think it was not all wrong.
i'm not tryin to be pessimistic here(okay i understand that there's little evidence that i'm giving to this claim of mine!), but there are somethings that i just cant find answers to!