CLAT and Karma

Today is Dec 18th (IST) and why does this date make me sad ? I am thinking of that girl in Delhi whose face was splashed with nitric acid just a a few days back. She wanted to write the CLAT exam and had wanted to be a judge. Today she's in the hospital, I have no idea if her eyes will be okay and this to me is painful and distressing.

What a terrible blow to her dreams, her aspirations and a loss to our country too !!! 

If she loses a year, that is still a lost year. And what about her future life ? What about her face ? Our face is our identity after all. I had seen one case during my engineering college days too. And felt the same anger, anguish for that girl.

How do men perpetuate such crimes ? Where they hate someone so much that want to erase her essence like this ? What makes them think they the right to do so ? This is masculine energy gone so wrong, where they believe in rights that they have not earned. This is the mantra of incels too and then of course of the whole set of people afraid of women's rights and the female trafficking offenders.

Now just imagine, if part of the victim's anguish and suffering can be given to these people. Say - if acid attack, well then they will also get one free as a part of the punishment. After all why should they not face the same trauma that the poor kid is undergoing ? Every crime should have an element of the victim's trauma added to the perpetuator's punishment. Even supposedly white collar crimes that cause financial misery and suicides in so many families.

I have always thought that 'An eye for an eye' will not make the whole world blind. It will make a portion blind but be a deterrent to the rest. After all that is how we are not yet in a nuclear war right ? Not that this is a guarantee that there will not be one. As days pass - 'Matrix' like days don't seem far away.

I have never understood all these TED talks about vulnerability and empathy being great qualities. Once you read "The 48 laws of power" by Robert Greene and "The art of war" by Sun Tzu, they seem even more laughable. On top of that such talks are mostly by women !!! 

I guess I feel this way because I on certain issues I think I empathize to a detrimental extent. The dark side is that it is easy to feel so much that it weighs down on you. Long time back I had volunteered in a counselling center - I had to quit in a month (and the head counsellor agreed !) . It was so depressing - most of the women cited that the violence brought about on their person was by someone they knew !!! 

I believe cruelty and kindness know no religion or gender though. However it does make me wonder, is karma really a thing ? Or just statistical normality - after all everyone gets some kind of comeuppance in life at sometime. Is that all it is ? 

All this talk by saints and religious orders - all this assurance about rebirth, paying for your sins or that the meek shall inherit earth and about heaven and hell; is it just a hoax or a way in which to answer the most basic query by all - Will injustices seen in the world go unpunished ?

I have read the book 'Karma' by Sadhguru and I still do not feel enlightened about this aspect at all. I am still skeptic. And yet one keeps faith, because if one does not do so, where can one go for spiritual succor ? Hope keeps everything alive and one needs hope in divine justice.

So today as I sit here on a relaxing Sunday, thinking of watching the World Cup Football final, my heart goes out to that 17 year old school girl, whose dreams of writing the CLAT today have been taken away so sadistically.  My prayers to her and hope God gives her the strength to get through this phase and come out shining and bright on the other side. Her path is not going to be easy.

Empathy

Empathy - Magic bullet to cure all problems !

Is that an eye-catching title ? Or more like a silly way to catch attention to something like a sale ? Never mind ! :) As a Mom  of a school going child .. one thinks perennially about schooling / classes / tuition / education system / school boards / subjects and the like.

And while there are so many things one learns in school and so many things that get 'unlearnt' - like the joy of learning while pursuing marks - I feel that if there is one thing that I could add to the syllabus - I would add the teaching and learning of empathy.

Now this does not sound very earth shaking does it ? But it would bring about a paradigm shift in the thinking process and the way life itself is handled.

Why empathy ?

• For one thing is is not wishy-washy like sympathy.
• Secondly it involves some amount of imagination and courage. It makes us go beyond ourselves and into the shoes of the person across whom we are sitting.
• It is more than conscience too.
• It is not connected with religion at all. So no dogmas need follow.

Yes all other moral values like - honesty, compassion, discipline, contentment ( vs avarice ), industriousness , respect for others etc are good but I would think empathy is at the root of all these values.

Think about it -

• If the creator of the Ponzi scheme was empathetic - he may not have ended up looting the life savings of so many old retired people. He/She would have understood the devastation that loss would bring about.
• Domestic violence would not be an issue b'cos the person involved would understand the physical and mental pain the victim would feel.
• Women complaining about the glass ceiling and discrepancy in wages for the same work would be heard with an open mind.
• Dowry deaths especially the heinous burning would be a thing of the past.
• We would perhaps switch to "Ahimsa Silk" so as to not kill the millions of silk worms for our usage. Ditto with animal furs...
• Child Abuse would make the person feel so abhorrent that it would not come to play at all ....
• Human trafficking - what is that ? :)
• We would have fire escapes that work, more water works in villages where women have to go miles for water, roads that don't vanish in monsoons, teenagers who think it is great to weave around aging trucks with no power steering more circumspect.
• Who would there be to teach a guy to walk into a railway station and fire bullets into unsuspecting people ?
• Nobody would wake up after an operation with a wrong missing body part.

... And so on ......

Empathy -  would lead to being more responsible. More open to negotiations. Not just expecting without taking responsibility. Ameliorating problematic situations. It would make us better humans. And therein lies the crux.