Asha Iyer Kumar :
It is hard to make confessions when you have pride and ego as your mates and when the level of transgression is condemnable by any standard of human demeanour. Yet I stand guilty of my offence, and I own up to it. It takes enormous courage to do it. To turn your sight inward, dredge your conscience and scoop the scum out takes guts of the kind that no external act demands. It is irrelevant if I am called man for belonging to a species or to a gender. It does not absolve me of my failing to uphold the scruples that I am expected to as a social being.
The fact that I am cognizant of this deplorable aspect in me makes me want to tear my soul apart. Yet I stand helpless, time after time, watching monsters rip the fabric of human consciousness.
I stand mute witness to sin and its manifestations. It wrecks me to think that my sensitivity stands paralysed even when I know that I need to act. It is a failure of my conscience, I admit. It’s a complete breakdown of my societal affiliations.
But I have my reasons for not doing what the whole world says I should do in the face of such gross violations that happen in my stoic presence. My reasons may not vindicate my fault, but it could make me less culpable in the eyes of all those who criticise me.
I have often ascribed my despicable inaction to my ‘middle class sensibilities’. I think I must plainly call it ‘fear’ – for my life, my family and for everything I hold dear. What if the crook in question kicked me in the belly, pulled out a hidden knife and stabbed into my heart? What if he knew my face and returned to settle scores some day? What if he knew which bank my wife worked in or which school my children go?
It will be unfair to brand me inhuman. I am not inured to corruption to the extent that makes me emotionally desiccated. When I see a fellow human being in distress and in need of help, I am goaded by my conscience to reach out. But I am held back by my education that tells me that it is not a wise thing to do; my reason tells me that by helping a man in trouble, I could be courting trouble myself. The tussle between the two realms of my conscience leaves me grievously injured from the inside, for I am not a mere log to be unmoved by what I see. Yet, my inability to act makes me wonder if I am a self-centred log indeed. Does anyone even realise what it means to live with the lancing sense of guilt that my passivity leaves in me every time I walk away from someone in a dire situation?
It is disgusting to be labeled an inert, perverse onlooker, but eventually that is what I am. I can describe my attitude in euphemistic terms and validate it with convenient rationale, but the fact remains – my hands are too short to reach out and help.
It is hard to explain, but I hope one understands. My emasculated instincts are results of my desire to live unhindered by the vagaries of a deteriorating human nature. Evil is getting eviler and life is getting severely impaired by it, and the last thing I want is to be sucked into the wicked sinkhole and be swallowed. To that extent I am selfish, I confess.
Altruism is a fabulous virtue, but as someone with a home and a family to feed, it is hard to acquire and employ it. As I now stand baffled, unable to sort my sensibilities, I revise my view. It takes less courage to turn inward and face the inner devils than to fight the ones outside.
(Asha Iyer Kumar is a freelance writer based in Dubai.)
