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A symptom of social sclerosis
HEMA RAGHAVAN
Who killed Aarushi? This is not one more addition to the multiple theories already in circulation that would make Hercules Poirot and Sherlock Holmes blush unseen in their graves. The police investigations mainly on circumstantial evidence have hurriedly nailed the father as the culprit. The trial by the media began even before the alleged culprit was presented in the court.
This off screen gruesome reality has outdone all the gory details witnessed in the Theatre of Cruelty. The sense of shock, outrage and dismay will soon evaporate and Aarushi will be forgotten except in the annals of crime. Life will assume its quotidian sameness till yet another tragedy of similar, if not graver, proportion jolts us once again.
A year back, we convulsed with anger over the Nithari killings. That has faded into oblivion and today we once more shake in our shoes as Aarushi’s face has become a framed beauty. We will wait for the truth to come to light but that will be not before many more Aarushis meet with similar tragic fates.
Urban culture
Aarushi’s killing is symptomatic of the social sclerosis of our times. This is specific of our urban society and is fast catching up with the rest of the country. The urban culture is founded on money that provides the urban people with everything except emotional sustenance and stability. The index of social status is exemplified by the plush apartment one lives in, by the number of cars in the garage, the number of servants hired and the number of modern gadgets one has access to.
There is a continuous race to accumulate wealth for a family that is limited to just three or four members. It is a family of husband and wife and one or two children. The earlier concept of a joint family where the elders — even when they were at variance with the younger generation — acted as shock absorbers has given place to a nuclear family of binary opposites.
The parents and the children have their own closed worlds strongly resistant to any kind of mutual interference. The daily quest for more and more money leaves little time for the family denying the basic human need for emotional togetherness. The unwinding after a day’s work is done in five star hotels and social gatherings where a crowd is no company. The artificial social life leading to extra marital affairs of both husband and wife shows the emptiness and vacuum in our modern lives.
Further the bizarre and absurd TV serials, the portrayal of mindless violence and cruelty in films and theatres has erased the cognitive faculty that distinguishes normative standards of behaviour essential to the well-being of society. The Theatre of Cruelty that we witness everyday has resulted in moral indifference and moral bankruptcy.
Limited purpose
This is true of the educated urban class whose abnormal and blood chilling behaviour as seen in the Nithari and Aarushi killings makes one sceptical about education being the backbone of a civilised society. This is because the emphasis of education has shifted from a wholesome development of the individual to a lopsided development of using it solely for the pursuit of the pelf.
Education at home and in schools and colleges today serves the limited purpose of an orientation to a job but not an orientation to life. Society is gripped with a psychological paralysis whereby the normal mind has lost its capacity to imagine the horrors and monstrosity of a civilisation that seeks economic development at the cost of human development.
Juan Somaviya, former Chilean Ambassador, speaking about the dimensions of People’s Society stated that we have to recognise that “human needs are not only material, but also spiritual, that in the very heart of every human being, there are values and ideals that need to be satisfied, because they constitute the ethical backbone of any society.” Aarushi was the hope and pride of the future. The bright flame has been extinguished by an act of an inhuman monstrosity.
Who Killed Aarushi? It is we the people. It is time for us to resurrect Aarushi by articulating all our hope, pride and grief that she symbolises even after she is no more.
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