Dark Corner

 THE DARK CORNER

-Roel Hangsing

“Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute”. Proverb 31:8

When the train halted, after nightfall, at that station the coach was once again filled with all sorts of filth emanating from the sun-backed human waste on the rail track below. My coach was at the extreme end of the platform. After a minute or so I venture out on the platform to stuff myself with anything labeled as food. The irritating noise of a group of people shouting slogans was heard from the other extreme of the platform. All attentions were drawn to that direction, except a group of people, probably daily wage workers. Under the roof of an unlighted huge shade that looks like an extension of the platform, they were seated on their fouled and stained makeshift beds. They were looking at the much darker corner of the shade that shelters them and I could hear their women folk talking in a high pitched and accented Hindi about the brutality of men in ‘Vardi’ while the men, probably their husbands, repeatedly told them to shut up. This makes me more curious about what they were talking and watching with uninterrupted attention. I listen more attentively in an attempt to figure it out but most of what they said was drowned in the slogans of a group of ungrateful agitating railway workers.

Determined to make sense of what drew their attention to that dark corner, I saw two policemen, one of them forcefully dragging an unwilling figure towards the darker side of the corner from a make-shift bed separately laid far from the rest. The third policeman was shoving, beating, and at times kicking a much smaller and sloppy figure out into the open. They were forcing a small child, who appears to me like a three years old girl, away from the unwilling mother. Though it was dark, I can make out another figure, probably their officer, waiting for the other two to drag in the helpless victim of their lustful designs. Her occasional cries could be overheard faintly but nobody heard her well due to the commotion created by the noisy slogans. While they were forcing them apart, the mother and child desperately hold on to each other. The child, apparently too scared to cry out loud, for a moment manage to cling to her mother but only to be snatched apart.

By now the group of people who were watching them started blaming their ‘Thikadar’ for putting them in such an unholy place, a railway platform but none of them appears bold enough to raise alarm or try helping the hapless mother and child. Judging by their makeshift bed, separated far from the rest, the mother and child must be an outcast or born low caste who somehow tags along with the group they originally belong for mere company or security that they found wanting when needed. The train moves again and I realize I am no different from the people nearby. I could do nothing for those who are forced to the dark corner by criminals and corrupted systems of administrations. In most cases, the society with all its inherent restraints and norms also remains a mute spectator.

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Prevail Peace

PREVAIL FOR PEACE

In the woods, no soul dwelled
Where silence is deafening
Footfalls and broken twigs
Hastened the heart and mind
Abides peace I seek elsewhere

Amidst gunshots and wailing
Where noises are deafening
Dawn of peace ever doubtful
Mere survival highly expensive
Sits my home I find nowhere

In deafening noise or silence
Where might seems to be right
Justice be denied or delayed
In fearful whispers or loud cries
Truth 'll prevail for peace to reign

THE FALLACY OF THE SELF

While in a stationary train or vehicle, we are often disillusioned of being in motion because of the motion of other train or vehicle seen through the side windows. To ascertain if we are truly in a state of motion, we look beyond those moving trains for known stationary entities like the trees or buildings. If the trees or buildings are not in motion, the mind immediately informs that we are not in motion. Many times in our real life, we completely deny or ignore the accuracy or the existence of such referable stationary entities. Like the knowledge of motion or motionlessness becoming impossible without referring to known stationary entities, our mind would not know whether we are sane or insane without referring to an external point of reference. Only through the senses derived by referring to external agents can one arbitrate the sanity of one’s own mind. 

Can a fallible self be a better point of reference for the self than the infallible being Himself? Man cannot be righteous without God as the point of reference. But the tendency to justify our own moral conduct is so intrinsic that we acknowledge the self more often than the infallible God. In the lack of the infallible Being, the self creates a god in the likeness of the self and the self reduced itself to an idolater when the self, in due course, worships the self. This intrinsic tendency is in total disregard to the truth - men’s need for an infallible external moral point of reference. As the disillusionment of motion in a motionless train, we used our own self to inform us on whether we are morally right or wrong not realizing or refusing to realize that we have failed time and again to look beyond and see the incorruptible God, the moral lawgiver. 

Extrapolations of similar misplacements are also seen in the social sphere. Self-justifications for the sake of self aggrandizements have become the emperor’s decree of the self. This is the decree any individual self is more than willing to self-imposed. The tendency of sensitivity only to the self has caused us so much pain and abounds our society with purposeless aspirations. 

While acknowledging the fallacy of the self, some have fatally fallen short by referring to a fallible and movable point of references. The movement of the train we see is not ours but the train around us. How long shall we remain disillusioned by the movements of others around us? 

With this seemingly post-modern mind, we end up arriving at contradicting conclusions but equally convincing explanations – the fallacy youngsters admired and adults celebrated. Such contradictions can never be the means to achieve mutual benefit or harmony. Are our minds closed to the common good of all? Are our minds fixed on the self and nothing more? When self becomes the measure of everything, God is no longer the measure of the self – then the self has lost its purpose and meaning.