In Our Corrupt And Violent World

“The young man had a whale of a time” Lulu, my parrot, said, “and the worst time of life is following immediately.” He was reading the newspaper account of the young boy dashing his Porsche and killing two persons.

“He was not even eighteen, he did not have a driving license, yet he drove his father’s Porsche. The two-crore-car Porsche is damaged beyond repair, two innocent victims of the accident are dead. And the two men, his father and himself are in jail.”

“And they are saying that the car was not even registered with authorities. Man! Builders can get away with anything. And oh! The bar was illegal too!!”

“This is shocking! I mean it shakes my confidence in the Government machinery and the police department.”

“Nah! Much more than that!!”

“What?”

“The hoarding which fell and killed seventeen guys was illegal. And if that is not shocking enough, the petrol pump over which the hoarding fell was also illegal, it did not have a permit!”

“So, what are you saying?”

“It is corruption galore. Obviously. Ordinary person thinks that corruption is declining; but the evidence is suggesting exactly opposite.”

“There is no rule of law, Lulu. There is no rule of law!”

“Ebrahim Raisi died only two days ago.”

“I mean how is that relevant to what we are discussing”?

“Raisi earned a reputation of being a hanging judge and was nicknamed the ‘Butcher of Tehran’. He was a member of the ‘Tehran death committee’ and was responsible for ordering the death of five thousand persons.”

“Are you sure you mean 5000?”

“Yes, 5000!” Lulu moved closer to me. “Some persons were hanged from cranes and Wikipedia says, ‘Because of the large number, prisoners were loaded into forklift trucks in groups of six and hanged from cranes in half-hour intervals.’ And Ebrahim Raisi considered that to be his proud achievement!”

“There is something wrong. Justice is not done. You cannot hang 5000 guys! This beats me completely. Unthinkable.”

“Corrupt minds allow criminals to erect hoardings without authority, construct petrol pumps illegally, and corrupt justice kills five thousand persons. Either way they do immense harm to the society.”

“True, immense harm. So, shocking it is.”

“And what is Netanyahu doing?”

“He is on a killing spree!”

“Did you notice something peculiar about it?”

“What is that? Tell me”

“He is doing to Gazans what Hitler did to Jews! Do you get me?”

“Hmmm ….”

“We have corrupt government, corrupt justice and minds which do not learn from history. Jews did not like the way Hitler treated them. Why is Netanyahu treating Gazans exactly in the same way?”

“That is a good question, Lulu. I guess history repeats in many ways.”

“Unfortunately, I do not see a Mahatma emerging who makes a government run and who is the champion of peace.”

Lulu, my parrot, looked out of window. It was a sky full of dark clouds.

PS Feature pic: Courtesy Pixabay

Vivek S Patwardhan

“What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.”