“Fist in the air, in the land of hypocrisy” sang Zach De La Rocha of the rap/metal band Rage Against The Machine. He was essentially “rapping” about the hypocritical nature of the American Administration and how these “imperialist lies coerced countries into democracy” almost against their wills.
As I sat in class and hear people rant about the “deprivation they saw” and the immense torture they were subjected me, I felt this funny feeling in my stomach something similar to what a north-Indian feels while having south Indian food( all sarcasm intended). I felt sick. I felt disgusted. I felt like taking a crowbar and shoving it right into some of their knee caps(thanks rajeev). Everyone suddenly felt so concerned about the poor. Granted that we did feel hurt by what we saw, but to react in such a way. Absurd. Some people claimed they were pro-poor(does that mean he/she wanted everyone to be poor?). What I gathered was that he/she was sick of the poverty. But then again ask an Anil Ambani or a Lakshmi Mittal if they were in favour of poverty and they would sy otherwise. But then again how are they the richest people in the world?
The post-deprivation trip disgusted me. Just the fact that i saw hypocrisy. I probably am portraying a ‘holier than thou’ image but this is exactly what I felt. I protested. They should not expect to change the world in a week(the whole notion of change is misinterpreted) and not be so hypocritical. I said what I felt and strangely enough i was labelled a cynic. My professor’s question convinced me. “How many of you’ll want to be rural reporters?”. Not a single hand. A resounding silence. I got my answer.
It was evident just a few of us felt this way. My friend(Rajeev) and I spoke about this. I was pleased in a weird sort of way to know that at least one other person felt the same way. But the rest didn’t care.
A good two weeks later. The dust has settled. The deprivation trip seems like a distant memory. No one cares. Rajeev and I speak about this on and off. The only thing we conclude is that we both wanted to”devastate them with crowbars”.
The song made sense. Rocha wrote about the American administration but it made sense now. He was talking about the hypocrisy in all our lives. Granted, I’m probably a cynic but one thing i hope I’ll never become is a “fucking hypocrite” as Zach de la Rocha puts it.
Amen to that!
2 Comments
well, nannu, i don’t know about that. just because you know something isn’t right doesn’t mean that you have to dedicate your life to it. it’s awareness-building, i will be able to share my experience about the lack of the trickle-down effect, and the farce the government is playing out, and my viewpoint, and therefore my writing – will be altered by what i saw.
it’s like saying doctors sent to villages for compulsory practice do no good if they never return. the covering deprivation trip is an attempt to opem people to rural reporting, and it will have an effect, like all experience has an effect – and at the least it might make one of us try to get a rural story passed when you become editors.
Strong stuff Unni. And this is the reality we live in. What I love to refer to as the ‘middle class bubble” – but i tend to agree with whisperingtidesofdarkness. Sometimes building awareness and creating top level change can be as valuable as working on the ground. Access is everything. Whether you choose to create it or not is up to you.