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Today,  instead of beginning with an explanation, description or question or answer,  let us begin with a story –

One morning, while on her walk, a lady heard a screeching sound of brakes,  she turned to find that a bike that  had two men stopped suddenly and began  hitting a lean, juvenile, boy who usually delivers newspaper in the locality,  the men looked well built, well to do and they looked better educated in obvious terms than the newspaper delivery boy.  The lady seemed brave heart and rushed to the scene to stop the fist fight but the men on the bike was powerful enough and the lady had to raise her voice and eventually on that early morning when the streets are normally deserted had few men gathering to the scene. By now,  whether by virtue of the elderly lady’s feeble voiced efforts to prevent the fight or slow accumulation of public to  get entertained. The conflict finally stopped,  now when the lady and the public waited briefly to know the reason for the fight they realised that the reason they were hitting the boy in the bicycle was that he rode past the motorcycle in a way that there was a possibility of an accident and that the handle of his bicycle brushed across the mirror of their bike. Now when they stopped,  the boy in the bicycle due to the humiliation or maybe in anguish began to try and hit back the men on the bike. When the public and the lady voiced out that he was doing the same thing that caused her to fight against them, the boy settled down and so did the others and finally the episode ended. 

Now,  a second and more aggravated scene when a rickshaw puller was being hit constantly by few men for having asked fora rational fare for a rickshaw ride that was taken by them,  this time it is a mid-aged business man who tried to stop them and in the whole affair,  they hit the man back so bad that he finally lost his life. Ironically all this happened in broad daylight when passers- by did not wait but Passers by not wanting to make a move is not new to us.  (we well remember the 16.12.2012 incident when passers by did not stop to help a fatally injured, perishing woman and her friend and left them in the cold to die,  besides as women would know the plight when they do not fight back even when outraged in the fear that no-one would come to her rescue in case of an argument)..  This incident where the mid aged man died battling to save the rickshaw puller made news nationwide.

These two incidents has been cited consecutively for a very simple reason,  that if the second incident would be in knowledge of the woman,  would she take a step ahead to save the boy from those men who seemingly were more powerful than the lady herself.

The crux in this detail is that – when we see any unusual incidents on the streets we watch,  capture videos,  upload on the Internet but do not make a move to save lives or help anyone who is genuinely in despair at that moment,  all this for a reason that we fear our safety,  which is a valid reason but do we make any other effort like try to gather mass around and seek help or make an SOS call to the police, we fear being trapped in the intricacies of the  incident and therefore ignore the incident but what we do not fail to do is get entertained.  As an onlooker we wait,  watch the whole show and then move away, to continue with our daily chores.

It is not the law breakers who are outraging the decency of the environment on the streets but the onlookers also who not only remain unbuffered by the incident but leave the outragers at their liberty to do what they want without fearing the power of the public.

It was taught to us during childhood,  that a bundle of sticks is difficult to break as compared to a single stick, therefore a combined effort to stop such incidents will create a scare amongst the ones who fear no law,  no public or no society and the mischief may be prevented.  It is not too difficult to make a call with phones available with all of us and try atleast help whether that brings result or not.  An intelligent and safe try for any task is atleast worth a try.

Most of us would have come across such incidents on the streets at some point of time. Please use the comments section below to discuss anything relevant and share for awareness.

Thank you for reading through…

Anubrata (Yugadhikari)