sign of times

Sign of times

Its November and temperatures are changing, we all want winter to land up, and land up fast in our midst. The jokes have also started with the muffler and the throat cough medicines but what is different this year, you may ask. Halloween has taken into us by a storm, it’s a festival where the west remembers the dead, the saints but the theme is of humor and ridicule to confront the brutality of death. How and why this festival took root in India is beyond my comprehension.

Halloween is a western festival; children dress up in various outlandish scary costumes and go trick treating to get candy. And suddenly yesterday, I saw my Facebook wall flooded with kids going to these theme parties, with the complete theme, décor, ambience created for young kids who don’t know what it means. Why have we started to give this kind of education, upbringing to our kids?

The next day was the day to remember thirty years of the 1984 genocide. No posts, except the cursory change of the cover photo, to show one is with the flavor of the day. The next day being the Gurpurab of the first Guru of the Sikhs.

Why are there no statuses to remember, pay respect, homage to Him?

In fact, we will give more emphasis to a western festival, and will automatically impart the same to our children laying the foundation for life for them, but heaven forbid, we might take them to the Gurudwara or temple, or try and teach them a lesson that one should not discriminate the other because he is a Sikh or a Muslim or a girl.

Compassion is what needs to be imparted empathy needs to be cultivated. My wall ( not the brick and mortar one mind you ) , but my virtual life one , had all these sweet , adorable pictures ( no offence to the people) but hey we do live in India . And, especially because we again and again have insensitive politicians swearing to get justice for the innocents whose generations have been lost to drugs, death, poverty and plain old no justice, they are given false hopes and then laid to rest when the TRP’s have been reached.

I implore the media to at least carry on some kind of coverage all ear around rather than surface, interview and die till the next year around. This horror can happen to anyone, and trust me we all are vulnerable.
Halloween would have been appropriate by being a terror victim costume, at least that would have been real, than the Joker of Batman.

“Why so serious?’

It’s a free country. Just saying my piece .

Ravneet Sangha