Let us be more humane..

This morning I got the following joke on my WhatsApp:
‘Please spare a thought for the man who told his wife he was going to China on that Malaysian Flight No.MH 370 and now cannot come out of his girlfriend’s flat!’
Honestly, I was not tickled by this joke. On the contrary, I was irritated that when the whole world was grieving over the unexplained disappearance of this fateful flight and waiting hopefully for some good news, some people could make a joke of it. This is an example of ‘ill-timed’ humour at its callous worst. Please don’t get me wrong that my age has perhaps robbed me of my sense of humour. It will never happen. All my life I have been specializing in the art of looking at the lighter side of life, MY life that is!

I am sure that even the non-Tamils in this forum are familiar with Thiruvalluvar and his Thirukkural. There is one particular Kural that has guided me through all thick and thin in my life thus far. This is how it goes:

"Idukkan Varungaal Naguga Adhanai
Aduthoorvadhu Agudhu Oppadhill"

Roughly translated, it means ‘Laugh the (your) sorrows/troubles away. There is no other way to conquer woes’. Though he does not specifically mention about whose sorrows that he wants us to laugh away, is it not obvious that he is referring to one’s own troubles? In fact, my teacher in the school gave several examples to illustrate this point and kept us enthralled for a whole session. I still remember one example that he gave. He was referring to our natural tendency to laugh heartily if a fat person slipped on a banana peel and landed on the ground with a thud. He would say that this was not what Valluvar meant by this couplet. What he meant was that if we fell down in a similar fashion, we should laugh it off heartily as we dusted our backside. It would also help us to hide our embarrassment. By laughing at another person who had a fall, we would only be adding to his discomfiture.

History is full of kings and emperors who had a warped sense of humour. The most classic of them was Emperor Nero who was reported to have set fire to Rome and as it was burning for six days, he was playing on a stringed instrument. The most nauseating of all the Emperors was Caligula whose atrocities cannot be discussed here because of their highly morbid nature. We had Hitler in the last century who snuffed out Jews in the most gruesome way. Pol Pot of Cambodia was another extremely cruel example. The jokes and rumours that are doing the round on the missing Malaysian flight are just manifestations of a sick mind similar to what some of these Emperors had.

The most endearing quality any human being can ever have is the ability to have a laugh at his own expense. I had read the following report in one of the American Medical Journals:
‘In these gloomy, uncertain times, the ability to have a good laugh — especially at your own expense — may be essential for survival. But are people really capable of having a sense of humor about themselves? In the first-ever study of its kind, Ursula Beermann of the University of California, Berkeley, and Willibald Ruch of the University of Zurich studied 70 psychology students to gauge their ability to laugh at themselves. The findings support what has long been believed: that being able to laugh at oneself is not only a distinct trait, but is also linked with having an upbeat personality and good mood and may be the foundation for a good sense of humor.’

Coming back to the passengers in the missing Flight and their families, it must be an extremely agonizing wait. They don’t even know what to expect. They are kept in dark. There is one Chandrika from Chennai who has taken this flight. Her husband and daughter lament how excruciatingly painful is this mystery and suspense. They say they are more disturbed by all the news and analysis by the media than by the event itself. Let us for a second assume that this WhatsApp joke gets circulated to them. How will they receive it? We should just pray and hope for their well-being. That will be the most humane response to a tragedy of this magnitude.

 

Dear PS
You have hit the nail on its head by describing the sender of this joke as 'insensitive'. I have only quoted just one instance that came on my mobile. But I believe there are many such jokes in circulation which are more insensitive. It is a pity that even in dire situations, people are not willing to drop a tear of sympathy.
God knows where are we heading!
Sri

 

My dear buddy Aruna
The mystery is not about the missing plane. The mystery is why people are acting the way they do. Even the Nations are lying through their teeth about what they know or what they are after. This unseemly rivalry among them at this stage appears more to establish their supremacy over others.
I have this fear that they know the truth but are holding it back as a tool to get at the bottom of the sinister plot. Only God knows who are involved in this game.
Sri

 

Dear Manju
The once harmless ice-breaking ritual of ragging is now redefined as an act that violates or is perceived to violate an individual student's dignity. Ragging was not unknown even during my student days over five decades back and I would not say that it was totally harmless even then. I really do not know when ragging was ever harmless in our country. The idea of fun differed from person to person but when they formed themselves into a group, the concept of fun tended to be more on the violent side. I have seen in my college that some individuals in the so called 'rowdy groups' were personally very well behaved and abhorred violence of all kinds. The riddle of how innocence got converted to vicious malice when in a group is something difficult to understand. I have seen some destitute widows sending their sons to schools and colleges at great personal hardship of working as cooks and menials with high expectations that their liberation would come through their sons. These were the boys who took to all the violent fun in order to please the affluent group in which they moved in the college. Initially they start doing errands for the affluent guys and eventually become their muscle men.

Coming back to all these sick jokes in circulation about the unfortunate missing Malaysian Flight, I recall the words of Michael Jackson in the song 'We are the world':
'There comes a time
When we heed a certain call
When the world must together come as one
There are people dying
And it's time to lend a hand to life
The greatest gift of all...'

Now is the time to come together as one to focus all our positive energies to save the people who are stricken by a mystery of the weirdest kind. This is no time to joke around. Would we do it if one of the victims is our own?
Sri

 

My dear Syamala
Sadism is a trait that I have never been able to understand. Causing untold misery to someone and deriving absolute pleasure from the spectacle of his suffering is a cursed mindset. I do not think any other creation of God other than human beings is capable of sadism. Once I witnessed a middle-aged man crushing a beautiful caterpillar under his heavy shoes and I was appalled that even grown-ups could do such a thing. That event left me disturbed for a whole day. What justification he had to snuff out life of an insect when it did not even cross his path? And in what way are the people who joke around the missing plane less sadistic than the guy who killed an insect just for his personal fun?

I always thank God for having kept me as a mild-mannered person all my life despite some hardship caused to me by others. I may never have to feel guilty about any wilful agony caused to anyone in my life. As Manju Reddy has spoken in her latest Snippet, I am happy to be the jellyfish that means well and is continuously serving the cause of God!
Sri