Better dead or alive?

Do not doubt this that Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam was a better man than most who trod this earth. May he rest in peace.

The death of this great individual and what is happening immediately after has set me thinking….Oh! It was always in mind....

The bard famously said “…The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones….” That probably was true in the era of BC. An odd millennium into AD, it is now fashionable to eulogise the dead immediately after they die – for what good they did and also some good presumed they did. This matter of death brings in us a sense of misplaced pity and a sympathetic wave pervades in the wake. Else why should there be sane voices raised against hanging one tried and convicted as guilty of terror? Once pronounced guilty by the judicial system why they are not just lined up and shot? The reason is death….the scary scepter of death. Our character is channeled by a sense wherein we feel obligated to death and an obligation to the dead.

Add to that the ‘bandwagon’ syndrome…

At the end of his first term as President the whole Nation would have been happy for him to get a second term at the exalted office. The ruling party in power (UPA led by the Congress) at that time thought he was not ‘fit’ for a second term and the powers that be propped up an hitherto unknown quantity, Dr Pratibha Patil, to the office. She later proved to be the worst President of Independent India.  Where were those intellectuals, media persons, scientists, teachers, children and the general public et al at that time? Why did not these people come out on the streets in vehement support of Dr. APJAK?  Those who then opposed a second term for Dr APJAK were on the bandwagon to attend his funeral in Rameshwaram. Was it in repentance for an act not done or was it for visibility – ‘The bandwagon syndrome’.  If all of us had stood as one in the matter as we are apparently doing now India may have had a better President during that one more term!!!!!! Alas it was not tobe as DR. APJAK was still alive then! What an irony!!!!!

Emotion and anger cloud the senses to the extent of numbness that we are unaware of what we do and commit excesses bordering madness resulting in grave consequences. The bandwagon syndrome is one such.

It is the nature of us Indians to look for heroes and even make one where there is none. Strangely our heroes in life are either always dead or temporary…why?