RE-TWEET IT!
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CAUTION: The theme of this blog post – and the video I link to – is NOT for children or squeamish, delicate people. It is raw, painful, and real. Skip it if you’re the kind who is too strongly affected by hearing of such things. You have been warned!
After four decades on this planet, having seen and heard of many sick and depraved activities, I find it amazing (and heartening) that I can still feel abhorrence, distaste and disgust at some things.
But I can. And do. It happened again last night.
Anish (@anishd19) on Twitter sent me a link to a TED Talk (India) video (NOTE: The video has graphic images and even more explicit content that can be hurtful).
I watched it – and squirmed in discomfort, cried in deep searing pain, and spent several disturbed hours thinking about many uncomfortable questions Sunitha Krishnan asked in the course of 12 short but lengthy minutes.
As a teen-ager, I loved reading novels by Harold Robbins. Many of my friends read it for the few pages of stark, explicit sexual narrative. I enjoyed the starker insight into human nature that Robbins was a master at expressing.
One of my favorite books was “79 Park Avenue”, a novel that defined a mindset and attitude about prostitution in my malleable brain that has lasted until today.
Sunitha’s presentation at TED ranks on par with this for impact.
Little children, their health and welfare, are close to my heart. I spend my professional career taking care of kids born with congenital heart defects. Most of my online work, writing and marketing efforts are directed at raising funds to sponsor their treatment.
Yet I have shied away from issues like child abuse and sex slavery in the past. Because I thought there was little or nothing I could actually do about it.
Now I feel ashamed about that. Of being a part of the uncaring and indifferent civic society the presenter decries in her powerful talk. The kind whose silence offers tacit, if passive support, to the cruelty of perpetrators – while adding insult to the injury of the abused.
And after sleeping over it, I decided to try and make amends for my silence until now – by sharing this amazing presentation, not with two people like Sunitha asked for, but with two thousand… or more.
Here, on this blog. And on Twitter. And other channels I have reach and impact on.
That’s the easy part.
What’s to follow is tougher. Much harder.
I’ve decided to try and change my mindset, attitude and prejudice about the victims. Not just of this kind, but of ANY kind of abuse. Because to spout empty words without backing it by deeper change within would be hypocritical.
It won’t be easy. It won’t happen overnight. It will take much soul searching and internal discipline.
I’m ready to try and do it.
Are you?
{ 1 comment }
firstly,I THANK MANI SIR VERY MUCH for not just reading my tweet but also to have taken your time to ponder over it and even writing a blog for the same…..i found that many didn’t even take time to retweet it!!.
secondly,i want to bring it notice that awareness on such happenings shlud be made more with the upcoming generation….rather than just elders…i myself am just 17..but with such happenings where a child of just 3 yrs is done injustice,,i dont see myself as a child…
thirdly,blogs are many but blogs which HAVE THAT SOUL TO CARE ARE FEW….so i request the readers to be kind enough to develop the same SOUL WHICH CARES and also make others to do the same..
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