Uncomfortably numb in a cruel world
Updated On: 02 February, 2024 06:52 AM IST | Mumbai | Rosalyn D`mello
While war rages on and the bodies of innocents pile up, we keep ourselves occupied as pausing would compel us to acknowledge the scale of our grief and the extent of our loss in terms of our humanity
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If we attended one funeral a day to mourn each Palestinian life lost to brutal, unsparing Israeli air strikes, we would be attending funerals for at least 27 years. Representation Pic
I’d be hard-pressed to find a truer meme than one I came across this morning, ‘We’re six months into 2024 and it’s only January.’ By the time you read this, it will be the second day of the month of February. I feel like as a civilisation, we have possibly aged by 50 years, so enormous is the intensity of our collective grief. What grief you ask, when what you see around you is saffron-hued euphoria? Collective grief is, sadly, never mainstream. Because those among us who live mainstream lives do so by cutting themselves off from the pulse of marginalised beings. Who is to blame for our inability to be solitary enough to attune ourselves to this state of mourning? The heady cocktail mix that is capitalism with a large splash of patriarchy, simmered in the fires of racial supremacy. You are unlikely to turn your attention towards the plight of those whose lives hang by a thread if your daily existence is consumed by the demands of having to commute to work, then spend more hours at the office than is technically healthy because in an oversaturated market, standing up for the cause of work-life balance means being replaced by someone who is more than eager to work the extra hours, then return home braving traffic and polluted air only to have to repeat the same grind the day after and the day after that.
I live in an environment of relative comfort. I am privileged to be able to work from home and to have access to water, clean air and indoor heating in winter. Yet, the demands of full-time motherhood protect me from having to ‘feel’ the intensity of this grief. I read a post the other day that tried to contextualise the extent of our mourning. If we attended one funeral a day to mourn each Palestinian life lost to brutal, unsparing Israeli air strikes, we would be attending funerals for at least 27 years. I don’t even know what to do with this information. I have been wondering, lately, if this is how capitalism perpetuates itself in our lifetimes, by making us believe we cannot do without it. You know there are people who suffer the loss of a loved one, and because they are too afraid to feel the enormity of that loss, they prefer to work instead or occupy themselves with other distractions, because they know the pain is too real and is ever present, and it needs only a moment of silence and solitude until it washes over them. I think this is an apt description of how we are currently living our lives, afraid to stop and pause because that would compel us to acknowledge the scale of our grief, the extent of our loss in terms of our humanity.
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