It’s an amusing observation. It makes me highly curious. I have noticed that I just don't get any comments on posts which talk about sorrow or death or are of a serious nature.
I supplement a simple reason- We all are escapists of A grade.
We, the A grade escapists, don’t want to express anything that is gross or sad or deals with death.
We, the A grade escapists can’t imagine our friend or mother or cousin getting crushed on the footpath by a drunken sod and we can’t just picture the dead body of a beloved lying in the drawing room, just brought fresh from the hospital.
We, the A grade escapists don’t want to rack our brains on issues that we are insulated from.
And so, we, the A grade escapists simply don’t talk about things like the Carter road carnage, eye-donation, or cancer or any such philosophical shit which has any distant link with sorrow.
Why don't we just get our ass fixed on the chair and prob why we are incapable of reacting to sorrow.
The problem is, thanks to tomes of literature and high-drama serials and all the sodden things which are thrust in our mentality left, right and centre, we keep sorrow on a pedestal.
We have personified sorrow. We have come to associate sorrow with a higher emotional connect, something that is elegant and obviously in fashion. (I hate Sarat Chandra in this, that he made an icon out of a drunken spurn lover in Devdas)
At the risk of sounding cold, I repeat: We have idolized sorrow.
And so, the mother who keeps grieving the loss of her son in a freak accident for over three decades is an idol of motherly love. And so, the professor who remarries after his family- two children and wife die in the Ahmedabad earthquake, is the subject of city gossip.
Why do we shy away from death and sorrow? Why can't we deal with it in a more productive manner?
Personally, I take death to be the most rewarding and most learning experience of my life. I firmly believe it was good for me as an individual that I suffered a loss.
Death teaches. And that is going to be my next post.
As for now, I repeat- We all are Escapists.
-Gauri Gharpure
