Who started that fight?

Date: 24/12/08

They came, they fought, they killed and they died. Sometimes it is the Hindus v/s the Muslims, sometimes it is the North Indians v/s the Maharashtrians, sometimes it is the Gujjars v/s the Meenas, but all these times it has always been Men v/s Men.

Riots; when one man becomes thirsty for the blood of another man. They do so for a reason; and at times the reasons are many - religion, pride, employment, etc. But all these are merely a superfluous cause; just an excuse to kill. While many riots are instigated by the selfish motives of the public leaders, the actual fuel to this fire comes from within.

It is the fight for survival. An estimated 6.7 billion people live on this tiny planet. It is tiny because we are very fast running out of our resources. Resources that in the form of food, shelter, breathing space, employment, earning opportunities, etc. We work hard for all these, but with ever increasing competition and increasing claimants on these resources, our frustration also increases. It is this frustration that makes us do things that majority of us would term as “irrational”.

With an exponential increase in birth rate and decrease in mortality, human population has breached its saturation level decades ago. Today with every single child that is born, the pressure on our resources augments manifolds. When everyone wants the same thing and the thing available is so little, people are bound to fight.

When resources are scarce and concentrated at one place, the situation worsens. As is the case with the metro like Mumbai; a tiny island housing a population of more than 20 million, providing food, shelter, water, employment, money and fame to all classes of people. How long will it sustain the pressure? Every time there is a riot, the city silently hints, “I have had enough, now go away”. But at the end of every fight, we yell at it saying, “Shut up and let there be a room for some more”.

This is just a beginning. With more babies being born, in future we will witness many more carnages; and who knows, someday even we would be a part of that fight – either killing or killed.

Bhavin Desai