What’s common between Aruna Shanbaug, Danielle
Lierow, James
Bulger, Junko
Furuta, and Jyothi Singh Pandey (more commonly known as Nirbhaya)?
We all know what happened to them, but we don’t know why it
happened to them. Maybe in the case of Jyothi, we can probe her rapists,
feature them in documentaries, and get their chauvinistic reasons for
committing such a cold-blooded crime. That probe, though, would never answer
why it was Jyothi who met such a fate. In all probability, the rapists would
have done the same if it were some other girl in Jyothi’s place that
unfortunate day.
When you start asking questions like “Why did Jyothi choose
to watch the movie on that particular day?” “Why did Jyothi choose a late night
show?” “Why did they not wait for a different vehicle?” you would eventually
hit this one enigmatic roadblock called fate.
There’s no reason apart from fate that can explain why
Jyothi particularly was the victim. And similarly, why Shanbaug or Furuta or
Bulger or Lierow were/are victims. Out of the five people listed, only Lierow
and Shanbaug are alive today. Lierow survives today, albeit without the necessary
development in her thinking faculty, which makes her much different from kids
of her age. She’s a 5 year old kid trapped in a 14 year old’s body, thanks to
the grave injustice her mother caused by just being negligent and unconcerned
of her baby.
While Lierow at least survives today, Shanbaug just exists. Sadly,
Shanbaug has been just existing for the past 42 years.
So, on one hand, we have a kid who couldn’t reach the peak
of human creativity and potential, and on the other, a 66 year old lady who
could have served mankind in more ways than one (Shanbaug was a nurse), if not
for fate.
Contemplation of the concept called fate opens up a
discussion about karma. While karma is a very convenient excuse for explaining
why something happens to someone, it again leads to a multitude of
uncomfortable questions. According to karma, what goes around comes back
around. If we believe that the perpetrators of a heinous crime will someday or
the other experience the same magnitude of pain they inflicted, we should also
be ready to accept arguments that the victim became a victim because he/she was
a perpetrator some time.
Let me explain this with an example. In India, we have
elders who threaten kids that if they (kids) kill an insect, they’d be born as
the same insect in their next birth and the insect would be born as the person
and exact revenge through a reversal of roles. This kind of a threat is
certainly said with good intentions. After all, kids should learn to not harm
insects, they must realise that insects are living beings that can feel pain
too. But using this threat of karma can backfire massively. What if some
super-smart kid asks, “Why can’t it be that I was this insect in my previous
birth and the insect was the human being who killed me in that birth? Why can’t
we consider that our roles have reversed now and I’m exacting revenge for the
wrong that happened to me?”
These are for sure very valid questions. Karma is like the
circus thuppaakki that Kamal Hassan wields in Aboorva Sagodharargal. It
can shoot forward; it can also shoot backward.
I don’t even want to talk about the kind of backlash and rebuke someone would face if they insisted that Jyothi Singh Pandey had wronged someone in the past and that’s why she suffered such a horrific end. And admonishment in that case is undoubtedly valid because of the argument’s sheer ridiculousness and absurdity.
We can avoid such uncomfortable questions and stances by
avoiding the argument of karma. Moreover, we don’t even know certainly if
rebirth is true. You can choose to believe in it based on the accounts of
people who regressed into their past lives and recalled perfect details from
those lives. But those are rare instances. Rational, practical thinking
requires evidence for belief.
Therefore, it’s good to treat fate as a stand-alone entity
that’s as intriguing as our very existence is.
In the midst of such perplexing arguments, one school of
thought says man is capable of controlling fate, and another says that it’s
definitely fate that controls man’s life.
I personally don’t know which of these is true, for I’ve
been in situations where I’ve felt in control throughout and in others where
control was just a bunch of sour grapes, and I, the aspiring fox.
In reality, I believe life is a mix of both scenarios. There are some things that we can control and some things that we can’t. For instance, wearing a helmet whenever we ride motorbikes/wearing the seatbelt whenever we drive cars is an action that’s under our control. We can choose to perform or not to perform that action. However, wearing a helmet alone does not guarantee a shield from death, for there have been cases where those wearing helmets have succumbed in accidents and those who did not were saved miraculously. Those are the things that are beyond our control. But still, wearing a helmet is a good practice because it’s been statistically and rationally proven that helmets minimize the risk of death during accidents, if not eliminate it.
So, that’s how fate is. Mysterious. We can try our best to
manipulate life the way we want, but what has to happen will happen, no matter
how hard we try to avoid its occurrence.
What we can further do is ensure that we truly exercise our control
over those things that we can control and count our blessings regarding those
things that are beyond our control. No amount of worrying, complaining, or
whining can influence fate in your favour. Fate seems to have a mind of its
own.
Unfortunately, Furuta, Jyothi, Bulger, Shanbaug, and Lierow are
some victims of fate.
But people like Malvika
Iyer are victors of fate.
