How much is too much?

"Aga tula mahitiye-" ("you know what-")

This one sentence, or its equivalent in other languages, gets the conversation going between two women. They're so eager to know who married whom, who had a daughter, who ran away, who is in the hospital, who bought an expensive car, who's mother-in-law is a pain the backside, and so on...

One little happening in the society and they have to tell each other of it.

When you come to think of it though, it's not just women. It's men, too. The only difference is that women talk about personal lives of other people and men, about the professional lives of other people.

They have to talk about it.

So there are those women who have the gossip, those want to know it, those who want to broadcast it, and then there are those who want to disrupt the general peace and quiet by saying "don't tell anyone, but-", knowing fully that everyone shall be told about it within 24 hours.

I get it - we see something, we want to share it. Talk about it. Discuss about its consequences, its causes.

All this when you're not involved, at all.

Give this some more thought, and you will realise, not everything that is seen and heard, is talked about and shared.

What, how, you ask?

I'll give you instances -

#1 You're in a local train, in the ladies' dabba. A woman gets in; she has a 5-7 year old kid with her. (It'll be a boy, mostly). It is clear that the kid is overly pampered. He is quiet for a while. And then out of nowhere, he yells at his mother. She tries to shush him. It doesn't work. (The other women have started staring shamelessly now...) Then he hits her. On the face. And all she says is "aisa nai karo beta," in the softest possible voice. (He's just a kid, right? Bechara na-samajh hai. Let it be.) This goes on for a while, with an occasional raise in the woman's voice. But you can tell that she's helpless and she knows it. By this time she's bored of the looks that are shot at her by everyone else, maybe even "mannered" kids. So she goes back to patting the kid on the back, hoping he'll stop. Of course, he does not.

If you live in Mumbai, you will have come across similar scenarios in buses, trains. If you have nothing to do then, you start thinking. Where did the child learn that? We know small children can only learn from so many people. They don't have a peer group at that age, so that is out of the question. Where else? Family. The kid can only have learnt that from what happens at home. So what does that mean?

#2 It's a nice morning. You are out in the market to buy some stuff. On the way back, you see a woman in a loosely draped two-piece saree, with a baby in her arms and two children, no older than seven, on either side of her, struggling to cross the road. She somehow manages to do it. (Now you're thinking "oh, the poor thing," right?) Once she's on the other side, she simply lets go of the two children's hands and they can't even walk properly so they just drop to the ground, literally. One of them actually stumbles and rolls beneath a car. The mother sighs with exasperation and helps him stand, and then out of nowhere - she slaps him. And again. And again. And the kid starts crying. His sister looks bored; you know this has happened before. How often, you don't want to know, because you're scared of what you might find out.

You just stand there. Dumbfounded. Not knowing what to do, what to say, if to say anything at all. All this happens in a couple of minutes. You can't wrap your mind around what you saw.

After a while, you forget about it...

#3 You're in college. There is a typical "macho" guy, his sidekick, and his innocent little baby girlfriend.
The girl is every bit of a weak person that you can imagine. She is not allowed to have an opinion, let alone voice it. She was brought up to stay quiet.
The guy, clear from the way he talks to women and looks at them, brought up in a house where all women do, all day, is cook and cook and cook. Oh, and serve their in-laws. Also, produce children.
The girl knows she is being cheated on. Yet, everything goes on just fine. The girl with whom the guy is cheating on her, knows she is being used, too. And yet, everything goes on just fine. The guy talks of beating the girl. Someone overhears him. Talks start. Murmurs spread. And yet again, everything goes on just fine.

This is at the very basic level.

Do you not find it disturbing? I do. Do I do anything about it? No. Why? Simple - it is none of my business.

But for how long is it none of our business? What if something happens to the woman in the train, the kid who was beaten, the girl who was cheated? I saw all of it happen right in front of me. I shut up. I chose to shut up.

The feeling of guilt does not leave you. You can't run away from it. It stays with you.

There's no harm in trying, though, is there? So' I'm trying. By speaking up, by writing about it.

I don't know if this makes a difference at all, but I feel better.

You should try, too.