Darkness

How do I tell?
How do I explain?
That this darkness consuming me

Feels like home
I finally feel at home
The only place
Where I am welcomed
Where I truly belong

Here I am free

Here I am

Me…..

~ Ms Her

When Life Is A Dream

Sometimes life feels like a dream.
One of those dreams where you’re driving on a scenic hill with trees and little streams of water and small waterfalls around you.
And you notice that the car is going towards the end of the road, the beyond which is a deep valley of rocks.
You try but you can’t stop the car. You can’t turn, you can’t even accelerate.
All you can do is watch getting close to the definite end.
And then you notice your loved ones in the car, watching you in horror and with hatred and disgust.
And no matter how hard you try doing whatever it is you think you can do but you can’t. You can’t make them not hate you any more.
Yes, I sometimes life feels like this dream. You’d call it a nightmare, maybe.

What we should (but probably won’t) learn after George Floyd’s death

2020 is not going so good, to say the least. And then we see the video from USA. A man being arrested, and police officers subduing George by pinning him to the ground. One of these officers, more importantly, felt the need to rest his knee on George’s neck, putting most of his weight on the neck of a man lying on the ground face down, held and surrounded by four police officers. As George gasped for air and kept saying “I can’t breathe” repeatedly until his voice could no longer be heard, this policeman knelt on George’s neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds!

One bit of detail to add here – the police were called because a convenience store employee/manager called 911, the emergency services, over suspicion that a customer who he believed was drunk, had used counterfeit currency to buy cigarettes; And the customer wouldn’t return the cigarettes.

This picture, extracted from the video has been seen by millions, if not billions across the world. And it is sure to evoke anger, sadness and even disgust within anyone with the smallest amount of empathy.

What happened since then is a global conversation. For the USA, this incident has sparked all sorts of reactions from the public – from social media outrage, to peaceful protests on the streets, to outright violent riots. The people demand justice for George Floyd. Protesters are seen holding signs saying ‘I can’t breathe’ and a particular photo of George Floyd has now become the face of the dissent against ‘institutional racism’ in the country.

People are talking against the senseless use of force by law enforcement personnel on criminals, suspected dangerous criminals and people accused of petty crimes (like suspicion of using fake currency) alike.

A couple of months back, much less aggravating yet similar scenes were encountered across India too, as the country went under a lock-down to control the spread of the new corona virus ravaging the world. This is a country where the majority of daily wage workers, contractual labor workers and micro-scale business owners migrate to other states into cities where they hope to find work and earn more than they could in their hometowns. They leave behind their families, sending money home whenever they can and hope that their loved ones are safe and healthy. Some bring their family with them, to try their luck at finding work in larger cities. For many such ‘migrant laborers’, what they eat for dinner depends on how much they earn during the day. As India stated enforcing lock-down, which was obviously a necessary step to control the spread of the virus, most of the industries, small businesses stopped overnight.

The common people, from the poor and helpless laborer to the much more comfortable middle class, who had never expected such a scenario were confused about the immediate near future. ‘What about food? ‘‘What about essential commodities? ‘

And so, a few people (relatively) wandered out of their home to buy supplies. And they were greeted by the police with lathis – long & heavy wooden sticks, stupid question and crazy suggestions. We saw an assortment of videos of policemen beating people, making them do squats while holding their ears as punishment for leaving home. Those who have experienced a blow from a lathi say it leaves a numbing sensation that lasts for days.

This was one of the headlines – West Bengal Man Beaten to Death For Stepping Out to Buy Milk During Lock-down.

These images are taken from the news. There were many videos that other people, sitting comfortably in their home, used as a source of entertainment and many even lauded the police for ‘doing their job right’! And once again, any mention of unnecessary use of violence by the police was put down by arguments such as ‘it is necessary’ or ‘people just don’t understand otherwise’ or even ‘this is exactly what needs to be done’.

Coming to the actual problem:

Even the oldest and wisest person on the planet still has ‘the child ego’ somewhere in the psyche. And repeated appreciation for doing anything, right or wrong, makes any person feel good about doing it. Give a person a weapon, a uniform and a feeling of authority over “the general civilian people”, and you’ve created a recipe for potential disaster. Tell this person to use force ‘when required’ and tell them it is the right thing to do, and the potentiality increases manifold.

Back to the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd. The conversation has now shifted to institutional racism and racism in general. I believe this will again result in the dissolution of the true agenda of changing the system. Because when the conversation is limited to racism, the scope for improvement or change in other areas will be ignored, and everything will become a political dialog for both left and right inclining people.

Policemen or people from any other law enforcement agency are after all, just people. And just like all people of the Earth, they have a mind, filled with worries and concerns of their personal lives, prejudices biases. If we teach people how to use lethal force effectively, they WILL use it. It is plain wrong for us to expect each officer to abide by the rules of when to use force. These rules are often vague – like in case of George Floyd – where “resisting arrest” was enough reason for four officers to engage together in an arrest procedure. And this same scenario has been seen over history many times, around the world!

The only important solution to pursue is to reform the training process for police personnel, incorporating more benevolent and empathetic values throughout the system, re-evaluating use of physical tactics to subdue criminals and possibly reduce the amount and type of weaponry in the hands of local police. If power, authority & weapons are given to use, with protection from consequences, they will be used AND misused.

~ (Originally posted on Medium.)