Another news from the newspaper, a 17-year-old boy was on his way to a coaching class in Bhagalpur Bihar, when a van hit him. He died on the spot. A few metres ahead, the van overturned and the fish it was carrying fell onto the road. People gathered there. But instead of helping, or even standing quietly, many started picking up the fish. A child had just died, yet people were busy collecting what they could.
The accident was tragic, but the response of the locals was far more unsettling.
I keep asking myself why such scenes no longer shock us the way they should. One reason, I feel, is that we see too much of this now. Accidents, deaths, and violence are part of our daily news. When the same kind of events keep appearing again and again, the mind slowly stops reacting.
In the book Thinking, Fast and Slow, which co-incidentally I am reading these days this is explained in a simple way. The brain gets used to repeated events. What is familiar feels less important. The mind chooses the easier path—notice it quickly and move on. We don’t slow down to think or feel. That part of the mind switches off.
Living among strangers has made this easier. Many of us no longer live in close communities. No one knows us, and we don’t know anyone. There is little fear of judgment. Little sense of shared responsibility. The boy was not “ours.” He was just someone lying there.
The worry is not just that we feel less. The worry is what comes next.
Seeing death so often may not make us numb, but it does not force us to act without shame. Picking up fish beside a dead child is not a reflex. It is a decision. And that decision tells us something uncomfortable about the direction we are moving in.
When I was in school, we had a separate class called moral teaching. At that time, we thought it was useless. Now I realise how important it was. Psychology also tells us that what we repeatedly hear and read slowly shapes our thinking and behaviour. Probably, this has been removed from the curriculum. Now from a young age, children are taught to look for benefit whether its job or entrepreneurship, to take advantage of situations, and to not miss opportunities. This way of thinking comes from the market, but it does not remain there. It quietly enters our everyday behaviour. When such thinking meets tragedy, something dangerous happens. A moment that should demand respect turns into a chance to get something for free. The fish mattered more than the life that was lost. I think it needs to be balanced by educating empathy, sensitivity, morality as well. Else it will be one-sided growth may be very cruel growth where this will be normalised like the past practices like slavery, like Sati when it was normalised and people assumed that the practice was correct.
I don’t know where this leads. If today we can loot fish beside a dead child, what will tomorrow look like?