Ugly and beautiful..
Simple and intricate..
Good and bad..
Love and hatred..
Innocence and guile..
Knowledge and ignorance..
Honor and ignominy..
Happiness and gloom..
Sweetness and bitterness..
Acquaintance and Stranger..
Intimacy and distant..
Clarity and ambiguity..
Boredom and interest..
Pure and Perverted..
Sacrifice and Sin..
Truth and falsehood..
Fact and fiction..
Attraction and repulsion..
All and none..
Full and empty..
Day and night..
Hope and despondency..

It seems someone's idea of quirkiness to create entities that act in tandem and against. A big joke played on a human mind - to perceive seemingly two opposite things in the what is the same. There seems to be no so called "thin and invisible" line that separates one from another. But we happily tire ourselves in search of a reality that does not exist - a mirage that invites us to lose ourselves in search of the obvious but what appears to be elusive. What we see of anything at a particular point is what we want to see and what we are at that point of time. But we embark on an endless argument of what is right and what is wrong. Little do we realize is all are the same , one is all and all in one.

Successive bomb blasts..
Himachal Pradesh Stampede..
Train accidents ..
And on and on..

I am reminded of a poem that I came across in my school. I think it was one of John Keats' - about Adam's fear of the night and his comparison to our fear of death. Keats was trying to convince the reader that our fear of death is as silly Adam's fear of beautiful star-lit night. He was trying to convince the reader that there is beauty in pitch darkness and absolute stillness, a form of peace bestowed forcefully after a few hours' uproar.

But what about the fear of causing someone's death or shock / sadness upon hearing someone's death?

When we hear about the news of various mishaps for the first time, it shakes us a bit initially and then as more and more of these keep coming, we take it in the stride, thanks to our adaptive mentality towards news that affect us not-so-personally. In some sense, it has got to be there. The power to shrug the bad things off our back and move on is needed. But have we reached a point where we pay scant attention to the pains of our race, save those blessed souls who rush to volunteer help? Have we reached a point, where the pain of a fellow human being affects us not? Are we turning cold to the suffering and appeals of help? As if nature's punishments are not enough, we create our graveyards with bomb blasts and what-nots.. Have we total disregard for human life's value, if not just about any form of life? I feel we are slowly and steadily getting there. And this is something that should be of concern to many. In some way, this is a fear that should exist in each one of us - the fear of shedding the tender feelings in the wake of a hurried life. Keats cannot justify the lack of this fear.

Of late, I feel assured when someone feels disturbed upon hearing a second person's pain.

Fear of death is silly, it happens to every one of us and thankfully, it does happen. But dying because someone induced death is not so silly and the fear for self is universal. This triggers our basic instinct for survival causes us to be on alert and dubious of each other - creating zillions of islands out of one single human race. We are specks in the whole scheme of things but we act as if nothing else matters.

Will we reach a state where we feel moved over poignant suffering of any living being - beyond geographical boundaries, beyond races and religions and zoological classification?