Being Inhuman..

It was just another lazy evening. I was walking back home. Its hardly a 10 minutes walk from class. There was some rock band playing really hard inside my head. I felt like my head would explode any moment, migraine attacks are sometimes dead painful. And then there were disturbed voices in my head shouting “what if and what if not? “  I could not shut them out. The cold air and the smokers on the pavement irritated me. Normally I enjoy walking. Maybe today wasn’t one of those normal days. I could see from a distance many people on the pavement. Normally the dogs and I own it at this time of the evening. I thought the golgappa wala must be the reason behind this little crowd of some 15-20 men. But then I could clearly see the reason. I saw a man lying on the pavement and there was a bike nearby. I thought it to be an accident. But nobody really went and tried helping the man instead they all stood at a fair distance from him and were just looking at his fallen body. The man was then at a distance of maybe 5 6 feet from me and that is when I realised maybe he was dead. There was no blood no injury. It wasn’t an accident for sure. But I could see white foam all over his mouth and face. And all those men preferred standing at a distance and just watching him. I realised they were not watching him anymore rather stalking me. So some 30 40  eyes followed me. I heard only one man asking to the person standing next to him “so are we supposed to call the police?” and the other person ignored him and ordered a golgappa plate. I walked as if I did not see anything neither those sick men nor the dead man. I was blank. The voices in my head had stopped arguing, everything was blank. I did not stop and I did not look back. It was sick and disgusting.  I walked for some 2 minutes and stopped realising what I had just done. People can be mere onlookers to such a thing. They could have taken him to the hospital or called the police. But they preferred enjoying  golgappa or stalking a girl. Nobody bothered. Even I did not.I accuse those 20 men of being inhuman but then what did I do?I could have been the one to call the police. The voices in my head started fighting again, the headache got worse and I ignored everything and rushed home as soon as possible.

I talked to a friend about the whole incident. She just asked me to ignore it and there is not much I could have done, I was blank. I belong to the category of people who eat chocolates keep the wrappers in their pockets or bags and dispose them off when they find a dustbin  and throw away the chewing gum after wrapping it up with a paper. I save money for my birthday every year and spend it on small kids at the orphanage. And sometimes I buy food for beggars.  I lived in a myth that I was being human, or rather a decent human being. But cmon a decent human being could have spent 5 minutes on calling up the police. I knew the fact that the jobless stalkers out there could only stalk stalk and stalk while I made the call. Yet I behaved like I didn’t notice anything. It was just another evening and I was playing hide and seek with the dogs on the pavement. I had matters to worry about  like “what if and what if not “, my migraine, the stalkers.  And maybe  I did not care about anything else in the world at that moment.  I don’t know if I was being selfish or inhuman. Maybe the people out there too had their own reasons.I learnt something being human isnt about being human to your own self but being human to humanity.