Where are the ‘forests’ and the ‘wild animals’?

Almost every day we are exposed to Indian media reporting sex crimes against women/girls from across the length and breadth of the country, the latest being the rape of a woman by the taxi driver of Uber, a car hire company in Delhi. The number of such reports seems to be going up and only up. It may appear that our media is reporting more such cases prominently after the December 2012 gang-rape and murder of a girl student in Delhi. Or is the crime drawing more attention after the heinous Delhi incident? Whatever said, the crimes against women are a completely devastating and unpardonable evil that is likely to question our whole civilization. The first question that I would like to raise is: “Where are we living?”. The second question that comes to mind is: “Where are we heading?” The third question that needs to be asked is: “Why is this happening?”

Most of us dread to live in a forest as it is full of wild animals though our great grand cave man ‘happily’ lived in the forests in unison with the beasts there. He hunted when he was hungry like any other animal. Hunting was not done for entertainment but only to satisfy the basic need of hunger. But in this civilized world that we ‘think’ we are living in, women are daily being hunted and haunted by our own people, it is not a species from a different planet or any other animal.

If we looked at the past, the wild animals lived in the forest and humans lived in their respective villages and cities after they started progressing. There was a clear demarcation on where the wild beasts and the humans lived. There was no trespassing of each other’s territories and even if there was a trespass, the consequences of such a trespass are known to both. Those were the happy times when compared with the present day affairs.

Now after the explosion of so called civilization and advancement of technology, human acts are unlike that of the early cave man who was mostly motivated by fear and hunger. Thanks to the so-called human progress, there are wild animals of different nature living in the midst of a civilized world. Going purely by the definition of wild animal, it appears that the real wild animals are far better than the ‘wild animals’ that are being written about in my below lines:

·     The TV is one of the medium for ‘wild animals’ that are reaching 24 X 7, the homes of several millions in the form of ‘unwanted’ ads and ‘news’.

·      The internet though helpful on the one hand is another which is paving a virtual red carpet to all ‘unnecessary’ stuff.

·      Some ad agencies are another set of ‘wild animals’ that objectify women to sell products unrelated to women. Why should a women model be used to sell, say for instance, tyres?

·       Few cinema producers and directors are one form of ‘wild animals’ who show women as objects for men’s gratification in their super hit films.

·      The ‘women’ who agree to work in a manner that ‘objectifies’ women are enemies for the other women.

·      There are ‘wild’ writers and ‘wild’ publishers who disseminate pornographic ‘literature’ for ‘making’ their ‘living’.

·      There is a section of the ‘wild’ print media that wants to build more reader-ship by publishing sleazy photographs of women. Why not? There is freedom of Press, right!!!

·      All those people who are directly or indirectly encouraging the above set of ‘wilds’ either by watching or reading their works and leading to ‘objectification’ of women are no doubt the worst kind of ‘wild animals’.

With increasing crimes on women and delay in delivering justice to them, we are not a progressing but a retrograde nation. Enough talking and making laws have happened in this country. It is time to show some very serious action on the ground by the government of the day and its various arms as our cities, towns and villages have become ‘forests’ infested by ‘wild animals’.

A person diagnosed with a terminal ailment that is likely to take his life will either completely stop consuming some item that would kill him or take only those items that would save him as per the doctor’s prescription as he knows that his life is at risk depending on whether he followed the doctor’s advice or not. Similarly today, the crimes on women have reached such a terminal point where unless the government immediately takes drastic measures the society is sure going to witness more such cases. The government's action should be in a manner that even the thought of teasing a girl/women should send shivers down the spine of all those ‘wild animals’ which the society calls as ‘men.’

Going by the present rate of crimes on women, the concrete jungles where we live are the real primeval forests. It so appears that the real forests are actually the most civilized areas on earth where the Law of the Nature prevails which is far superior to the laws of the civilized world.