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September 11, 2005
Empathy (Or My Lack of It)...Revisited
I wrote about my empathy drying up almost five years ago. Not much seems to have changed.
New Orleans is no more. An entire city…is just gone. When I saw the city under water, on television, I went cold. But as I later told my wife, the reaction did not really have anything to do with New Orleans itself…it was because I immediately thought of a similar scenario in Mumbai and that almost knocked me out. We were unable to handle Terrible Tuesday. Something like this would have killed millions of us, in one stroke!
Uma and Ajit have talked about their reactions and why they haven’t written about New Orleans in as much detail as, for example, Uma wrote about the Mumbai floods. Among other things, I suspect it is a combination of “tragedy fatigue” and distance. Terrible Tuesday hit home, all of us had stories and most of us were affected. New Orleans is on the other side of the globe and unless you’ve been there or know someone (and I have neither been there, nor do I know anyone), at least I find it very difficult to connect.
On Friday, when a few parts of Mumbai were flooded, as normally happens every monsoon, the government agencies and the news media pressed the panic buttons. People at work started getting calls from their parents to leave for home immediately. And as everyone at the same time started driving northwards back home, we got stuck in the mother of all traffic jams beyond Parel. We eventually had to leave our car in KEM Hospital (thank God for these few sanctuaries) and then hoofed it up. When we reached Wadala, we realized that the traffic was actually moving well and we were able to get a cab hone. I finally went back at 11PM and got the car back from KEM.
In the meantime, I was fielding calls from home, from my HRD manager and other employees on what to do! Luckily, being in the arena, and having realized that this was nothing but a panic situation with no real issues, I was able to get some sense into everyone.
In the evening, we took the other car and drove to Matunga Gymkhana for the kids’ karate exams. After dropping Mom to the market, we drove on and landed up in a jam again. I get amazingly claustrophobic in traffic jams and with what we had gone through an hour earlier, I was already on the edge, wondering what “worse-case” scenario had happened.
As the cars moved, we realized what had happened. Some idiots had decided to do a Ganapati visarjan (the only visarjan on that day) and instead of using the by lanes, were merrily blocking the main market road and creating a jam. I just lost it. I got out and let loose some choice expletives at a couple of guys at the end of the procession, especially at one guy who was trying to divert traffic as well!
This is what I seem to connect with. Local issues and personal problems. Maybe it’s a euphemism for selfishness or self-centeredness…I don’t know. What I do know though is that unless the tragedy is close by, images and words from television and newspapers only provide a way for my brain to assimilate the information, but at no point do they really strike a chord.
Damn me!
Posted by bhavinj at September 11, 2005 10:51 AM
Comments
Ajit. I find it a little difficult to sift through my feelings at such times. And they are so often contradictory wrt virtually similar issues, though in different parts of the world. Thanks for the "empathy"...
Posted by: MFM/Bhavin at September 12, 2005 07:25 AM
not sure that its lack of feeling empathy, if anything its the other way around. feeling the terrible angst and helplessness of finding that the expected and even taken-for-granted support system - all the state machinery - becoming either non-existent. or worse yet, subverted or made dysfunctional.
and since we in bombay have a recent 'been there done that' experience, the tendency to compare, and get judgmental is only natural. uma has expressed things far more eloquently and pithily - its not a contest! for me, it doesn't make sense to compare... and doesn't make you or i any less empathetic. could i say i empathize with what you have felt and posted here? :o)
Posted by: amenon at September 12, 2005 07:12 AM
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