Recently I was in Mumbai and all Mumbaikars are familiar with crowd, traffic and rush in Mumbai. In my college days, morning traffic was southbound and evening traffic was northbound or east bound. If you travel opposite directions you would get lesser traffic and rush on local trains. Afternoon time was much breathier span. Over two decades this situation is completely changed. Now, you are part of huge crowd whenever or wherever you travel.Luckily trains are closed from 1am to 5 am otherwise you would have found people are travelling at that time too.
As long as I remember, from my childhood, people in Mumbai are always in rush. If anything happens during this rush hour, people have no time to wait, to show sympathy towards incident or victim. And even someone wants to help, the law & procedures were so unfriendly, people used to avoid it.
Has this situation changed over the decades? As people, are aware of more human side of life through media, civil activities.
Recently India was stormed by discussion on intolerance. Everyone was expressing his opinion on intolerance & was trying to put his opinion whether India is tolerant or intolerant. During those days, there was one tragic incident that took place in train in Mumbai and people forgot the incidence with a small sympathizing note as routine matter. This behavior is classic example of indifferent attitude of the people towards fellow human being. That incident was not discussed much in media. Incident was that, during the rush, one young man fell down from the train & died. Due to the heavy rush the man couldn’t get grip for his foot on board. He was requesting the people inside the train, to allow him to give some space but he was unfortunate, and he slipped from train. People from Mumbai know very well that daily local train journey is like going to war & coming safe back home is winning of the war. This journey is depiction of reality of life, all attitudes like indifference, intolerance & inhuman on every moment. The young man was victim of all those attitude of the mob. His dependent family will now curse whom? - destiny or indifferent people.
This indifferent attitude mostly prevails during this mad rush of life as everyone wants to be first, everyone wants get in time by putting foot on others foot. This indifferent attitude is further aggravated due to social media. Whenever any incidence is happening, people are more interested to shoot that incidence without caring that the victim may need some help, becausetheir objective is to upload the incident on the social media & make it viral. This is exactly happened with this incident. The man fell down and people were shooting the incident. One person was shooting from inside, as if he knew that this victim is going to fall, but he didn’t offer helping hand. Instead he preferred to sensationalize the incident by uploading on social media .Most of the people watching on social media made it viral without diagnosing the cause. This sensationalism attitude to make it viral is one negative aspect of social media. Technology & social media are bliss in modern era if you use it properly for human cause. Otherwise family like this victim will always blame social media. So it’s paramount to be humane during such incidents when occur around us.