Who is actually responsible?

There's a very highly educated and qualified career woman I know for a fact who is abusive, mentally and physically to her maids. Maids in the plural because none of them stick around for more than a month. Now these are not rumours or gossip, 2 of them have actually asked for help to escape her clutches. While fortunately for all concerned, things have never gone out of hand and each of these girls safely found employment elsewhere, the much in news Unnao and Kathua rape and murder cases sparked a debate in my head with myself.

What did I do, what actions did I or the others who were aware of her awful misdeeds take even when the girls brought it all to our notice? Yes they didn't come to us directly asking for help but they did talk to us about their employers behaviour. Like all others except for some mild commiseration I looked the other way, not wanting to get involved.

Everyday the newspapers and other media channels are filled with rapes, murders and abuse of children and women. Other than a very brief moment of sadness and bitterness very rarely do I give these reports another thought. What else can I do I say to myself. This stuff happens all the time. Children and women get raped, murdered and abused by strangers and more often than not by their own fathers, brothers and uncles. Men are killed too for greed for power, money, and fame always have and will rule humanity.

And a mute spectator is what i have become. Looking at it all from the outside not letting it all affect me because really what's the point thinking about such dreadful things. Living my life, turning a blind eye to all of it with only a murmur of - what has this world come to, I put down the newspapers, change the channel and go back to my daily routine. What can I do I say to myself again and again, deceiving myself to live with a false security inside a bubble believing that such things won't happen to me or my loved ones. But really, the secure bubble can burst anytime because what have I or anyone else around me done to make our world a better place to live in.

What is it that I or many others like me can actually do to ensure that we and the coming generations do not have to deal with what has now become rampant - society's degraded moral fibre and our silent acceptance of it.

We are all writing about the brutality of the 2 incidents, posting pictures, talking about it, joining candlelight marches, playing the blame game...didn't we do the same when Nirbhaya was brutally raped and killed not so many years ago? Did the shame and shock the entire country went through not bring about any change? Haven't we learnt any lessons?

Very obviously no because that's who we are. Humans with no humanity, savage and sadistic beasts we take pleasure in our cold hearted and ruthless devilishness because well that's how it is. While all of us play the blame game, blaming everyone else but ourselves it all carries on, never stopping for a minute in our very own country, city, village, street, and in our own homes.

We have learnt to shield ourselves from all depravity because you know it's all part of life. Rapes, murders, corruption, abuse, harassment, lying, cheating - we are all used to it. When a mother of a 20 something boy from the local slum beats up a girl because her son has hundreds of girls begging for his attention and how dare she complain about his unruly behaviour, when a mother in law justifies her son's abusive behaviour towards his wife and daughter, when a father tells his son that girls are asking for it, when a friend eggs his friend on to go get that girl, when 8 year olds drag their classmate to a corner of the lobby in school wanting to have fun, ( all true incidents) when parents forget their duty as humans to teach their children what is right and wrong because they themselves have forgotten what is right and what is wrong, when we all believe 'kya karein aisa hi hai ' , 'sab karte hain', 'Karna padta hai aajkal', and justify all that we do wrong, we all become culprits and participants in the rapes and murders that take place so commonly.

So as we easily put the blame on the politicians, religion and police, we forget they are us, a reflection of who we are as people and the society we belong to. And till each of us cleanses our souls and detoxifies our minds of the perverted and deviant behaviour we have accepted as being a part of our lives, nothing is going to change, no one is going to get justice and it's only going to get worse. Till that time we can only hope and pray that what happened to that 8 year old innocent child never happens to any of us.