The Good News and The Bad News

The Good news is pretty visible now as I enter the third trimester of pregnancy. I think I am truly blessed to have had the opportunity to go through this again and more so to have family and friends around me who provide so much love and care during this critical time. 

I remember the time when I was carrying my first and people on the streets, in shopping malls, elevators, on flights, would be genuinely considerate and take care lest they hurt me. Don’t get me wrong! Pregnancy is not a disability. It is in fact a privilege! But it certainly makes you more vulnerable to getting hurt. So if people around you are considerate, it makes the whole experience all the more beautiful. 

Eight years hence, I have been in for a rude shock. The minute I step outside the safe arena of my house or office, the insensitivity of people  surprises me to the core. Whether it is the traffic which will passes by dangerously close or the long queues at the airport check-in, examples of insensitivity are abound. Just the other day, three well groomed boys on a bike deliberately zoomed by dangerously close to me. At the airport, while I was waiting patiently in queue for security check, a well educated lady tried to bypass the queue to get through just before me. These are of course not the only instances and there are many more that happen each day.

I used to get frustrated earlier but over time I realize that these so called educated people are not to be blamed. They are not being insensitive knowingly. Perhaps they don’t even realize my situation because they don’t even notice the world around them. They are busy sharing messages on important social causes on Facebook or are busy tweeting their opinion on important political movements. They might even be extremely busy gathering funds for a child in Nigeria who needs organ transplant. They are all extremely educated, highly responsible and deeply sensitive people. Just that all their worries exist for the virtual world out there, which can be easily switched off whenever it becomes too depressing for them.

Times like this, I feel ashamed to be part of this generation for whom “making a difference” is all about online propaganda. I truly wish we could sometimes detach ourselves from the online world and see the LIVE world around us. There are elderly folks in the bus who need the seat much more than we do. There are pregnant women accompanied with children trying to carry groceries home for dinner. There are people with disabilities who need a little longer to cross the road. Do we ever stop to think, they might need help? Or do we consider them as burden to the world we live in, because they tend to slow us down?

It is true that our good deeds on Facebook get us national acclaim. But I hope that we don’t forget that at the end of the day, we don’t sleep with the nation. We sleep with our own conscious which is watching us even when no one else is.