Friday, August 15, 2008

We Know But We Don't Understand


I should have written about this incident last week only when I was thoroughly under its impact but somehow I didn’t get time. I’ll still try to put in plain words what I felt, even though the feelings have gone astray in this one week only.

Our whole batch had been invited by our comm. theory teacher to a film festival which was screening some films on the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bomb blasts. We all (thought we) knew about it, and were least interested in attending it, but just for attendance sake all twenty of us reached the destination just in time for the show to begin. We entered a small auditorium and waited for the screening to begin (or rather end). The first movie was about the birth of earth. Needless to day, we all had already started whispering about our plans for after the session.

What followed next shook us completely from within. It was a documentary on blast victims (Hiroshima and Nagasaki), who had survived to put up with the anguish of all that they had lost. Their tales were painful and the reconstructions hurt even more. One actually needs to sit through that eyesore experience to understand the plight of those who survived. There were scenes which refused to leave our minds even after the movie was over- the boy with a burnt back, tufts of hair falling due to radiations produced in the body, a completely charred man walking 5 km in search of water but finally losing the battle of life- and somehow made us realize the threats nuclear weapons posed for us. Words like agony, sorrow, torment, pain, suffering, distress, grief made much more sense now. There were facts and figures which made us think again and again about India’s nuclear deal and if it really is all that essential, and they made us become conscious of how much we are losing, and how little are we gaining out of it.

“You know, but you don’t understand.” I have used this line n number of times on my friends. It’s only now that I have realized how aptly it applies to all of us in a much more severe way. We all thought we knew about these blasts and the negatives of nuclear weapons, but this 20 minute experience really worked as an eye-opener for all of us. It was wonderful see how uncomfortable we all were after the screening ended. It would be apt to say that it made us think, but the shameful part is that it made us JUST think. None of us are actually doing anything about it because we don’t know what we can do (if at all there is something) and how to go about it.


5 comments:

Ishita_Dasgupta said...

my feeling exactly!
n u kno wat...i had actually drafted a post on dat film fest on my blog 2 a cpl of days bak...gonna post it in sumtym.. :)

Scribbled Thoughts!! said...

v all felt the same way...i wanted post sumthing on my blog related to this but couldn't put my feelings into words...it was an experience v might never forget

sksingh said...

I understand your concern, but please take it this way. A knife can perform surgeory and give life but at the same time this knife can injure or even kill a person if used by insane mind. Therefore every thing has two sides of it. it only matters which type of mind is using it. The nuclear dael has emence potentiality when used rightly to generate power (electricity) to cater for the ever growing need of human kind, but unfortunately used by wrong intentions can devastate the world.
Papa

Mishika said...

@ishita:better do it before its too late. i felt so bad for this one week delay :(

@gayatri:we might never forget is true. But what pinches is the fact that even though it had such a great impact on us, we aint doing anything abt it

@papa:glad that your're reading my posts :)
n i noe every thing has pros and cons but the -ves should never be overpowering the +ves, which will eventually happen in this case. its inevitable.

Ishita_Dasgupta said...

oie! i hav...i posted it a cpl of days bak actually..
go chk it out if u cn!! :)

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