Bomb Blasts, Social Responsibility, and Baazigars

On the 13th May, 2008 at 7.30 PM in Jaipur, the first bomb planted by terrorists went off at 7.30 in terribly crowded streets of the Pink city and by 8.00 PM nine blasts had spilled the blood of hundreds of innocent people. About eighty people died and above two hundred injured lay crying in hospitals.

Concurrently, at 8.00 PM, in Kolkata, the IPL Cricket match between the Kolkata Knight Riders and Delhi Dare Devils began. Kolkata Knight Riders' co-owner Shahrukh Khan was present. His team won the game and he danced at the victory of his team. He had millions of reasons to dance and not even one reason to show concern for ordinary people who go crazy even to have a look at their idol. The cricket match was planned long back and couldn’t have been cancelled.

That is reasonable but consider the horror of seeing cheerleaders dancing in Kolkata as Jaipur lay bleeding. Some would say that they are paid to dance and they did their job.

Die-hard Shahrukh fans will opine that he is a very busy man and he couldn’t have known about the horrific events folding in distant Jaipur.

It appears increasingly impossible to look for such elusive sensitivities from our icons. He was perhaps so terribly focused with his maniacal concentration looking forward to a win, he lost contact with other matters. Like a latter-day Arjun, he focused all his energies on the cricket match. In today’s connected world it is unacceptable and unthinkable that he, his staff, or his resourceful associates didn’t know of the horrific bomb blasts.

It’s horrendous to know that nobody bothered to suggest toning down the victory celebrations and displaying concern for the dead and wounded as result of the terrorists' attack. At least, it was expected that he could have avoided dancing at the end of the match and had mourned the terrible event in Jaipur.

Other Baazigars of 100 plus TV channels gleefully continued to beam glamorous advertisements and laughter show promos while continuously reporting the bomb blasts.

It seems that the media is the biggest gainer of natural and unnatural calamities befalling helpless people. We must know by now that these Baazigars don’t have any sensitivity left along with zero social responsibility.

To talk about the concept of social responsibility of our icons is perhaps totally insane and useless as they have not heard and/or understood it.