It is a 2 day old news but I really can't wrap my head around the fact that a girl who scored 98.5% in boards & got through LSR, had to give up her life because her scholarship got delayed & there was institutional apathy from all corners. Breaks my belief unlike anything else.

We're a sick nation. That's what we're. Period.

We made terrorist of a young girl who said "Hindustan Zindabad, Pakistan Zindabad." We let people with lack of privilege be victims of systemic apathy. A young student's death doesn't concern us. Murders don't concern us. Lynchings don't bother us. We brew hate. We kill. Tragic.

We jail civil right activists. A Muslim has a burden of patriotism to discharge. Patriarchy is writ large. We burn victim's body in midnight. We kill family of a girl raped by an MLA. We take out rally in support of rapists of an 8 year old. None of it concerns us. We've failed.

Whataboutery is our escape from everything. Economic downturn hits the lesser privileged the hardest. Social ostracism is the cult. Media is a kangaroo court. Leaders are voted for religious promises & hate. There's 0 accountability. Social structures have crumbled. We're real.

A bright student's life was lost for lack of scholarship when we're building a 20000 crore vanity project in a pandemic to satisfy a megalomaniac's endless thirst. Elected representatives are turncoat for crores. People died walking home & there were 70000 LEDs for election run.

We bulldoze democratic safeguards to force laws. Poster boy of progressive politics recites Hanuman chalisa when his state is burning. Higher judiciary hears vacation plea on bail but constitutional matters are deferred indefinitely. This is our collective destiny & we deserve it

We're a nation which has lost its way. The political leadership is a manifestation of our societal underpinnings & fault lines. A nation which obsessed over a witch hunt & then a cricket tournament, ignoring everything in its wake. We are a failed country & nothing changes that.

One of my favourite characters (Rust Cohle) from one of my favourite TV series (True Detective S1) said "Our sentience just cycling through our lives like carts on a track." Context of humanity but sums up the India of today, as how I see it. A nation which failed its students.

The blood of the young girl is upon the institute which displayed apathy. On the govt which couldn't fund its lesser privileged students. On the society which revels in this massive inequality & non-equittable structures. Lastly, on all of us, who let the system become what it is

We've killed enough for a death is no longer a dent on the national conscience. The deads are mere numbers. Lesser privileged mere statistics. It doesn't bother us. At all. I repeat, we're a sick nation, & the sickness keeps on growing with our active collaboration.

A nation heavily divided on the fault lines of religion, caste, gender, prosperity, skin, language, culture & everything else is not a nation. It's a body of people living in a geographical boundary who have sheer disregard for everyone else on the other side of the fault lines.