Loving sob stories

Khaleej Times (Issues) / 3 August 2013

 

HUMAN BEINGS, as a rule, love tragedy.

That might be a scandalizing opener, but nothing can be truer than this contradictory revelation about our innate love for the sordid and solemn aspects of life. For all the fear and forbidding sentiments we have of adversities, there is a strange allure in matters of misfortune that keeps us engaged in them for longer than we may please. Let’s put ourselves under the scanner briefly and examine this curious predilection we have for the dire dimensions of life.

 What keeps us glued to the television more — breaking news about a major terrorist attack and a massive earthquake or tame reports about changing political equations in our country? News about a horrendous gang rape or the details of a foreign minister’s state visit? A talk show on domestic abuse or a panel discussion on the country’s economic prospects?

 I must confess that the three most enduring television reports I have in memory are of the twin tower collapse in NY, the siege of Mumbai by terrorists and the South Asian tsunamis. There have been better, awe-inspiring events in the world that might have characterised human existence in the past few years, but none of them have left imprints of the kind the above events have done. It wasn’t appetizing in the least to watch the tragedies unfold, yet the appeal and mystery of doom that I previously mentioned probably outweighed any sense of revolt and horror that I might have felt in those moments. I shuddered, shook my head and clicked my tongue in disbelief, but didn’t stop the TV from running for hours on end or lapping up exhaustive details from newspapers. I am fairly certain that I was not alone in feeling or doing so.

A journalist friend once mentioned in the passing that crime reports enjoyed the maximum hits on their website and it was impossible to gloss over this curious factor that kept many news joints from shutting shop. It brought home the point that the world essentially survived on the gross and grotesque, without which it would have been just another monotonous patch in the cosmos.

 Concurrently, the rule applies in our private lives as well.  The message on the T-shirt of a young man I saw in the metro the other day read, “If you are truly happy, don’t let others know.” It echoed a thought an old friend once gave me as a tip to happy living — groan and stay safe, for that’s what the world loves to see you doing. Your happiness can incur wrath and envy. It was a bizarre piece of advice, but it probably carried a weird nugget of truth.

 Either for reasons of keeping envy at bay or for our irrational fear of tempting misfortune by openly expressing our joys in life, we have made it a habit to conceal the pleasant and reveal the unpleasant. We revel in narrating our tales of woe, and feel vindicated. Even in adverse times, when the heart affirms hope and the mind instills faith, and somewhere in the green room of our existence we feel that it really didn’t matter if we didn’t make it, the mouth bawls ceaselessly just so the world takes notice and sighs with us.

 We need audience that sympathises with our narrative; so we embrace our sorrows and stay tagged to them even after they have tempered down. We tuck them away in memories and look in time after time. It is as if the retrieved pain compliments our pleasures and completes our existence.

Man, by nature, fears evil, shuns pain, despises misfortune. Why on earth does he still harp on the nuances of the unseemly, and bring forth more distress than he deserves? Like the protagonists in Shakespearean tragedies, why does he hurtle himself towards his denouement aided by his own projected love for catastrophe? Clues anyone?