‘A Death in the Gunj’ & Talking About Casual Cruelty

In the adult world, the line is wafer-thin between lack of empathy, bullying and cruelty.

It’s one of my most vivid memories of high school. A very sick senior had dropped a year and joined our class mid-session. Her face all scarily bloated, her body somewhat deformed - she could barely walk. And yet she came to school whenever she could, was always nice and polite. Her parents appealed for financial help through the school and we learnt that she was suffering from a terminal disease.

One day, she was absent and it turned out to be the perfect opportunity for the ‘first girl’ of my class - a beautiful teenager who excelled in everything she tried - to entertain us with a vivid mimicry of her. I remember how everyone laughed. The girl died a couple of weeks later.

After all these years, I don’t remember her name or what she died of. But I remember her face and how someone way more privileged subjected her to a very cruel humiliation. It doesn’t matter to me whether or not she was present there or came to know about it later. It happened. And it couldn’t have been a solitary incident.

Why Does Quietness Attract Aggression?

Growing up as a very quiet and unsocial child, I have always been sensitive to casual cruelty and its extended avatar, bullying. I suppose that also made me especially aware of others being subjected to it. And as an adult, I discover it’s not much different. So it wasn’t really a surprise when I resonated so much with Shutu, the protagonist of Konkona Sensharma’s just-released film A Death in the Gunj. The film tells the tale of a quiet, sensitive, troubled boy’s disconnect with his family and surroundings, and the wafer-thin line between lack of empathy, bullying and cruelty.

I have no idea why, but quiet, sensitive, and so seemingly docile people attract amazing levels of aggression from the extroverts of the world. It seems to me like a pack instinct - evolution has perhaps not taken us as far away from other animals as we think - where the “different” has to be cowed down or hounded out.

How else do you explain the immediately condescending body language most people assume around introverts? In fact, it’s so pervasive that we don’t even realise we are doing it. Look at how Shutu is ordered around, even by people who don’t really mean to be unkind to him; how he’s constantly urged to participate in communal activities; how he’s asked to ‘man up’ and pull up his socks. In short, he has to fit into standard boundaries.

Growing up, I have had extended family members call me “sick, abnormal” and I shudder to think how a more vulnerable child might have reacted to that label. Even today, acquaintances continue to make snide remarks about my “quietness”.

We don’t do different, we humans. Why though?

THINK ABOUT IT

I have never understood how not talking nineteen to the dozen or choosing to spend time with one’s self is perceived as a threat by people at large. How does such a person bother you? Why is it intimidating? And may be, just may be, it’s time to read up about personality types?

Words Hurt

The primary vehicle of casual cruelty is of course words. Hurtful words have a way of seeping through your skin, lodging in your blood stream, and furrowing unforgivingly into your bones. Collect enough and they beget pain, anger - sometimes bad enough to hurt others or one’s self.

Making personal disparaging comments is of course the easiest form of cruelty. “You must be drinking a lot of tea, which is why you are so dark”, “should wear something more suitable to your skin colour”, “how are you becoming bald?”, “you are beginning to look like Ganesh”, “but your sisters are so beautiful!”, “why do you talk in that effeminate manner?”, “what will you do with this house? You only have one daughter” - the list is endless if you start crowd sourcing hurts like I inadvertently do. And surprisingly enough, as a friend told me, most of the casual cruelty comes from one’s own family - from people who know you best.

A Death in the Gunj illustrates just that. From dismissive unkindness to downright malevolence, Shutu, the young man, is made aware every moment how dispensable he is to his own family.

Romantic relationships also beget a lot of casual cruelty - and all sexes are guilty of it. And because it’s also where people are at their most vulnerable, the pain it can cause is potentially lethal. From making stray disparaging comments like “fatso”, “who will call you good looking?” and “give me your phone, I will slap you”, to condescending remarks about partners in public, to not acknowledging them in public at all - it comes in many forms. And with time, the lines melt into abuse.

THINK ABOUT IT

Stop for a moment and consider this very simple thing. How would you feel if someone treated you like this? That, my friend, is the simplest yardstick of knowing whether what you are doing is right or wrong.

Only a Dog-Eat-Dog World?

Of course where one’s loved ones are so insensitive, expecting empathy in the professional world is downright foolish.

Yet, is it? Does it only have to be a dog-eat-dog world?

From being unfairly humiliated to being victim of power trips to even having people not let me charge my phone - I have been through it all. And even after so many years of the rigmarole, I can’t help wondering at the necessity of it. You may not like me, but is it so difficult to co-exist? You may be insecure about yourself, but how is pulling someone else down push you higher?

Firstly, stop taking yourself so seriously. Very, very few of us are actually doing anything that will make the world a better place. So calm the **** down. Secondly, empathy and respect go a way longer way to get other people to work well than condescending power trips.

THINK ABOUT IT

Do you really want someone to think of you with the same revulsion with which he or she thinks of say, a lizard or a cockroach? Because trust me, it boils down to exactly that.