Listen....

I initially intended to post this blog on "Snapshots..", but then I decided that it's place was more deserved here. The LSE Anthropological Society screeened a movie today called "Shooting Dogs", which was based on the Rwandan genocide in 1994. This is not a movie review, but while the movie did suffer from the usual cliches, it did drive home a point. Close to a million Rwandans were slaughtered and killed in that year alone. There is a scene in the movie that continues to play on in my mind. Amidst the madness, a Tutsi woman gives birth to a child. At that moment a question arose in my mind. With what hope are we bringing new born children into this world? A world where greed, ignorance, intolerance forces man upon himself. A world where wars are brought upon by men and innocent women and children pay the price for being caught in the crossfire. Are we, who inhabit this world, doing justice to the newborn? As the question played itself out in my mind, the movie continued and soon gave me an answer. The baby was murdered a few minutes later. And what was depicted wasn't an exaggeration, I have heard stories like these from Gujarat, Iraq, Serbia,... One of the main characters in the movie, a young man from Britain finds himself incapable to alter the situation and finally finds himself choosing the safety of his own life in the face of the inescapable slaughter of 2500 Tutsi people. The director leaves the viewer with the helplessness, guilt and failure of this character. Cut!

I am a man of privilege, and if you can read this you are a man/woman of privilege too. I was brought up in safe, secure environments. I have had the joy of family and friends around me, and continue to do so. I was never helpless, I have always had the power of choice. To be honest I have never felt utterly powerless, never felt underprivileged, never felt that my existence was immaterial to the environment around me. I am a man of privilege.
But at times, through ways I could not have fathomed, the voice of the weak and the powerless travel to me and plead to be heard. They wish to be heard, they wish to be rescued from their lives devoid of hope, they wish the privileged will listen to their silent cries and come and save them. They wish..........for that is all that they can do.
We, the privileged, can effect change. We can give our children, the children of your street and the children in the orphanage close by, a better world. We can start by listening, listening to the unheard voices crying for help, and paying heed to them. It may not be the answer, but it will begin to take the world to a place better than it is today.