Life before 2016 … Life After

2016 can be unequivocally classified in the category of the “watershed years” for it marks the beginning of the world which we did not know till very recently. It shook the very foundations of our beliefs … Our implicit trust in democracy seems misplaced. Our instinct of preservation watered down and reduced to our obsession with reservation where the like repelled the unlike … Life came to be valued in terms of the casing it lived in. It is not as if preservation of life on the basis of color and religion is a new trend. However, it was institutionalized and unashamedly justified for the first time at an unprecedented scale. The last we saw such unabashed institutionalization of discrimination was during the interwar period where Europe was polarized on religious lines. However, the same was short-lived and what we saw was a resurgence of secularism in Europe. On the other hand, 2016 became the year in which people took upon themselves to proliferate and deepen the existing fault lines. People voted for bigotry, misogyny, racism and religious fundamentalism … It is as if they invited it all in their lives.

One of the most stable regional trading blocs disintegrated because those who conquered the territories beyond their seas could not stand people from those very territories entering into their land … One of the most prominent advocates of equal rights is now headed by someone who has mocked the disabled, ostracized the members of LGBT community and wants to take away the right to abort from women (reversal of Roe v. Wade) in order to make them bear the brunt of indulging in unsafe sex … One of the most pugnacious countries which had sworn by its enmity openly interfered in the elections of its arch-rival  in order to facilitate the “(S)election” of a puppet government … Food riots in a country which is known for its beauty and vitality … Devastated kids modelling for the lost city of Aleppo … Blasts rocking Paris … Indian currency notes being outlawed overnight … Nature’s fury in Italy …

This has clearly been that one year we all would want to forget …

What will emerge in 2017 will be substantially different from what we knew … So lets all hope … 2017 paves way for a much stronger human race to endure what it has sown … After all as you sow, so shall you reap ..!!

Sowing fresh sugarcane … SugarsatchetPicture credits

1. http://www.michaeloart.com/racism-test-reveals-our-biases/igualdad-liberty-love-no-racism-favim-com-491861/;
2. http://blogs.tribune.com.pk/story/22057/once-upon-a-time-in-the-land-of-the-pure-i-was-a-religious-fundamentalist/