Sunday, April 16, 2006

Rajkumar passed away - but why kill the others???

I find no reason???

To some extent, I hear, they brought it on themselves. But my common sense (however little it might be) says that in any scene of violence, the real people behind the violence never get hurt!!! They know when the violence begins and they know when they've to flee. It is always the common man who ends up getting hurt or losing his life. Somehow, that same common sense says the same thing happened here.

While I am in no position to give any first hand info on what happened, my friend here can. He works in a software firm in Bangalore. While I accept the fact that RajKumar was a highly respected and worshipped person in the state of Karnataka, I cannot comprehend the reasons for the sort of behavior displayed by his so called fans. I say "so called" because I still believe that the common fan would never have done anything of this sort.

There could have been reasons under which the emotional outburst would have seemed more reasonable. Had the person been killed by someone, or because of somebody's wrong doing - anything where the death seemed unnatural. Here we have a person who was aged, to begin with and he had a very natural way of death - let his soul rest in peace. But what followed was completely stupid. I've got no other word for it. I mean, it made RajKumar's wife, under such emotional stress, to make a public request to the fans asking them not to involve in such violence. That was a great gesture for me from her - but the "so called" fans did not seem to hear.

I'm using the so called term because of the kind of things I get to hear. Why would a fan want to burn public transport vehicles??? What does he gain out of it??? Why would a fan want to wreck havoc in corporate offices and shopping places??? I've got no answer!!! The king of all things - there are reports about what the fans did on Friday when RajKumar was being cremated. The fans could not get a last view of their hero and violence broke loose. They turned their attention to a nearby hotel. Glasses were broken, vehicles set to fire, foreign travelers attacked and, listen to this, looted!!! Shameful really!!!

All in all, the whole thing seemed nothing but an "use this opportunity" thingy, which had left a pretty bad impression on the ppl of the state. In my opinion, no fan would do such things in such a time. Having said all this - where was the POLICE?!?!? I've been to bangalore quite a few times and I've seen the police at all times. Morning, noon, evening or night - there has been some police somewhere. Even at 2 in the night. Where were they. If things went out of their hands on day 1, why weren't there more on day 2???

Too much questions. Too much loss, I hear, too. Overall - this is not the way the great man would have wanted him to be remembered. Especially not on the lines of "when this man passed away - so did some of his fans" or "when this man passed away - Karnataka suffered so much loss". For a man who loved his state and his fans, that is really bad for him.