Guwahati is in recent news for the public molestation and assault on a teenage girl outside a pub, as impotent onlookers swarm in just for a peek. Though disturbing and condemnation-worthy, it gives us reasons to celebrate. What it does is send positive signs that Guwahati is a blossoming city (or a concept of city as we know it) - now to be counted among the league of Delhi, Gurgaon, Mumbai, Bangalore, all of whom have been proud to have their own string of rapes and molestations to claim. This is how the peripheral states merge with the mainstream. I can imagine the expression on many people who were always hesitant move to such a place, but who now feel relieved that they can find men of equal degeneracy, and mobs to dissolve their personal responsibility and revel in uninhibited impromptu exploration into the human anatomy. Same goes for the women who don't wish to change "the game" that they're so well versed in merely due to a change of cities. We revel in being malicious and delight in mocking our midgets - including our midgets themselves (except for that one midget). Who ever had a problem to that?
The one in the problem zone right now, is Mr. Amar Jyoti Kalita (aka "the man in the red t-shirt"). He is on the run, and purportedly presently hiding in Bhubaneshwar (Odisha). What's the best thing about the developing story is, that this guy is on Facebook. And the profile is public, which opens a Pandora's Box into his personal life.
His picture updates tells that he admires the Indian Army (in the meantime, an Army jawan in Assam is jailed for molestation, how coincidental is that), likes Pierce Brosnan (which is why he calls himself "bond"), and is quite a roadie driving around his Maruti Swift to envious locales. He uploads his childhood, and school photographs. His favorite food is Maggi ("Home made", as he's specified). He even likes Iñárritu's Babel - spelled Bable (sic) on his profile. He shares a lot of witty humour doing rounds on Facebook (example - Gandhi: "Alcohol is not the answer to all questions" Vijay Mallaya: "Alcohol is not the answer to all questions, but if you don't get the answers it helps you forget the questions"). He drinks VAT 69, classy.
Ironically, one of his status updates (from Nov, 2011) reads "Enjoy life and all the things you have at the moment because you can't have everything at once"... seems he was living his life on a hunch.
He's so much like everyone else. And now he's being hounded by everyone else. He's been labeled a "rapist" (which he technically isn't). There's even a group called "Amar Jyoti Kalita Ko Phaansi Do" (hang AJK) with 1013 likes [Note: the URL of the page says "Kill AJK", not hang, which in itself hints at an irrational mindset of this activist crowd].
Each of his recent Facebook updates have received scores of shares, by people demanding his head - especially ones in which he's wearing that same red t-shirt and with that same dirty smirk, but curiously not the ones where he's with his music band (he claims he's a vocalist), or where he's just a regular guy at some family function. He's also made the great mistake of uploading his passport scan, which has already got a mob resharing it on their pages - I wonder if those passport details are abused. In summary, his profile, though it conveys a superficial calm, has been decimated.
Says one popular campaign line: "पहचानिये इन चेहरो को ये वही है गुवाहाटी के दरिदें । ये फरार है …अगर आपको ये कही दिख जाये तो तुरत सजा दें उसके बाद मरियल हालत में पुलिस को सौप दे।
और इनमे से कुछ हैवानो की फेसबुक प्रोफाइल देखकर इनकी पहचान करे …॥
समाज के मुंह पर कालिख पोतने वाले ये दरिदे बचने नही चाहिये…"
Talk about passive activism - come see this.
Let me state that I don't sympathize with Mr. Kalita here. I'm scared - he's just as normal as everybody else, and that is the scary part. Having gone through his past year's posts on Facebook in a rush, I can only perceive him as being condemned to death for 40 minutes of deviation from the accepted normalcy (which, too, seems like under intoxication). How far are we from that? Its all credit to our mob mentality, which has even brought out the basest of behaviour among the holy men.
There's no simple solution. What are we gonna make the charge against - alcohol? bars? girls in bars? girls? men? engineering graduates? mustaches? gatherings?
To end on a lighter note, the last thing he wants is to be tracked through 4-square ("Amar Jyoti Kalita is now the Mayor of Hotel Pal Heights, Bhubaneshwar" or some update like that), or perhaps through an update like this one
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