Recent incident in Noida, where two middle-aged sisters locked themselves in and cut off from the outside world for six months has raised a number of questions.
This is not the first time, last year another middle aged woman kept the body of her mother for almost 4 months hidden in her house. She was described as mentally unstable. Rather than hiding behind such easy escapes we as a society need to really introspect and try to understand the underlying trends. Some of the questions which we need to dwell upon
– Why it happened?
– What went wrong?
– Does this indicate something underlying wrong trends?
– Is it because of the ‘rat-race’ that we hardly have time for anyone apart from our material pursuits?
– Why neighbours could not provide a safety valve for the women to let out their anguish?
– Why even housewives / retired persons in the society are finding it difficult to have their chit-chats, which often serve as safety valves?
– Is TV contributing to our behaviour where our minds are so preoccupied that we do not find time to visit houses of the neighbours?
– Is it due to the multi-story apartments (designed to preserve individual privacy rather than creating conducive conditions of inviting people to each others houses) ?
– Is there any connection in houses with open verandah and optimism?
Above list is certainly not an exhaustive one, but the ones which immediately come to mind, I am sure there are several other issues which need to be thought above.
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