"Order,Order,Order!!!!"

"Order” is a word when repeated thrice, ushers my imagination in a flash ..into a court room setting. I see vividly in my mental image , a picture of a court room.. jam packed with audience brimming with curiosity, incredulity and repugnance. I hear a case being argued about and counter-argued(??) in a foreign language that I am unable to comprehend….I see a man with a grim face at a distance who has been convicted of some abhorrent crimes and I hear the verdict of the judge

“A life imprisonment”..

Well.. what is all this???....This was the projection of my mind (which had been quite dormant of-late) … when I read the news of the verdict of the Austrian Josef Fritzl‘s case. A case that has shocked the entire world!!!! Perhaps half of my imagination is a bit of an intumesced version of the court room scenario in reality!!!!..

But what is the undeniable reality??!!!… Austrian Josef Fritzl, locked his daughter in a cellar and fathered her seven children. The very statement emphasizes the fact that the torment undergone by the daughter has not been a short lived one…but has extended to a gruesome 20+ years… The cellar had been maintained as a dungeon..deprived of sun light and typically characterised by lack of moving space.

All this sounds like a horror story …. A story that one might think could possibly happen only in movies. It is scary to even think that perhaps horror movies take their inspiration from real lives.

I was pondering on what could be the root cause for such a behavioural trait of Fritzl which defies all logic and reasoning. First few thoughts pointed towards a possible psychiatric disorder, mental instability and what not. But his Modus operandi of the entire torture process that has happened surreptitiously …..definitely seems to be a product of a rather sane, intelligent mind albeit a perverted one. One cannot fail to notice the ingenuity of his crooked mind in making the cellar a secret location which was so well hidden that when the police searched the property they failed to find it until Mr Fritzl showed them where it was.

Further shocking is the outcome of analysis of the convict by psychiatrists and experts in the related professions. They have tentatively stated that Fritzl is quite a “sane” person and his authoritative and domineering natures have been the root cause for the entire problem.

What remains baffling to me is… How could even one of his behavioural abnormalcy ..not have been spotted by anyone around him…his friends, his colleagues, his family ?!!!!...Or was it that… it was noticed, but not reported of ???..Or worse still ..was it not noticed at all??!!!!

This brings to question the very mode of functioning of our social structure of the current days. Are we so less concerned about the people around us and so busy with our own lives that we fail to take notice of people , their traits and happenings around us?.. Have we got too much used to the concepts like “personal space “and “intrusion into one’s privacy “ that we formally create a safe distance between ourselves and the rest of the world and create a bubble around ourselves??. Getting in and out of the bubble becomes our own discretion as and when required and we do not let others decide the dimensions of our bubble for us.

Are we struggling to draw a line between being too judgemental and being too tolerant and accommodative of shortcomings of others??. As a community and as a society what should be our responsibility and course of action towards preventing such crimes from happening in the future?. Are we going to be lamely blaming the Government for anything and everything that happens around us or are we going to address the root cause of such problems ourselves??. How do we prevent such Fritzls in the world from continuing to be so menacing of unimaginable magnitudes??.

Although these questions keep reverberating in my mind….I do not know of a conclusive answer to any of these.. …The pondering continues!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!