Last week saw a shocking incident where a man named George Floyd, 46 was mercilessly choked by a police officer in Minneapolis, USA. Watching the video was uncomfortable and reflected an ugly truth which people usually don’t want to face. The video went viral, and so were reactions.
Black Lives Matter started trending on social media. In no time, protests started everywhere in the world. Soon mob became violent and started vandalizing the property. Police cars were burned, property damaged. In one strange video a woman pooped on a police car. Then came another video where a local ‘Target’ store was targeted and people looted the store. Then a nike store went through the same ordeal and later a Louis Vuitton store too was emptied by the hoarders. Looting mainly increased when the president of the United States warned the hoarders against it.
From breaking public properties, mob moved to breaking any property that irked them. In one incident, the mob beat a man who tried to defend his store from the attack. In another, a white woman stood in fear when a mob started to break the things with sticks around her, leaving her terrified, offering no room to escape. In a very sad incident, a 77-year old retired police officer who happened to be black as well was attacked because he was trying to interrupt when the angry mob decided to damage another property. Irony died just there. Not completely though.
As it always happens with modern and English speaking, cool Indians especially Bollywood celebrities, also started to feel sad about George Floyd’s death. When there is nothing wrong with being empathetic, these people conveniently forgot to express any remorse or sadness over the lynching of two Sadhus in Palgarh, Maharashtra, where they all live. After the brutal murder of two sadhus in Palgarh, two more sadhus were killed in Nanded, Maharashtra but still not even a single word or tweet came from otherwise ‘sensitive and woke’ celebrities.
Ironically, Huma Qureshi is a brand ambassador of Lotus whitening cream, Ileana D’cruz endorses Pond’s white beauty cream and Kiara Advani gives her friend a Pond’s white beauty cream in another advertisement too. Kareena Kapoor performed on ‘fevicol se’ song where she calls herself ‘butter’ and her sister Karishma has also done her fair share of ‘beauty cream’ advertisements mainly Pond’s beauty cream and Olay total effects cream. Hence their concern for George Floyd is tailored, not from heart. How is it possible that everyone shares the same screenshot, same worded tweets at the same time?
Ashok Swain, who is a professor in Sweden’s Uppsala’s University was upset that such protest doesn’t happen in India, so did another ‘journalist’ Rana Ayyub. Instead of showing solidarity with a man who lost his life, these opportunists are provoking vandalism and mayhem in India too. This is the problem with such protests. Everyone tries to take advantage of someone else’s life and that is why ‘Every life matters’ and not every tragedy should be milked.
Peace.
