"The funny thing is, on the outside, I was an honest man, straight as an arrow. I had to come to prison to be a crook."
From: The Shawshank Redumption
A few days back I saw a horror movie and trust me it was more horrifying than any of the exorcist or grudge series you know of. This movie is called “Black Friday”. It proves undoubtedly that the most terrifying creatures in this world are the humans. The human race has gone on to believe in its supernatural powers of deciding the fate of many others in matters of life and death. Now if the movie can scare you, try and think of the people who faced these atrocities and worse still of those who survived and are still engulfed in this.
Consider for a moment the matters of life and death, conviction and acquittal, true and false and more importantly right and wrong. Unfortunate as it seems all matters in life are not as simple as mathematics where ‘correct’ answers are available. So finally in order to decide whether the conclusion drawn in any sphere of life is right or wrong we seek refuge in the word ‘JUDGMENT’. Judgment leads to justice and justice leads to court and law or is it the other way round? For centuries laws have been framed, reframed, mended and bended as per the wish of rulers, framers, constitutionalists and people with such respectable and reverent connotations. So from where do these learned people derive their wisdom to prepare guidelines in order to decide the crime, sentence and in extreme cases death of a convict? A very well known and propagated notion is that above all courts lies our conscience. However the depictions of the world prove that availability of conscience on the market is very poor. A commodity boasted by the HR people needs to be advertised and marketed by the marketing experts.
While conversing with a cousin of mine who happens to be an advocate I was able to reconfirm my belief that the number of people convicted for crimes are much less then the ones who actually commit them. Thanks to the old principle of law “Let one hundred guilty go free but not one innocent should not be convicted.” Having said that I realized that guilty and innocent are actually matters of perceptions. Do people committing heinous murders, homicides; rapes ever feel they have done something wrong? Let them apart there is another breed of people termed as professional lawyers. Their job is to help their client go free from the clutches of a number of statutes defined in thick volumes of law. Professionals as they are, they are also dedicated and determined to help their clients get a clean chit from the court of law. The defense as well as prosecution lawyer knows the truth and yet there are acquittals in a case where crime has been committed. Let us allow the guardians of law to seek recourse in the tussle between “Dharma” and “Karma” in order to account for their actions. Who then is the person accused of the crime? Is it the person who committed it, the person who abets him to surpass the law or is it the jury which declares ‘not guilty’? If an act was done someone is responsible and someone will have to pay. Who, we still don’t know. Do any of them truly believe that what they did was different from what should have been done? Do they ever close their eyes and speak “GUILTY MY LORD”.
As kids, we are taught about these right and wrong things..... we think , they are so rigid and absolute, like something which is right cannot be wrong !!!!!
ReplyDelete'never do anything wrong always do right things' and we believe in what they say about right and wrong... later on we understand that it is very difficult to explain which is right and which is wrong and they are very subjective things...
Now I think, one should do things that give him peace also be smart to save his ass while doing it.
When you see something wrong happening(ofcourse from your perspective), you have options from just letting it go to confronting it ... you find your peace level depending on how much control you have on the situation and settle with it.