Not much. Being very honest right at the outset.
My sincere condolences to his family and friends and fans – but what happened to him, was in all probability an unfortunate incident, even accident maybe. But for me (an occasional spectator of the sport), I don’t feel much beyond feeling bad for the family and his loved ones, but not enough for me to join the #RIP army.
Picture courtesy: http://cnn.it/1vtCdbc
Now here’s the problem, you would ask, if not a fan of the sport, what gives me the right to write about it, right? You bet! Or maybe you don’t. But, in Cricket somebody always does, so you needn’t worry about that. Anyway, without digressing any further, I’ll put forth my point:
Like every good Indian involved in an argument, I’ll answer your question by posing the same question back at you which will be followed by an answer: Q. Why does a death of a human being in an unfortunate incident matter that much to you?
A. To put things into perspective: (Note: Generalizing things a little here, to avoid hurting anyone’s sentiments) A cricketer is one of the of the 7.125 billion people on the planet, out of which given that the mortality rate is 9.5 deaths/1000 people, 71250000 people stand a chance of dying due to several causes/reasons.
To put things into simpler perspective, let us look at it only in the Indian context*:
1. In India, over 19,728 deaths have occurred in accidents involving two-wheelers, and in most cases it was absence of, let alone quality, of the helmet.
2. About 70% of women face domestic violence in India; a woman is raped every 29 minutes; a dowry death occurs every 77 minutes.
3. This year, 18,735 people have been killed until now in railway accidents.
4. Our country’s infant mortality rate is currently at 41. That means 41/1000 infants die under the age of one – mostly due to lack of basic sanitation facilities like washing hands.
I could simply Google and throw some more numbers at you, but that’t not the point.
And like a true Indian, after beating around all the Bushes, Clintons, Obamas, etc I put forth my actual point, which is also a question to you:
Why don’t we value lives of these aforementioned people? Why are these simply a statistic for the most of us? Why can’t we think of these people as someone we love?
Imagine getting killed by a bullet, not from a gun, but a train. Imagine your house-help who might have been a victim to child marriage which most likely involved dowry and is now suffering from violence at the hands of their spouses. Imagine the beautiful children in the baby-products ads, and now imagine them being dead because their mothers didn’t have access to a bar of soap (and water!) Imagine you, yes you, sitting on a bike with your loved one as pillion and (god forbid) fall prey to an accident and die only because you didn’t wear a helmet.
Putting an #RIP doesn’t really convey much. Because if it did, we would have a #RIP for those 71250000 people, wouldn’t we? After all, every one of those is someone’s Phil Hughes..
*Note: The data used above may/may not be very accurate. Following are some of the sources that were referred:
1. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs310/en/index3.html
2. http://pib.nic.in/newsite/erelease.aspx?relid=74404
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_violence_in_India
4. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Death-on-rail-tracks-on-rise-18735-lives-lost-in-2014-till-October/articleshow/45323918.cms
5. http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.IMRT.IN
6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_collisions_in_India
Views, opinions, sarcasm and beyond.. 