Recently I read this story about a young boy and a monster, which I am narrating to you. I will then connect it to current situation around us. A young boy was always afraid of darkness. He used to feel that as soon as he switches off lights in the room, a monster that lives inside his wardrobe comes out and fills his entire room. One day he collected a lot of inner strength and decided to test his apprehensions. After switching off the light he actually walked to the ward- robe and tried to verify, if the monster is still in the wardrobe or outside in the room. To his utter surprise the monster was still in the wardrobe, who immediately started crying with a deafening sound. The monster cried so much that instead of getting frightened this boy had to ask him why he is crying so much. The monster replied that he is afraid of the boy. Hearing this, the boy became bolder and started talking further with the monster. The boy also shared the secret that he used to fear the monster since many years due his dark colour. After the talking sessions started, the mutual fears were gone and the boy could be seen talking to his wardrobe monster for many hours in the day as well as in the night. The moral of the story was actually related with starting a dialogue so that all fears will ultimately vanish.
When I see this story in context of recent incidences of communal violence and uncalled methods of protests, I truly feel that unknown fears resulted in clashes. The unknown monsters are filling our rooms of tolerance. Some people do try to open the wardrobe, but instead of one person crying and other one consoling him, both start crying together. No one talks, no one shares and eventually the monster of intolerance takes over. We are living in a world which has monsters of prejudiced casteism, inequality, poverty, absence of education facilities, uncleanliness still thriving very much around us. Intolerance against religion of someone, eating practices of someone, inhabitance of someone or even attitude of someone will not result in getting over the real monsters. Interestingly social intolerance is a matter of business for a group of people. Intolerance of people is seen as an opportunity by these people to feed their vested interests. It is time now we shake hands with positive monsters inside us and make a stronger team to fight the people who are in the business of taking benefits out of social intolerance.
Dr. Sunil Ji Garg
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