I have discovered two terms: 'competitive compassion' and 'competitive inaction.' The first term occurred to me when I was working for a certain publication, where the distinguishing feature at office was 'competitive inaction,' the kind of which is generally believed to be found only in government and public sector offices. Anyway, it is not relevant to what I have set out to say. The term 'competitive compassion' struck me much earlier, when a colleague had been hospitalised and one day when some of us reporters had huddled together at a restaurant, 

one particular colleague thumped the table and vociferously asserted that he had called on the ailing colleague the most number of times. (Pardon me for this, but I must tell you that my mind immediately switched on the scene that I had witnessed as a boy of eight or nine: It had just turned dark and I was walking with my parents in a playground. A group of boys, all my age, had formed a circle and in a formation that could be termed a human fountain were targeting their jet stream to its centre. When I grew up I heard similar stories from friends, and I realised that it is not unusual for boys of that age – the age of discovery of one's own body – to compete among themselves to find out as to whose jet had the farthest reach). 

Not long ago, I saw a photograph in a newspaper. It was of the assistant commissioner of Hunsur sub-division giving away a check for Rs. 10,000 as relief to the wife of a road accident victim. The woman was in tears; the dispenser of the check had, owl-like, turned his face by 180 degrees, and was unabashedly staring into the camera. 

A local MLA lends his shoulder to lift the body of Dr.H.M. Nayak, the litterateur who died recently, and lower it into the hearse. The solemn occasion does not distract him from his vigilant gaze at the camera. Now, ever since killer Tsunami ravaged Asia, help has been forthcoming in Tsunamic proportions for relief. Media is mired with photographs of donors, some of them scarcely being able to contain their glee at the chance the tremor-triggered tragedy has scooped out for them to parade as philanthropists. What is it that so quickly loosens the purse strings during a cataclysm? Why are we not so forthcoming to lift our fellow beings from their utter misery in the normal course? Death dances with such aplomb that humbles us so completely. If art humanises man, so does the dance of death, howsoever momentarily. Is that all that is there to it? No. Our competitive inaction rests on community callousness. It is this inaction that is responsible for the day-to-day suffering of the majority. It is as if to compensate for this routine neglect that we rush to the help of the survivors of a catastrophe like Tsunami. What ensues is a visibly competitive outpour of compassion. Since compassion is immeasurable, who gives away the most gets known as the most philanthropic. Karnataka gets credit for being the most generous giver; the United States is accused of not giving enough. 

So, the necessary and sufficient condition for the soul to fulfil its need is that another soul be in misery. The fulfilment needs some advertisement, doesn't it? And, it is in the very nature of advertisements to exaggerate. Smiles sell products more easily than tears. So, the philanthropist smiles, rather the camera pulls out the smile from him. (If his smile can infect another man to loosen his purse strings, why not?) 

This takes me to the physics I studied a long ago. The fallacy of science. The physicist does not study what she wants to study, because by the very process of her observation she changes the object of observation. His microscope lights up the atom under observation. The photon particles (light) bombard the electrons, which get agitated and are no longer in their natural state, as was desired by the physicist. 

The camera flash bulb serves as the journalist's electron microscope. Its very sight excites the objects before it to the point of their disfigurement, permanently altering their natural state and transporting them totally away from the realm of dignity. If the gun kills the body, the lens kills the soul. 


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