The Case for Biti

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Couple of days ago, I found Biti hitting the headlines again. It was almost a forgotten story and suddenly it was bang there in the main page of my morning newspaper. The details this time were thrilling enough to wake you up from your early morning sleepiness and worked better than my regular cup of tea and I am as well pretty sure that the news would have got some Bollywood scriptwriters working overtime for their next thriller. Not knowing tough, that the act itself might have been inspired by an earlier script. But who knows, but for Biti himself. The same news got me thinking too, as to who should be the considered the main protagonist of the whole drama. The most obvious pick would be Biti himself. A young lad, most probably a spoilt brat of a senior police official, raped a German lady in Rajasthan and was caught and lodged in Alwar Prison, who was helped by his father to jump parole and later went missing for 7 long years. Had it not been for the anonymous letter to the police, he would have finally settled and as they say, 'lived happily ever after' in a small town in Kerala under the acquired name of Raghav Rajan. That he had all the false identification documents in place right from school leaving certificate is reason enough to believe that he got an excellent support from his family and surely from someone in power. Else, its anybody's guess how difficult it would be to acquire a fake identity, more so, after having committed a crime. And this is the type of support which becomes the main reason why sons of influential people turn out to be social nuisances even before they reach their teens. The fact that your family will be there on your side no matter what you do, only goes in making the children bolder and once they are in the adolescence, this boldness someday gets them on the wrong side of law. My cousin during his college days had become a little bit naughty as happens with most of the boys at that age and I heard my uncle and Aunt admonishing him often. Finally, when those counseling didn't seem to work he had sent a strong message by threatening them, that in case he brings a bad name to the family, he would not think twice before dragging him out to be thrown under a moving truck. Now this could make a lot of parents think of child rights and may disapprove of such threats; but the matter of fact is, they did work. I am not debating here whether my Uncle was right or wrong in giving out such a strong threat but definitely, letting your children know that their mistakes wont be tolerated  goes a long way in effecting the quality of society for the next generation. At my own home, I seldom got support from my parents for any fights me and my brother got into. Explanations simply didn't work as my mother would question as to why I was there at the scene at the first place and if a fight is possible without sufficient provocation from both sides. Now this again is debatable. We do have situations when provocations from single parties did initiate a fight. However, her stance ensured that we never got into any major scuffles during our school time simply because we got the message that we should avoid fights to the extent possible. I am sure if we could have secured our parents support, we would have ended up with fights almost everyday. The other lessons that we were taught were the respect of ladies. During my primary school the relationship between the boys and girls were hostile and we had regular altercations for any reason that you can think off under the sun. On one such occasion, the arguments did reach flaring point and we saw blows raining from both sides of the war camp and I ended up hitting a girl on her chin. In the evening, mother would not talk to me for a long time. When prodded she showed her displeasure of me having hit a girl, who according to her was nothing but an embodiment of Goddess Laxmi. This sounds so anachronistic now and my lady readers would themselves take this with a pinch of salt. But then, it was enough to develop a sense of deep guilt within me and I had vowed not to hurt a lady anymore. I am not sure how many of our children are taught like this. And most importantly how many of us have that time to give these moral teachings. I am not sure where and when Biti faltered. But it seems most likely that he did not have the conditioning and checks to have him understand the accepted norms of civilized society. It could be lack of time or they might be simply irresponsible but nevertheless, it puts the onus of the whole act squarely on the shoulders of his parents. This makes the parents more likely candidates for the protagonists of the drama, that seems to have ended ...Or has it??