Hare Krishna

The Hare Krishnas here in Melbourne run this canteen in the city, where for 6 dollars, you can have unlimited helpings to vegetarian fare. I was walking around the city about a month back, when one of the Hare Krishnas passed me a small leaflet advertising the canteen. On the back of the leaflet was printed:-

Chant

Hare Krishna
Hare Krishna
Krishna Krishna
Hare Hare

Hare Rama
Hare Rama
Rama Rama
Hare Hare

and your life will be sublime

I somehow find it amusing every time I read it. Sublime ah? I don't know the first thing about the theology underlying Hare Krishnas, nor their structure or belief system. But I like how this small leaflet reaffirms my idea of its followers and intertwines with memories of seeing them dancing and singing while walking around the busiest parts of the city. There was always something so oblivious and joyous about them, so carefree.

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The London riots, in all its horribleness, have been quite transfixing to follow. I feel very sorry for the victims(with Asyraf Haziq standing out amongst them), and at the same time I am also intrigued by how rioting manifests in general. It's amazing, in an awful way. It's as if all social conventions are suspended, there are no rules.

Is there really any one reason a riot starts? I supposes it's a cocktail that can include various things, from racial tensions, to the socio-economic landscape, to deep-rooted problems within a community, or any number of unfortunate circumstances. But you have to wonder what combination of any of the above could mix and bubble and boil until it leads up to people behaving so frighteningly primitively. What pushes them over the edge? Would I act the same way if I had been in their shoes?

And what is the triggering factor, what is that breaking point that makes something click in the heads of people who are angry and makes them resort to violence? At what point does a crowd protesting the death of a man suddenly turn hostile, and at what point does that hostility segue into breaking into shops and looting and general chaos?

Articles I've been reading about the riots have phrases like 'mob mentality', 'marginalized by society', 'troubled youths', 'pent-up anger'. One of them stressed that irregardless, at the end of the day people had a choice. God knows there is enough evidence of people who have done bad things in this world for me to understand that there are those who choose to do wrong, but I am still astounded when I see things like that footage of people helping Asyraf up, only to open up his bag and steal his stuff while he's standing there bleeding and disoriented, it just boggles the mind that someone can choose to do that.

Kesian dia. And kesian mak bapak dia. I think every parent who has ever sent their kid to study far away(or just any parent, really) worries most about their child getting hurt in some way, and this must have been a sort of nightmare come true.

***

Day 11 of puasa.