Are we descending towards barbarism?

Travelling in Mumbai's local trains can prove to be quite an insightful sojourn for the simple reason that you not only come across all specimens of mankind but also get a glimpse of human nature.

The other day I was travelling back home in a Virar-bound (yeah, the dreaded one) local with music plugged into my ears, smelly armpits shoving their way into my nose and the ugly mangroves and nullah at Bandra treating my eyes.

Just when I was about to deport myself to a world of serene siesta, I was hauled back into the crowded compartment by a shrill voice hurling cuss words at another woman.

I got up to watch two 20-something girls clawing and tugging at the hair of a middle-aged co-passenger. 

The woman had apparently asked the girls not to push her, and in retaliation, the girls were abusing her and trying to push her off the train. Spitting a string of vulgar abuses, they tore at her clothes and beat her black and blue.

The woman fought back with defiance, blood oozing from her face and her hair strewn while others were trying to hold the girls back in vain.

To my horror, I realised that the woman was being trampled upon and almost killed till the train halted and an RPF personnel came to her rescue.

For something that could have been ignored or resolved verbally, I fail to see why the girls had to resort to this show of power and brutality.

Was it an outlet to their frustrations, or an overbearing desire to prove their potency over people who were weaker than them? 

What is it with human psychology that vices like brutality and cruelty come so easily to people? Has the human conscience plummeted so low that compassion and altruism are on the verge of extinction?

If minds as young as 20-year-olds can display such savage brutality, then humanity is surely on the way to its decline.

The recent spate of attacks on women — a Dalit girl in Fatehpur, Uttar Pradesh, having her limbs chopped off for resisting rape; a Lucknow girl being shot dead for refusing a friendship proposal and, more recently, a Mumbai girl being attacked with a knife for not parting with her cellphone number — makes you sit back and wonder if the human race is really civilised, or is it just a notch higher than our ancestors.

Or may be, just may be… we are reverting to the Middle Ages, when barbarism ruled with an iron fist and 'eye-for-an-eye' was the rule of law.