Aristocratic Apathy…
January 16, 2010 7:51 pmI shuddered at the gaping hole in his neck; at the blood, and his grey, inert face. Who was he? No one seemed to know, or to care much either. All I wanted to do was to get away. Back to my dinner party, a drink, talk, spoons dipping into soup, servants in red cummerbunds passing round plates of food and bottles of wine–a scene calculated to put out of sight and mind this other one of sprawling bodies, and the man with the gashed throat who was too inconsequential even to have a name, or arouse curiosity as to why he should have cut a gaping hole in his windpipe; his single gesture of defiance against a world which seemed indifferent whether he lived or died.
At our dinner-table conversation I mentioned the incident, giving rise to a number of sage observations. Calcutta medical services very inadequate, traffic control deplorable anyway life held cheap in the East–look at the way they treat animals–in contradistinction to the West, where the individual was valued.
~Malcolm Muggeridge, Chronicles of Wasted Time
Chronicles of Wasted Time
Author: Malcolm Muggeridge
I read this passage recently while sitting alone in a local diner with the pulsating TV coverage of Haiti running incessantly on a mounted plasma screen. Subtitled imagery of earthquake horrors had accompanied my reading for several hours, and for a moment I had forgot that it was actually happening. Happening still, to people I had met. Frantz, Gertrude, Michalenge, and Mackenson. Are they still alive? I don’t know.
Just a few days earlier, I might have joined them at their dinner party.
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