Let us celebrate little Bency's demise; let us mourn Ajmal Kasab's extrication

Last day, Bency a fifteen year old girl had the last laugh in her painful and tedious battle against the rough and weird edges of nature as well as the schools in Kerala that had ostracised her along with her kid brother Benson for bringing HIV to this sacred land.

These two innocent kids that got affected by HIV virus through their infected parents - presumptively congenital - cut a sympathetic figure being shuttled among glorified educational market places in the state, curiously called schools...rather than proving to be a travesty of the conscience of the average Keraliyan who takes pride in the self styled tag 'God's own country'. My good old English friend Chuck Doherty was quick to point out the contradiction. "How can a region with more average folk, claim and assume such a striking status, even though symbolically?", he wondered.

Doherty cannot be blamed for his finding, particularly when the people in this state are currently struggling to tackle a grave socio-economic situation, marked by intimidating facets of comprehensive moral degradation ranging from grievous crimes to usurpation. From this ruckus, where is the leisure for deigning to attend to the burning problems of an ordinary being even though it happens to be a human being?

Coming back to Bency, the woes accompanying the stage ARC (AIDs Related Complex) and AIDS itself can be comparatively less painful and dreadful when weighed against the mental agonies she had to go through half a decade back when she was persistently humiliated by a band of tuxedo clad Pre-adamites who threatened to take away their wards from the schools that tend to admit this poor being. It is against this backdrop that Doherty lauded a noteworthy gesture from the part of the BJP Leader Sushma Swaraj, who took pain to hug and kiss them in public.

Doherty said, "I just cannot play down the Swaraj act as condescending, although I will do exactly that when the her party boasts that a cloth donation ceremony carried out by them to celebrate a leader's birthday - and ended in a number of stampede deaths - was an act of charity." "Her appealing gesture would have had far reaching effects in showing some light into the sparsely populated brains inhabiting the God's own Country.

Thank heavens! the angel from the heavens - definitely not from His own country - finally came assuming the form of an encephalitis attack that is arguably less painful than the more common Pneumonia or Tuberculosis accompanying AIDS (the final stage) in these areas. Doherty maintains that the Kaposi's sarcoma, the terminal disorder accompanying the final stage of an HIV infection in the West is more painful - a reprieve for the inhabitants of His own country from Him? Whatsoever, RIP Bency.

When poor beings such as Bency that unwittingly happens to contact such deadly Viruses and suffer 'ineffable' pain for almost a lifetime before exoneration through death, someone in the country that has caused indescribable agony to many is being given the luxury of a sudden death ironically. Doherty commented on the sensational sentence - the death penalty awarded to Ajmal Kasab, the protagonist of the 26/11 action drama, "This is something he could not have even dreamt of getting and in such quick time; besides giving him the smoothest safe passage to ecstasy - anyone would have to go one day - the outcome could have also given an opportunity for other protagonists of his theories  (on either side of the LOC) to eulogise and celebrate the perpetrator's attaining martyrdom".

However, the system as well, is helpless to a great extent as it just had one this option under the circumstances, with public opinion largely demanding it. Moreover, the enormity of Kasab's (and is companions') act absolutely invited the capital punishment described in the country's penal code, which unfortunately is the easiest way out - to hang until death. It is maintained that the punishment system in India is based on certain criteria, which include retributive theory that speaks of justice demanding an eye for an eye, reformative theory that stands to reform the wrongdoer and deterrent theory that applies to deterrent criminals.

The modern theory of punishment that covers the punishment system of India is a combination of the best of all these theories. The punishment awarded to the offender should to an extent satiate the retributive urge of the offended individuals (such as Mrs Karkare), it should give the society a strong statement that the culprit is not punished for he committed the atrocity but another one should not take his act as a model, it should give the wrongdoer a chance to expiate for his act, and hence reform himself and finally it should also see that a intransigent criminal does not go at large in the society to commit more atrocities.

Here, when given a second look at it one could see that bringing an abrupt end to the life of the culprit not only ends his misery once and for all, but the offended segment (not just Mrs Karkare but all the peace seekers in the country) will see the same face haunting them multiple times in similar acts of atrocity in the future. Today Ajmal Kasab is a man, tomorrow he may become the impetus for another untoward movement, which is totally unacceptable as well. The most grim argument that would spring up against this view would be, "Why should we provide for a criminal that have attempted to outrage our very peaceful existence with a ration, only to return him to a set of terrorists that could in the future hold someone or something valuable for the country, for ransom?"

Nevertheless, this is not at all a simple decision to be taken even though a number of people would like to see the terrorist expiating for his misdeeds in the dungeons of the country, alongside toiling to the economic cause of the very country that he and his associates had attempted to violate. But more intriguing is the ambiguous designs of the almighty that left an innocent little weakling to extreme suffering while leaving the most convenient way out for a remorseless headhunter that obviously deserves a lifetime of forced agony....strange.....strange....strange........