{"id":4418,"date":"2007-05-08T07:00:37","date_gmt":"2007-05-08T12:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com?p=4418"},"modified":"2007-05-08T07:10:05","modified_gmt":"2007-05-08T12:10:05","slug":"sick_sad_world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/2007\/05\/08\/sick_sad_world\/","title":{"rendered":"Sick, Sad World"},"content":{"rendered":"

Someone needs to make a Bollywood movie about this; to naive me, that’s the fastest way to reach the masses and start a dialogue about ignorance regarding “black magic”. Somewhere between a jarring, music video-like interlude and a montage of Swiss images, let a flat-screen TV show a fake news story about this, after which Aishwarya turns to Abhishek<\/a> and says,<\/p>\n\n

“My God, that is terrible!”<\/p>\n\n

“When will people realize black magic is not real?”<\/p>\n\n

“And that doing something like this is murder!”<\/p>\n\n

Etcetera, etcetera. I’m not trying to make light of what I’m about to post, but I do wish there was an immediate way to communicate how heart-breakingly wrong the following is, to the maximum number of people possible…via Reuters<\/a> and<\/strong> the “Oddly Enough” feature at the top of my GMail inbox:<\/p>\n\n

An elderly Indian husband and wife were burnt to death after villagers accused them of practicing black magic, tied them together on a pyre and set them on fire<\/strong>, police said Thursday.<\/blockquote>\n\n
“The aged couple died screaming for help,” said police superintendent P.V. Sunil Kumar.<\/strong><\/blockquote>\n\n

Well, where the hell were you<\/em> Superintendent Kumar?<\/p>\n\n

Sayanna, 70, and his 61-year-old wife, Pochamma, were set ablaze after being doused with kerosene.<\/blockquote>\n\n
Both were farm laborers near the southern city of Hyderabad who also practiced traditional medicine<\/strong>. Police have arrested six villagers for the incident.<\/blockquote>\n\n

At least there is an attempt at justice. And now, for some cringe-inducing words…<\/p>\n\n

Belief in black magic is common in some parts of rural India, despite the country’s robust economic growth and cutting-edge high-technology industries.<\/blockquote>\n\n

Hmmm. Belief in misguided, hawkish jingoism is common in some parts of America, despite the country’s robust educational system and cutting-edge technology industries. (Yeah, like THAT will ever get printed.<\/em>)<\/p>\n\n

Siddhartha covered this<\/a> almost exactly a year ago:<\/p>\n\n

Dozens of women are murdered each year after being accused of witchcraft.<\/blockquote>\n\n

The following reminds me of the bible story about Abraham and Isaac<\/a>, though there was no mercy, divine or otherwise for this little boy.<\/p>\n\n

Last year, a barber in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh killed his four-year-old son by slitting his throat with a razor after the man started seeing visions of the Hindu goddess Kali demanding a sacrifice.<\/blockquote>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Someone needs to make a Bollywood movie about this; to naive me, that’s the fastest way to reach the masses and start a dialogue about ignorance regarding “black magic”. Somewhere between a jarring, music video-like interlude and a montage of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4418"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4418\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}