Did Eve, despite a warning from the Divine, not pluck the forbidden apple hanging all alone in the Garden of Eden? That some devilish temptation later made her bite the apple and unleash calamity, is an entirely different issue. But was it initially not the noble feeling of empathy that drew her attention towards the solitary fruit? Do we not often don the cape of the gladiator, and go all-out to occupy the only vacant seat left in the metro train, to selflessly make sure that it does not go neglected and unaccompanied? Come on, kids bring lonesome, stray puppies home all the time!
All these observations, brimming with benevolence, stand a witness to how natural it is for us humans to identify ourselves with the pain of the abandoned. Which is why I fail to understand why the Bangalore airport security levelled charges of theft against a Delhi-based professor who walked away with an unattended laptop at the Bangalore airport a few days ago. Clearly the definition of theft needs revision. The sacred feeling of compassion for the forlorn — leading to immediate action (alleged as theft these days) — needs to be freed from the false accusations of larceny. It was highly irresponsible on part of the authorities to not even for once consider the Scenario of the Saviour which would have rightfully deified the kind professor to the highest rungs of the Ladder of Altruism.
The enlightened would agree that the mere sight of the laptop sitting alone in the airport lobby would have touched the professor deeply and made his pliable soul to cry out an ‘aww…’ to give the poor thing company. He then — after walking away stealthily with the notebook, shushing the surroundings like a rescuer — would have held the computer close to himself, gently caressing its heart, or to say, its processor, which in this case would have been at least an i3 or an i5, given that the unkind master happened to be an MNC executive.
Where’s the crime here?
Analysisng this from another angle would show this behaviour to be strongly suggestive of a special kind of sincerity in effort from the said faculty member to fill the increasing void between the real and reel lives, since his actions seemed inspired from the Academy Award winning film, “Her“, which unsurprisingly portrays love between man and machine. If that be the case, our professor deserved an Oscar, more compellingly than even DiCaprio.
Either way, we have ended up blemishing a fine man who had nothing but a finer purpose in his mind. And all this shame came upon us just because we were, all this time, consulting law books that had become distressingly old and out of (human) touch. Serious steps need to be taken before the situation runs out of control. Better start by getting some new, sensitive touchpads, shouldn’t we?