Fire

I was talking to a friend today who claimed that she was apathetic to politics. On the next breath, she was telling me how her religious teacher was being marginalised for offending the political authority. His offence, preciously, was openly asking for religious freedom.

She told me that he had restrictions on where he could preach, and was losing his followers because of the offence. Then, she turned around to say that she was non-political and just wanted to stay out of it.

The thing is, my friend, if the fire catches you, how can you stay out of it. You don't need a wise man to tell you that to stay out of it you'd have to put the fire out first.

People told me similar things before. The particular politics to keep clear from may be as specific as gay rights and freedom of speech, or as general as human rights and democracy. They were adamant that they shall be non-political lest they catch the fire. And they remained apathetic even when the fire had caught them. The end result? The society they helped create became an inferno and they burnt collectively because everyone had decided to stay out of it.

I did not try to point this out to my friend because she was elder to me whom in our culture I was supposed to defer to. Or perhaps, it was because I thought she was too old to change. Or after all, she might not want to hear what I had to say. I listened quietly and let the topic pass.

It was only two days ago that I wanted to talk to her about what happened on 4 June 1989. She cut me off and said that she wasn't interested in petty, pathetic, futile and earthly politics...