An incident of human wickedness

Many people wouldn't find this incident wicked, but I did. And maybe I do sound ridiculous, but I am posting this anyways.

This happened when I was going to Bangalore from Nagpur after Diwali last year. I hadn’t got a confirmed direct ticket, so had to come via Chennai. There was a family in my bogey from Nagpur, parents and a cute kid, Ria. I had become quite friendly with the kid during the journey; we kept playing all the time. So when we had a stop at the Chennai station I tagged along with the family. This is where the incident happened.

We were waiting at the station; three men were sitting around a pillar, discussing something. Ria went close to them as one of the men started spitting on the pillar. When she saw this, she said very sweetly ‘Uncle, Please don’t spit.’ I was amazed at the sense of righteousness of the young girl. I thought that the man would oblige to the lil’ girl’s request, but it was not to be. The man spit again, this time not because he wanted to, but because he had been asked not to do so. And after this he smiled wickedly, Ria seeing this came back, disappointed and hurt.

How could he derive pleasure by purposely hurting a kid whom he didn’t even know? I was forced to think that if given free rein would he go to any extent for this sort of pleasure. Is it the fear punishment that keeps him bounded now, and if somehow he gets over it what would he do? Say for instance there is a riot and hooligans are having a field day with no police control whatsoever, would he go berserk too? Was he a criminal in the making, or was he already one? Just a thought... I am no psychologist after all.

Maybe I was overreacting and what I saw was just the primal instinct present in all of us ‘to not submit’, something which we call ego, in this incident which meant obeying a child. But maybe I was right and the person I saw was actually wicked, I can only surmise. We see incidents like this happen around us, sometimes we react sometimes we don't even give it a thought. Maybe we have reconciled to evil, which these days is ubiquitous.