Road Accidents

It is one matter when we congregate once every year, painting our jaded faces red and white, wildly waving our flags and feverishly making proclaimations of loyalty to our dwelling place. In the heat of the moment you might even mistaken your passion for a genuine brotherly or sisterly affection for the individual jumping next to you. It is quite another matter, however, to realise that when a fellow countryman, a fellow vessel of the blood of humanity lies devastated and wrecked on the side of the road, victim of unfortunate circumstances, bodily tissues and fluids oozing out of every pore, lungs perforated and cranium exposed, that some of us simply pause, emit an eerily laconic scoff, shrug a pair of guiltless shoulders, and drive on. In such moments the values upon which we are ostensibly grounded, the fundamental ethical sense that is assumed to abide in every human being, becomes a laughing stock, mercifully veiled behind the unforgiving public eye by a bloodstained cloth atop the purity of white, crescent and stars perhaps a mournful indication that night has fallen upon the beautiful conscience of our land.