There is no Them

What the Snake and the Elephant whispered This week saw two incidents from Kerala, that hit the national headlines. The story of Uttara who was murdered using a snake as a weapon and the story of a pregnant elephant being killed with a cracker inside a pineapple. The first story revolves around Sooraj, his family, Uttara, her wedding videos, her parents aspirations etc. Notice that no one even talks about the snake which was also a hapless victim, nor much about the core reason of human motivation. The focus is on dowry system, about parents giving too much, about what fathers of girl daughters should or should not do. The narrative slowly moving away from the incident to a system or group of people.  The second story revolves around simpler narrative deviants of the cracker being placed to kill boars and accidentally consumed by the elephant(as if that was legitimate) to more serious narrative builders attributing to certain communities supposed to be residing in that area and even ab