There is a reality and that is there is no Dark Knight who will rise and save the city of Gotham. The City of Gotham is a city and environment in our imagination where we think we have a savior who will rise up to beat and ward off the miscreants. The true reality within our imagination is that the existence of the Dark Knight is fully dependent on the existence of anti social elements… based on someones imagination he or she takes the side of the Dark Night or the miscreant.

It is the worst day not just for people who lost their loved ones and had to witness the dreaded episode in Aurora, Colorado, it is also the worst day for any moviegoer in the world knowing how unsafe you are without Gun control. Accessibility to guns for the civilian is the biggest threat that our lives face of course amidst all other issues that are thrown at us.

The question that would bewilder many of us is why does such a thing happen over and over again where somone easily gets hold of a gun and uses it on you and me… And would such a thing have happened if there was a stricter Gun control across the country. I can’t find how someone can again object the fact that we need strong Gun control laws. Because the lack of a Gun control law completely would have put a gun in the hand of every viewer in that theatre and if everyone were going to shoot in self defense in that dark room, the death toll might have been more and still no surety that the miscreant would have fallen. May be you would not even know who did it…

In my opinion easy access to guns is not the only issue but the most important issue and root of the problem we have in hand.  Also the fact that there is so much violence on TV, Cinema, and games that when movies like “The Dark Knight Rises” gets released it is also joined by equally violently creative games to promote the movie that this can get an imbalanced moviegoer with no prior criminal record deep into the fiction and violence as a character…

It is not that we did not have guns and shooting in movies before.. All the old western movies that depicted the wild west starting from the silent era had guns in them but when a movie goer sees the movie he is never thinking he is inside the movie and probably never loses the sense that he is a viewer and the movie happens on the screen. But now the games and most of them interactive and even internet group games enable the viewer to play out the roles that slowly blur the distinction between reality and fiction. And I don’t have to say much of the youngest age when kids get hooked into these games.. They are hooked into the games now much before they have the mental growth, sense and patience to sit in a dark room watching the big screen… which is scary if you really think about it..

Recently I was telling a friend that in one way I think many of these violent games and games that act as a stepping stone to violent role plays are a criminal addition to our society.. Some might think it is a blow on the freedom of art when I say that.. but the truth is we have law and order to ward off criminal minds from raping, shooting  and reaping from our society but we are quite fine with them in their imagination killing and destroying cities, people and civilizations playing both good and bad.. we can’t have solutions that treat the problem if we don’t have a mind to approach the problem itself…

It is a very thin line and we are incapable of making that line bolder than it should be. The guy who came to the theatre with the gun and opened fire and people who dress up as their characters and come to a movie could all in one way or other be trying to be part inside the fiction to improve their experience of the movie. Movie is an art for enjoyment and more lately it has for many become an art form for forgetting the reality.. Virtual reality… I am not against technology… but every technology has to have a responsibility that aligns positively with our society and if profits are the only thing in sight when a new product or art is created then morality…Righteousness…correctness all get flushed through the toilet.

While I write this I am doing so knowing that living in another part of the country does not make me immune to what happened and at any time I could also end up as one of the people who lost their life… Being a movie buff I might be able to relate much closer to the issue…but the theatre is not the only place here…this can happen in a coffee house as well…

Sadly we all are so used to becoming paranoid about something when it happens and then forgetting about the incident completely after a while without taking any measure to change what happened…. And so if the problem of kids, games, violence, profits, market capitalization, lack of responsibility all keep going in the same equation as it is now we are never safe… And having a gun in every hand for self defense is being proven over and over as the stupidest idea just to support the interests of the lobbies that profit from guns and ammunitions…

Do we have a solution…Well my thoughts are more on how do we bring up our kids to be non violent, understanding, caring and responsible. Building a strong reading habit among kids is the best way to create a new generation that would bring positive impact on the society… Now more books are written than people who buy them…… Good reading among kids are to improve…but reading among adults are almost extinct unless that reading is giving them the value for the buck.. Value of the Buck..? when you pick a Charles Dickens or a Tolstoy or an Agatha Christie thinking what benefit will this book have for me…then how can we survive as considerate human beings…

When talk shows get mileage telling people how lucky and better off they are,  people stick with their own miserable selves without coming out to make a difference.. Books open our world to the pains and reality of life and the truths of the human endurance and goodness and we learn from them…..I might be too partial in my opinion towards books and my opinion to games might sound out to be too critical and that is because I am a book lover and not into games.. But when I see my kids get hooked and addicted to games and TV much more easily and start living inside it… it scares the hell out of me…

Yes we should accept generation gaps but are our kids going to be in a generation where the violent games and virtual reality will rule their senses to smell the flower… feel for the characters in the classics or read and enjoy Neruda, wordsworth and others…. A generation where poetry and love becomes scarce…I fail to understand…I really do….

These are incidents that make you feel how small and insignificant many things we do are… but nevertheless there is hope… Our society is no way irreparably damaged… it is going through a phase where we need to be more considerate to each other… be in a community than alone….tell the kids that life is all about love and teach them about art.. poems….stories….teach them to hate guns…hate wars…hate oppression and yet be non violent….

My heart goes out to all those who lost their life and their loved ones…it is not easy….and I say that because I know that there are equal chances that I could have been one among them any day….