My foray into violence

Hmm!!! Can I call it a foray... not sure, but this is the first time I came eyeball to eyeball with violence.

I have written about how much violence disgusts, pains, shocks blah blah blah before. But for the first time it frightened me and I was not even directly involved.

I never realized how much the TV and News papers distances the happenings around the world until yesterday.

I was leaving for home in a metro bus listening to Jagjit Singh, when I realized some disturbance behind me. I was too immersed in my own thoughts to even turn and see.

The stage came and the TC got in to check our tickets when there was a shout and the sounds of a person getting hit. There was this guy being hit and kicked by three other guys. And the hitee was actually inciting them to hit him some more. Then the four guys got back into the bus and the hitee started loudly demanding that the bus be turned towards the nearest police station. When the conductor did not heed, he went straight to the driver and started pulling him off his seat.

Now another concerned traveler got into this foray and started pulling the hitee away. When he refused to listen, the traveler too started hitting the man.

By now my eyes started burning and I realized that I was watching the whole thing without blinking. So I blink, only to find that the hitee had pulled out a knife and was brandishing it in front of the traveler, threatening to stick it into him.
My God! Do things like this actually happen in real life???

The hitee was boasting that he had been to jail twice before for knifing someone and did not have any problems going once more and screaming at the traveler for hitting him.
And in another blink, the traveler had pulled the knife from the hitee and thrown the man out of the running bus. The hitee calmly got up, brushed himself and went away.

I was staring at the whole thing wide eyed, open mouthed and scared witless.

Trust me when I say, violence in real life is much more horrific and unrealistic than when seen through the TV. *phew*