Indifference?

I had written this sometime in July, 2007. This space didn't exist then, but I feel like putting this up now.

They screened Mira Nair's Salaam Bombay today. Three of us went for the movie: S., I. and me. We could watch only one hour of it. There is an undercurrent of so much pain throughout the movie. Stark, shocking poverty. We see it around us everyday, everywhere and we choose to ignore it everyday, everywhere. Why then does it hit us so much and so hard when we see it on a movie screen? Why is the world of ignorance, drugs, prostitutes, pimps and child laborers so easy to ignore and yet so hard to watch when someone points it out to us? We know everything and yet we choose to ignore everything. And then you walk out of the dark auditorium and see a big, well lit room, feel the cool air of the a.c. and discuss the movie in English, try to be light and normal, try to go back to the world of choosing-to-forget. How is it so easy?