Acts of people threatening orderly life both in the country and the rest of the regions across the globe on one side and the cosmic dance of nature’s fury, also in and around the country as well as all over the planet on the other side seem to be in perpetual competition in causing devastation to an extent and on a scale beyond the capability of administrations everywhere to manage and restore normalcy even to reasonable levels. Residents of Mysuru, hearing from public speakers of various hues and reading the scripts of seasoned writers about the city’s social and cultural profile that has got badly morphed to its current realities must be aghast while witnessing or reading reports in dailies detailing the factors behind the disturbances, violence, high-decibel sloganeering against different sections of society with the government sandwiched between them. Mysureans in their evening of life have surely lived during its golden decades.

There is more reason for despair than hope in the firmament for the fast deteriorating harmony in society to return to even a semblance of the ambience that we hear about in the days goneby. Some well-informed circles trace the goings on to historical events, particularly influx of aliens and their dominating over the land’s original inhabitants.

While the events that the pages of the land’s long history, particularly the systematic assault on the cultural edifices such as the excellent sculptures and monumental shrines by the invaders first and the much-avowed divide-and-rule strategy of the colonialists second have many valuable lessons directed at realising the imperatives of such events, the present generation has clearly turned a blind eye to those lessons. The clarion calls from the moderates in society, including heads of spiritual institutions and renowned writers respected by their captive readers to not just tolerate but exhibit unalloyed acceptance of socio-cultural diversities among the masses are not making any dent in the outlook of people following different faiths and also ideologies.

In the foregoing backdrop of emotions dominating public behaviour at the drop of a hat, the nation urgently needs a collective and organised action by people at large in the manner of cleaning the Augean Stable as it were. The first step to achieving it is to ruthlessly avoid electing a crop of leaders of the present all-too-familiar-undesirable kind.