apathy – Hearts Still Care

can’t unsee what I’ve seen. A cow’s head crushed with a gas cylinder. A dog tied to a moving vehicle and dragged until its cries fade into silence. Boiling water poured over a cat as laughter fills the background. A leopard beaten to death by a mob. None of these images leave me. They live behind my eyelids, replaying every time I try to sleep.

I don’t look for them. The algorithm finds me — because it has decided I love animals. And it’s right. But it’s also cruel. Loving animals in this world means being shown their pain again and again. It’s a punishment for empathy. The very thing that makes us human becomes the source of our deepest anguish.

People say, “Don’t watch those videos.” But ignorance isn’t a cure. Because somewhere, right now, a creature is being tortured for no reason other than human apathy — or worse, amusement. We share this planet with them, yet we act like landlords who believe in eviction by extinction.

And this is what breaks me: the lack of outrage. The absence of mass grief. We weep for war victims, for political tragedies, for celebrity deaths. But when an animal screams, it echoes into a void. There are no protests, no vigils, no breaking news alerts. Only a few of us stay awake at night, clutching our hearts, wondering how humanity can be this numb.

I know — the world is cruel in many ways. There are bombs and gas chambers, rape and murder, children dying of hunger, queer people shamed and driven to suicide. Humanity has fallen before; it will fall again. But how far do we fall before we admit that we’re broken? That our capacity for destruction has outgrown our will for compassion?

It’s not just about animals. It’s about us. What we manifest when we refuse to care. What we become when we scroll past cruelty as if it’s another meme, another clip for engagement. We cannot expect a peaceful world when we thrive on violence — even the kind we consume in silence.

I don’t have answers. Only sleepless nights. And this constant question: When will we rise?

When will we take responsibility for the world we’ve built — for the pain we inflict, directly or by indifference? When will empathy stop being an inconvenience, and start being our instinct again?

Because if we don’t learn to protect the voiceless, we will lose our own voice one day. And the silence that follows will be the sound of everything beautiful dying.

Earlier this week in Mumbai, Raj, a 32-year-old chartered accountant, died by suicide after enduring eighteen months of harassment and blackmail over a private video. The police confirmed that two individuals extorted over ₹3 crore from him by threatening to circulate this video. He was made to steal from his company and deplete his personal savings. His sister later revealed that the blackmailers humiliated him repeatedly, questioned his sexuality, and used threats to break him down emotionally. They even forced him to bear the burden of an SUV registered in his name, demanding EMI payments. The mental torture pushed him to a point where he could no longer carry on.

What the news report fails to mention — and what is so often left unsaid — is that the “private video” was of homosexual sex. Raj was not just blackmailed. He was targeted for his sexuality. He wasn’t just defrauded financially. He was hunted emotionally. And despite having made three complaints, the police failed to act.

This is not a new story. It’s an old one, a painful one, and an increasingly familiar one. I have heard it too many times in too many ways. Gay men being blackmailed for being in the closet. For wanting intimacy. For trusting someone. Sometimes it’s the hookup itself. Sometimes it’s someone pretending to be an ally. Sometimes it’s a calculated setup involving the local authorities, with “sting” operations meant to trap and extort. Always it ends in shame, silence, or something worse.

Before Section 377 was read down in 2018, the law was a weapon used to blackmail closeted queer people. After 2018, society simply adapted its weapons. The fear remains. The shame remains. The vulnerability remains. The closet has become a trap — not a refuge. You go into it to feel safe, and someone finds a way to reach in and destroy your life.

Our society demands silence from gay people. Families force their sons into marriages to preserve reputation and lineage. Parents say, “Have a child, and everything will be fine.” They don’t care that someone else — often a woman — is being lied to. They don’t care about the happiness of their own child either, as long as he conforms. The pressure is relentless. And so people remain in the closet. And those in the closet become easy prey.

I have seen my friends suffer. Some have been assaulted. Some emotionally manipulated by men who disappeared after sex, leaving behind guilt and self-hatred. Some took their lives. Loneliness is the most silent killer in the queer community. As we grow older, it intensifies. And when loneliness meets blackmail and social shame, it often ends in tragedy.

I was brave enough — if one can call it that — to have come out at sixteen, with some family support. Not everyone gets that chance. Not everyone is believed. Not everyone is safe.

We keep asking: why do we need Pride marches? This is why. We need Pride because Raj is no longer alive. We need Pride because someone, somewhere, is being threatened tonight for just being who they are. We need Pride because even today, seven years after Section 377 was scrapped, queer people are still being criminalised — not by the law, but by society.

We need authorities to stop being complicit through inaction. We need them to do their job. If a person files three complaints and nothing is done, who is responsible for the outcome?

This has to end. I wish — deeply wish — that every queer person finds the strength to be proud, to live truthfully. But I also understand the fear. The shame isn’t theirs — it belongs to a society that hasn’t learnt how to love its own children for who and what they are.

Until that day comes, we must keep fighting. For visibility. For justice. For those who didn’t survive. For those still too scared to speak. For Raj.