By Dr Vincent Alva, principal, Milagres College, Kallianpur
Udupi, oct 31: A combination of two disconnected words is called oxymoron. Oxymoron is a figure of speech in which two opposite ideas are joined to create an effect. The common oxymoron phrase is a combination of an adjective proceeded by a noun with contrasting meanings, such as ‘cruel kindness’, or ‘living death’.
Hungry water can be one such combination of two different ideas. There might erupt several questions in mind – how can water be hungry? Water is a non-living entity. There might be some aberration in combining these two words…!
In my mind there is no confusion left at all. The combination of these words is forced one meaning nothing at one glance. But when dealt with seriously, the subject is as vast and deep as the ocean with colossal volume of water.
There isn’t anything on globe as attractive and as valuable as water. The ‘Save Water’ campaign is being taken up seriously because we have come to know how serious the problem of water scarcity is. Nevertheless, water also attracts people more quickly than anything else. May be a small brook, hidden under the foliage, attracts the living creatures towards it with its sheer sweetness and power of quenching the thirst. Running water in the pregnant rivers attracts the viewers with its consummate beauty. The falls at various spots make the visitors crazy with their roaring gorgeous dance which is a feast to the onlooking eyes. All the water flows into a mysterious sea monster with its mouth open, waiting to gulp anything that flows down into its throat as if it is thirsty from ages.
But nowadays water has been hungry too. It is hungry for human flesh. It has become very routine with human beings to succumb to dangerous water. Knowing quite well the danger involved in playing with the water, people sometime become so insane that they care very less for their own life. Almost every day we see on television screen or read in newspapers people dying of drowning, either by accident or by negligence. Death by accident can have a consolation. But death by negligence, mirrors the insanity in the people.
Most of the time, water accidents take place with the tourists. Groups of people travel to water spots, river-banks, falls, lakes or sea shores because they are very attractive spots. As soon as they see the water, they go mad and start playing in the water without least knowledge about the danger involved. There is a saying- ‘Known water is better than unknown’. But the people get into the water without knowing the water. The sea attracts them deeper and deeper as if it is hungry for human flesh. Then it raps them up with a mammoth wave and traps them. Lucky will survive and unlucky become the fodder to the sea.
Selfie habit has become an incorrigible nuisance with the people so much so that nothing is required to trigger the enthusiasm for a selfie with the dangerous water. Especially the youngsters become an easy prey for this kind of danger. So many youngsters have slipped down to the depth of the falls while clicking selfies and have been silently buried in the watery bowels. So many young tourists who visit the seashores with friends and family members have left their fellow tourists and family members wallowing and writhing in pain on the sandy shores onlooking their beloved ones getting washed away into the depth of the sea, cell phone in their hand in selfie style.
Nowadays watery bed has become an easy resting place for the people who are depressed in life. Jumping into the water to end life has become a common practice nowadays. That is why it makes me think that water is hungry and insane people become an easy prey to the hungry water.
Life is very precious. Let the hungry sea remain hungry. It might find another way to satiate its hunger. But the life washed off into the sea gets wasted with so many dreams unfulfilled. Beware of Water!!!