yesterday, my mother's phone almost got snatched while she was in a moving auto returning home. a 14-15 year old boy tried to snatch it. my mother held it so tight that he couldn't do it successfully. fortunately, he said, "he was doing it for the first time", otherwise -

snatchers keep blades with them and use it to make the person lose their grip. anyway, this teenager was taken to the police station, while on his way, he kept talking about not having parents & kept his little pouch close to his chest. obviously, the pouch had chemicals -

he was basically trying to steal the phone in order to get money for more drugs. he was severely addicted. when my mother took him to the police station and demanded he should be referred to a rehab, the cops said two things. -

1. Rehabs are being shut down, these people are growing in numbers, 2. We find so many like him dead on the streets everyday, and the boy has around 2 years left to live looking at how deeply he's into it.
My point here is -

when a Rhea Chakroborty or a Deepika Padukone is summoned for consuming weed, and it becomes the national news, to an extent where people don't refrain from calling them 'addicts', we turn a blind eye towards the real people struggling with addiction with no resources whatsoever-

ever since this case has been going on, (thanks to the media even if I try to avoid it it's right in my face), many people have tried to talk about the actual problem. about Punjab, and Himachal, or other states, actual people with no fame or money. and everytime they'd be -

verbally abused, trolled, hated upon, called 'anti-national' (?), for talking about the ground reality, the mere truth? the actresses accused of taking drugs never really endorsed it. but every other guy on hinge/bumble/tinder says, "we'll get along if you smoke up" -

it's simply because, we are NOT interested in fighting drug addiction as a nation, we're interested in digging deeper into people's personal lives for chabootra gossips, and that teenager who tried to snatch my mother's phone sadly has no personal life that might interest us.

but mind you, the day that boy becomes something big (if only he survives), marries a rich, successful, independent woman, begins to drive an SLR or sth, we'll be interested. we'll try to get either justice for him, or someone he'll be accused of harming of wtv. it'll interest us

never did a teenager smoke up saying, "it's cool, even deepika does it", but chances of him saying, "bum bum bhole" is way higher. if that boy were successful in snatching the phone, we'd have to blame bhole rather than deepika, or even better, the government. yes, that fits well