World Kindness Day is observed today, a date meant to remind people that small courtesies matter. It is also a fitting moment to ask whether everyday life in India is becoming cruder, and two recent killings offer a grim answer.
The day was established in 1998 by the World Kindness Movement, a coalition of kindness NGOs formed at a Tokyo convention in 1997. This year it coincides with Friday the 13th. Its message is modest: be decent to the people near you, in small and practical ways.
A parking row, 16 bullets
Take the case of Paramjit Dhankhar, 42, who worked for a multinational in Singapore and had flown home for a family wedding and Diwali. Police say he returned from the gym around 8 pm on the evening of Dhanteras, when a parking argument broke out with Mohan alias Monu Sharma, a neighbour who lives on the third floor of the same building in Faridabad’s Sector 21C. Sharma allegedly fired 15-16 rounds from his licensed pistol, and 8-9 bullets hit Dhankhar.
CCTV footage of the incident has since surfaced. It shows Sharma opening fire as Dhankhar’s frightened son runs from the scene, and Dhankhar bleeding heavily. The footage also carries a grim detail, with the accused reportedly saying “Happy Diwali” during the encounter.
The killing might have been prevented. PTI reported that Sharma allegedly told Dhankhar at a police post that he would not leave him alive by tonight, where Dhankhar had gone to file a complaint. Sharma was arrested from Ballabgarh the next day.
A sweet that was not a sweet
The case of Rajendra Barautiya, 35, was quieter and crueler. He was warming himself by a bonfire with his family in the courtyard of his house in Padariya Chhanta village in Madhya Pradesh’s Dindori district. A fellow villager allegedly handed him what he called a rasgulla.
Barautiya, believing it was a sweet, bit into it, and the device detonated in his mouth. His family rushed him to the district hospital, where he died during treatment. Police say the device was a crude explosive of the kind used to kill wild boars. Two men were arrested and remanded to 15 days in judicial custody, and police are investigating how they obtained the explosive.
What the cases reveal
The two are very different. One was an argument that escalated in seconds, the other apparently a planned act. What links them is how little it took, and how little restraint stood in the way. A shared parking area, a neighbour’s dog or an old grievance became a reason to kill. A sweet, among the oldest gestures of welcome in Indian homes, was turned into a weapon.
They are not isolated. India TV listed a similar case, a 28-year-old shot dead in Amritsar over a parked scooter. Such episodes feed a widely shared sense that disagreement, once settled with a word, a shrug or an appeal to a neighbour or the police, now escalates faster and more violently.
The accused in both cases are presumed innocent until proven guilty, and courts will decide what happened. But the questions the cases raise are not only legal. Neighbours who cannot resolve a parking dispute, a complaint that apparently did not stop a threat from being carried out, and a community in which a sweet can be a trap all point to a thinning of the ordinary civility that holds shared spaces together.
What the day asks for
World Kindness Day does not claim to fix any of this. It asks people to practise, today and on other days, the small decencies that rarely make news: yielding a parking spot, answering a neighbour’s complaint with patience, accepting a sweet from a friend without a second thought. Dhankhar and Barautiya were each at home, among family, when they were attacked. A day devoted to kindness cannot undo that, but it can serve as a reminder of what ordinary life is supposed to feel like.