Why You Don't Harm Those Who Harm You

In June 2024, a man named Renukaswamy, who worked in a medical shop, was found dead miles away from home, in a drain in Bangalore. It later emerged that he was a fan of Kannada actor Darshan and had sent an indecent message to actress Pavithra Gowda, believed to have been in a relationship with Darshan at the time.

The prosecution’s case is that Darshan’s henchmen abducted Renukaswamy, beat him up and tortured him, including by giving electric shocks, and in the process killed him before disposing of the body. It is also alleged that Darshan and Gowda themselves had beaten up the man in their custody. This was in reaction to Renukaswamy sending lewd messages to Pavithra Gowda. If what the prosecution maintains is true, then Renukaswamy died because of his trolling. He would never have imagined that a message from his phone could result in his violent and painful death. Most trolls, online or off, do not realise how dangerous their actions are. People who are slighted or even just infuriated can act in ways that are out of proportion to the offence.

Most people carry a parallel life in their minds, where they react to injustice against them with imagined acts of great violence. These fantasies are rarely proportional to the actual harm suffered. There is an episode of Black Mirror where a man designs a complex scheme and uses hi-tech robotic insects to lure people into trolling a writer mercilessly, and then sets out to kill them because he despises trolls. Watching it, I couldn’t help but feel the writer was probably living out a fantasy.

Yet, people do not act on their fantasies of revenge; the visions exist only in their own minds, perhaps to relish in private. But then, some people do act out. And it is in the nature of revenge to be disproportionate to the crime. The case of Renukaswamy is unusual because the revenge was criminal in nature, and the suspects were high-profile. But the case does reveal an aspect of human nature. People seek vengeance all the time. What is unusual is acting on it.

Successful acts of vengeance in everyday life are rare, minor and go undetected. They may occur in offices, housing societies or neighbourhoods—not as criminal acts, but as subtle injuries or professional sabotage that are still disproportionate to the trigger. Nearly everyone has been harmed by someone at some point. Often they know the perpetrator, and they fantasize about spectacular revenge. Both men and women are capable of a lot of mental violence. But most of them never act on it, because action requires time and effort. As in all aspects of life, so in vengeance too, people are great at ideas, but execution is another matter. Also, vengeance that is both successful and anonymous is almost impossible, even for powerful people like actors and politicians.

I myself have never managed a respectable revenge even though I have satisfying ideas. I know exactly what to do, but the perfect execution is too elaborate for me to bother with. For instance, a few weeks ago a guy picked a fight with me in a parking bay because he thought my car had touched his when I was reverse parking. He was so dramatic that I started laughing. He walked away meekly. I thought that was the end of it. But I realised later in the evening that he had keyed my car. He was a man who could act on the idea of vengeance. He had to wait patiently to ensure I was a safe distance away, go to my car, hold the key carefully and discreetly, take a moderate risk and damage my car. But he was foolish. There were at least three security cameras in the area. But then, have you ever gone in search of camera footage? It looks easy only in films.

There was a bank right where I had parked and it had cameras. The market itself had several cameras that would have captured his exit, and a liquor shop where the man went, which had an interior camera. I knew the exact time. I knew what to do but it seemed boring. I started thinking, ‘this is a small act in the immenseness of the universe’. That was not maturity—perhaps all of maturity itself is simply laziness. I was curious to see though whether I could complete an act of vengeance. So I thought I would dedicate a whole day to fix him, and write about it—that way I wouldn’t have wasted the day. In a way, I am paid for everything I do as long as I write about it. I soon figured that the building’s cameras in the common area were not operational. I went to the bank; they made me wait for ten minutes because they were a bank. Then an official told me that for the bank to even show me the footage I would need to file a police complaint. At this point I was already bored. It was not worth my time. Still, I went to the cops, hoping that they would dissuade me from pursuing the matter, which was exactly what they did. I have undertaken more complicated sequences of investigation in pursuit of stories, or in search of authentic Malabar parottas on my cheat days; I can even run for no reason for an hour, but to act against a petty man seemed so onerous that I gave up within the first hour of trying.

I make characters do such elaborate things as part of my plots in novels and film, but in real life these actions don’t work. The most popular forms of retribution in movies are bogus. For instance, in real life it is almost impossible to enter someone’s house and wait on the sofa to ambush him. In every aspect of life there is planning, which is enjoyable, and doing, which only a few can achieve, like those aggrieved actors who killed the troll. Most of us only fantasise. A whole famous human emotion called vengeance is familiar to us, yet we have never felt its glory.

(Manu Joseph is a journalist, novelist and screenwriter. His latest book is ‘Why the Poor Don’t Kill Us’.)