Present Tense is The Swaddle Team's stream of consciousness response to the world's madness.

An IPL team won the tournament for the first time in eighteen years. When Royal Challengers Bengaluru beat Kings XII Punjab this week, Virat Kohli broke down in happy tears and the streets of Bengaluru burst into jubilant celebration. Sometimes sports touch an emotional range that can only be experienced as a collective. A hive mind feeling euphoric. What else can boast such a gift to society?

But a match outcome that should have stayed jubilant quickly devolved into tragedy, as eleven people were killed in a stampede at the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru where RCB held its victory parade. The victims included teenagers and young twenty-somethings, some of whom travelled from out of state to catch a glimpse of the team.

Why do people die this way? It's a question that keeps insisting on an answer when tragedy visits sites of celebration. The world that leaves no room for everyday people to express themselves loudly.

Over the last few years, we're learning that when we ask questions about the right to live, it invariably also includes a question about who has the right to an emotional life. Cricket and the movies are perhaps the two available spaces for people to live emotional lives together, in a way that moves something in the world. Both are built on the backs of a million people who love individuals that they don't -- and perhaps never will -- know in real life. Last year, a woman died in a stampede at a screening of Pushpa: The Rule.

The idea of fandom is itself a confirmation of the fact that most people are allowed to only have small feelings as individuals but big feelings as a collective. But a select few individuals are allowed to have big feelings all by themselves. They are given so much space, it takes up almost the whole world.

Take, for instance, Elon Musk: a man whose every feeling, whim and burst of energy not only has space to exist, but has consequences too. Because he is who he is, he can be balls to the wall wired on something at his public appearances, he can keep tweeting shower thoughts endlessly, he can have a tantrum about welfare policies and strip US federal funding from foreign aid and healthcare, and then he can reverse his stance because he's upset about being on the losing side of a messy divorce from the US President. Trump, the president in question, dropped him like a sack of hot potatoes when he got too much – and you know it’s bad when the reality-star president distances himself from you. Here is another man who operates solely on the basis of the magnitude of his emotions.

Gaza is another example of the fact that the social, cultural, and political real estate bestowed upon one group of people's feelings is often deadly to another. Calling Israel's actions in Gaza a genocide invites accusations of anti-semitism, asking questions about starving children and dying babies invites reminders of the young Israelis who also died. Much of the discussion about the genocide therefore turns into an emotional tug-of-war -- with one side demanding not just physical space but also the cognitive space to have bigger and greater feelings than the other.

So we end up in a situation where, a year and a half later, a boat carrying 12 people risking their lives is en-route to Gaza, carrying medicines and food to help the starving population at risk of famine. Greta Thunberg is on it, with 11 others. This is an incredibly dangerous mission, especially considering that sitting US senators have already insinuated threats to Thunberg and Israel has announced it is prepared to “intercept” the flotilla upon arrival. Another example of the fact that a few people's feelings (vindictiveness) being more legitimate allows them to deploy physical force against an aid boat, steered by the feelings (compassion) of a few other people.

Piers Morgan, the Arnab of the UK, has changed his stance on Israel and is now confronting its representatives on his show about their killing of children. As many have put it, we are now in the “one day everyone will have always been against this” phase of the genocide. He used to have the space to feel one way, and now he has the space to feel another way. Add to this list: Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke, who released a statement that made the genocide about his own personal feelings, accusing his fans of engaging in a “witch hunt” for asking him to say something about it. When Roger Waters called him “a prick,” maybe there was something to it.

All these seemingly unrelated events have taught us one thing: maybe we stop idolizing people. One day, if not today, they’re going to do something that breaks your heart. One day, they might be the reason people risk and lose their lives while trying to reach them. It would be nice if we could have a world where the compassion and love steering 12 people on a boat is enough to change the world for the better.