I could start with a caveat but that will just dilute my wrath. And I’m in no mood for that.
I spent 30 minutes on the night of 13th Sept tracing friends in Delhi. One of them couldn’t be found. It was a Saturday evening and he is a nocturnal creature. The bombs had taken off in 3 of the more prominent public places in the capital. I just didn’t want things to add up..
My mother’s eyes are misty as she looks at the plasma screen beaming lifesize images of destruction. She lived in Greater Kailash and has fond memories of walking to Connaught Place with college buddies on a lazy weekend, if at all there is such a thing in Dilli. She refuses to pronounce it any other way. She reminisces about how scenic and unforgettable Delhi is in winters. Karol Bagh is where her best friend lived. She still might.
But she possibly can’t connect all of that to the surmounting frenzy and chaos building up on our TV screen.
Did this really happen? Again?
The price your pay for being the world’s largest democracy is a bloody balls-less government. Very soon headlines in most national dailies of this country will declare which cities weren’t torn apart by terrorists. Everybody and their political cousin are condemning the blasts that shook the capital and the rest of the country but clearly that is a whole lot of hot air. We’ve seen the charade far too many times now. It is just not good enough. Who the fuck wants you to“condemn”?
We want you to stop it.
The political system in this country is miles deep in pure shit for playing the kind of gutless and mute spectator it has to the terror perpetrated by an increasingly peccant bunch of fundamentalists. And worst of all, they are operating from within the country. I still remember, about 7 years ago, flaming SIMI posters pasted around my college bus-stop threatening to annihilate the “qafirs”. Open call for mass scale defiance. Unhinged display of superior moral fabric or some such. Nobody was in a bleeding rush to exterminate the vermin when it first made an appearance. This is what happens when you ignore the first cockroach pacing around in your kitchen cabinet. Before you know, the population soars beyond imagination. Secularism suddenly seems a whole lot of hogwash. Yes, I am incredibly bitter. I have every right to be so. This whole forgive-and-move-on mantra is hardly working for us. We are still being hunted like a bunch of blind animals.
Apparently it’s a consolation that only 22 people were killed. Ha! Be happy that the number did not shoot through the roof. Take refuge in the fact that a few were people killed. It a good use of the barter mentality that’s been prevalent for eons. Statistics is often more significant than life.
Indian media is equally spineless. Why are the TV channels unleashing the little errand-boy, who managed to catch a glimpse of the terror triumvirate, upon the rest of the world?
Just to gain a few extra TRP points.
Is that the most ethical or even the wisest thing to do? Hardly. But in your quest for more ad revenue, ethics are the first casualty.
The most irritable of it all is the ticker displaying the “compensation” proffered to the victims and their families. The law makers and keepers grope for clues in the pitch black while the politicos shake their heads like a well orchestrated group of eager to please choirboys. This is not a competition, glassheads!
Seriously, dudes, pull your ankles out of your butts. For a little kid who’s lost about half of her family, 50-fucking-thousand rupees do not make any sense. The most basic of laptops average around that much.
Who are we kidding?
The devastation, the constant shadow of fear and a niggling sense of helplessness, the worse of the lot, is what you are left with in the wake of such a tragedy. We know it. We live it. The Bombay bomb blasts, 7/11, all of it is still fresh in people’s minds. I remember talking to a friend in a communication skills session and suddenly this kid shows up in her class with a stunned expression. And completely wordless. The incident snatched his sense of hearing, forever, but he didn’t think of that as the ugliest part, it was the mental scourge of what had happened that damaged his life permanently.
You hug your kid a little more before leaving the house because of the unsurety that clouds your mind about your safe return from a day at work. You blacklist your neighbors who doubled as your extended family because a few people, who probably have nothing to do with any religion or faith except that smiliar sounding first and last names, have wrecked havoc. You don’t know who or what can and can’t be trusted. That’s the output of something so incredibly vile.
And we are still awaiting some form of justice after two years of what transpired in Bombay. Nada.
Instead we have a new and more heinous, not to mention highly cowardly, sort of violence.
We live in this state, constantly. The climate of Fear. The culture of denial and sweeping things under the carpet. This is our genetic code as Indian citizens. Meanwhile, pot-bellied ignoramuses dedicated to protecting us sit by the roadside hoarding cheap and free noodles from cardboard shindigs, grinning, playing cards or harrassing young couples; all in the name of law.
Most of North Africa is probably safer than any cosmopolitan city in India – a country that takes pride in calling itself the Next Superpower. High ambitions! No amount of nuclear deals can help you keep your head above water in the next elections, dear incompetent mutts. Take my word for it.
Also, run a survey of how many Indians would like the local police force neutered and caged. The percentage of those who agree will be astonishingly high. TOI should take notice for their future polls.
If it wasn’t so downright nausea inducing it would be laughable that the most important question now seems to be that of the Australian team’s safety for some impending cricket crapfest. Bravo! Cricket in time of terror, how entirely lyrical and of course a clear indicator of where our priorities lie as a people. Only in this fucking country does an antithesisreceive such unflinching attention.
I don’t give a damn about the pussyfooting around the issue, the Mumbai spirit – grin and bare it-should not be replicated elsewhere in this country. It reeks of passive and masochist desires to forever play the victim. Its twisted but I think we revel in this. Its not good enough, to simply carry on without so much a grimace or a serious axe to grind with those who are doing this and those who are letting them do it. The terrorists and the government. Hand in glove. Something has to be repaired somewhere because things are mighty awry in this part of the world.
We let go of militants who threaten to, and almost do, blow up our parliament. Though, on second thoughts, that almost seems like a blessing in disguise given the general uselessness of the political cadre. We hide behind banal “human rights” banners to protect utterly repugnant non-humans who are scheming and plotting to maim, kill and impair our children, our parents, our families and us. These are people who are delighted by our destruction. They celebrate it. These are people who are aiming their guns at our public parks, schools and our homes. And no, I didn’t intend for this to sound like a speech mouthed by some deep South Republican vying for American presidency but this is how I really feel right now.
There are serious questions that emerge in the aftermath of another terror strike that has left the country paralyzed.
What will You do about it?
What will I do about it?
What will We do about it?
Is this really the place where I’d want to raise my kids?
I don’t know anymore.
As a 24 year old Indian, I’m starting to lose faith in India.
And that just borders on incredible sadness.
