Sunday, November 30, 2008

Who are India's real enemies? The terrorists that come from across the border or those that sit in India's central capital?

In the wake of the recent terror attacks in Mumbai, so many thoughts and emotions have come to the fore…so much bitterness and sorrow that the last few days have been emotionally exhausting and mentally tumultuous…
No I don’t know anyone who died in the terror attacks…no I don’t know anyone who even survived the drama…and no I am not a hardcore Mumbaite who is feeling the heart of Mumbai bleed…but does all that really matter?!?!
Is it not enough to know that the lives lost are of innocent strangers who for all you know are tax paying, law abiding citizens like most of us? Is it not enough to know that each one of them left a grieving family behind, one that will never be able to wash the blood stains from their homes as the pictures of the deceased go up on their walls?

Time flies, though it’s not true that it heels all…the pain of old wounds just doesn’t surface as often that’s all…but every time an incident occurs and images of bodies turned into charred, dead puppets reappears, it only brings all the horrors back, as if time just stood still and life never really did move on from the fateful day when you yourself came home to one such image that changed the course of your life…it’s funny how children, though low on comprehension, can retain so much and remember it again and decipher it better when a similar time comes back to haunt…
Call me dramatic, call me unpractical, say I’m overreacting…it doesn’t matter…

But our country is a funny place. Speak to people from other cities and it sounds as if these folks live in a planet of their own…untouched, unfazed, unshaken by anything that has occurred outside of their own borders that are only defined on a map, and can’t be traced on the ground…is a lack of humanity a problem only amongst the politicians of India…I think not! Or does a politician lie hidden in each of us somewhere, somehow coming to the fore only when we have to show compassion for those who don’t immediately matter to our lives…uncles, aunts, strangers, acquaintances – day 4 and everyone was talking about the next family gathering that needed to be organized, or how sordid the mood is going to be this Christmas & New Year…everyone has an expert opinion on what the security forces should have done rather than what they did…everyone has a word to add on how the matter could have been brought under control had it been tackled like this or like that…But we all forget that it is easy for us to sit in our soft bucket couches, in our air conditioned living rooms, watching the proceedings on a 40inch flat screen; and we have little or nothing to write about as far as our contribution to bringing peace goes…so lets not belittle those who stood the test of time and fell while in the line of fire cause most of us have never fired a bullet from a gun, let alone be in the line of fire with bullets coming our way…

The human blood bath is over but the emotional rape is yet to peak…given a chance, our famed and esteemed and not to forget highly revered and respected politicians would have been mud slinging all over the place by now. And while mr. white haired Advani, who I respected while BJP was in power, must already be talking about this as an electoral issue in Rajasthan, mr. shallow inhuman ravi shankar prasad was able to buy enough space in newspapers to appeal to people to vote against terrorism and vote in favour of BJP. Shame on you mr. prasad…you are a disgrace. Shame on you mr. advani…you are well on your way to becoming one…
But most of all shame on mr. deshmukh who has been busy strutting around with his ungifted son turned actor and bollywood’s controversy king in tow making a blue print of the next bollywood smash hit in his scattered brain…
Shame on you congress for all terrorism that has taken place in India over the past two years…shame on you for all the lives lost of those who voted for you, including myself, and made you the ruling government…

Question is who next? Who should we vote for this time around? Who will you vote for this time around?
Personally, I won’t exercise my vote at all…if I would now, it will be only if a group of retired army men come together to form a party or only if retired successful men from corporate India come together to form a party…
It would have to be someone who knows the toils of earning a decent living in this country, it would have to be someone who has worked and walked shoulder to shoulder with the common man of India and felt his pain…it would have to be someone who understands the meaning of deadlines…someone who understands the value of time…someone who understands the value of effort…someone who understands the meaning of disciple…someone who values action…someone who values life!
For big bully raj thackrey, who has been sitting pretty in the shelter of his home protected by guards whose life is a waste behind a man like him, I hope the next time your men descend on this city while you cocoon yourself, they are pelted with stones and crushed to death by a public that is frustrated by the kind of oppression you preach…a coward with no real muscle to show off…

Despite it all, we return to work today…we are back to the grind and back to being in switch off mode from humanity again…we all go back to living in our own worlds, oblivious to the looses outside, oblivious to the dangers that have been and could be…oblivious to what if it is a member of my own family next time….

Take care and have a good day!