There is someone on the iLand who is afraid of revealing his/her identity. So he/she calls him/her-self  ….! I think I that person is someone who visits my iLand regularly. And yet he/she doesn’t have the courage to openly criticize me or my posts. So that person puts a comment after taking the pains to disguise self. That person seems to be net savvy as I am not even allowed to send an e-mail to him/her. And the comment is not even half as abrasive as he/she fancies it to be… ’ Another of your moan-groan post, yawn yawn….’ No big deal, …. . Be careful to fill your pen up with some stronger venom… If you want to really enjoy yourself, why satisfy yourself with half measures? If you have the balls, go all the way. After all, there is no excitement if the veiled comment is a damp squib and has no teeth! 

Only 43% of eligible Mumbaikars voted this time. More than half of the voters from the metrop avoided excercising their franchise. Isn’t it a shame? I think it speaks volumes about the mentality of the city. What has euphemistically been called the indomitable spirit of the city and the capacity of its citizens to bounce back after the worst is nothing but callous apathy. Henceforth the city as a whole has no right to complain against the apathy of the system: the system is only what we make it into and it responds only as we train it how to. Tomorrow any gun totting and granade hurling b^$#@rd will hold us to ranson, any place and anybody can be blown to gory bits of limbs and trunks and what we expect you to do is take out candle lit marches with a lot of make up and so much lipstick to flaunt. And when someone remarks as to the same you and your media jokers will tear them to bits. After all, it’s fashionable and so free of risk! We are doomed to be culled like a bunch of hapless chicken and a large chunk of the blame rests squarely on your shoulders, Mumbaikars. Shame on you!  

The terrorist attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team does not make sense. At least, the way it was executed and the outcome thereof don’t. The motive behind the attack seems to be something else. The most incongruent aspect of the whole episode is that there were no serious casualties. None of the Sri Lankan team members got even seriously hurt. Now this looks like a half baked, hastily conceived and shoddily executed operation and appears to be a very unprofessional job; one which would have made de Gaulle squirm in his grave. (’The ba–ards can’t even shoot straight!’ he would have quipped.) Of course, I, like millions of other cricket fans and peace loving people, am only too relieved to learn that most of the cricketers have escaped with the minimal of damage, but this very fact leaves behind a big question mark, a gaping hole in fact, regarding the motive as well as the authors behind the episode. If the same group that was behind the Mumbai nightmare was responsible for the Lahore episode, then they seem to have lost their touch a bit in the interveneing 12 odd weeks. I mean they were armed to teeth it seems and at the end of the day they left with only a few police men dead and not even one of their sitting duck targets getting more than a scratch or two. On more serious notes, we need to read between the lines. There seems to be more in it than meets the eyes. What message they were trying to convey? To whom? Was it indeed some foreign hand staging a terror attack that would appear like one attack too many so that the Pak government plays ball with the power? Was it meant to be the proverbial last straw on the camel’s back so that the power can justify surgical steps against the you know who? Is it possible to link the timing of the episode with the upcoming general elections in India? Will this event lead to something that will provide the so far ‘groping in the dark’ UPA government to save its smarting face? Or is it just another flash in the pan? Who will suffer the most because of the terror attack? Who will gain the most out of it? Or the terrorist master minds are not just smart enough to think in these terms? Any ideas?

One thing that manifests itself clearly after all there terror strikes is this: Terrorism will keep haunting those countries where just being a Muslim doesn’t automatically subject him/her to close scrutiny by the rest of the citizens and of course by the government machinary. India, with our bastard politicians, particularly those seeking support from the likes of the bloody Commies, or The Mulayams or the Lalus or the Mayavatis are never going to get tough with the muslims and so we innocent Indians are doomed to die terrible  gory deaths on the streets. Any arguments?

Why did it happen? Why did we suffer the indignity of being impotent witnesses when a handful of bastards were raping our beloved motherland?

  Who was responsible for it? Forget Islam. Forget Pakistan. Forget even our bastard politicians. Are you sure, we, we as in you, he, she and even I, the common Indians, are absolutely exonerated from the responsibility? Do you really think it would have been possible for whoever they were and whoever it was orchestrated by, to carry out the heinous deed without our direct or indirect consent?

 Do we do our duties religiously? Don't we take short cuts when it is convenient to us? And then cry foul when our rival does it to suit his own interests? Have we never bent the rules just so much to suit our own selfish motives? Have we paid our taxes in time, without cheating the exchequer? Do we vote every time when there is an election? Don't we elect the politician who promises to grant us favours out of turn? Do we always look at the merits or otherwise while casting our vote? Don't we vote for castes and sects and religions and selfish motives? How many times we have voted in the interest of our country? We cheat for our own levels of interests: for a few scores or a few hundreds or a few thousands or a few lakhs or a few crores as our privileges vary. The amount doesn't matter. We all are like that. When our leaders do it the stakes are much higher. So can we cry hoarse when incidents like Mumbai or Jaipur or Bangalore or Ahmedabad or Delhi happen? Are we not to take the blame to a large extent? We vote in the same party even after watching the shameless bickering for the post of Maharashtra CM barely after a week of the Mumbai carnage. And the decision was finally made after a Bollywood actor conveyed the massage to the heir apparent to the throne.

 We knew what was coming, literally. The IB had intercepts and the locals had complained to the police about suspects in Colaba. Even the navy failed to act. The RAW was all but asleep, more worried about where the next chief was coming from than the safety and the well being of the nation. The coast guards were doing God knows what. So if our house is not in order anybody can walk in and help themselves. Even after the attacks one person had walked in through the security barriers at VT Station in Mumbai with a gun and the guards were caught napping.

So we must prepare ourselves for more such attacks in future, because we as a people ignore our duties and with it the interests of the nation while we are busy looking after our own petty gains, because someone can hurt us only as much as we allow him to do, because we have very short memories, because we tend to ignore when death strikes someone else's family, because we are alarmed only when our own kin is consumed at the altar of cruelty.   

So it is officially over. The damage has been done. The wounds hurt. They will keep bleeding for a while and then they will leave ugly scars. Scars on the stone edifices will be repaired eventually. Those on the psyches of the masses will stay there permanently. The void created in the lives of those who have lost their dear ones will be irreparable: they have suffered the most.  We don't know or rather don't want to think of the torture, the agony the actual victims might have had to go through in the last few moments of their lives. Some might have broken down, others must have put up a brave face before resigning to the inevitability of fate. A fate they had to endure because of the incompetent nitwits this country has had the misfortune to have as leaders.  Others like you and I have had to suffer the trauma of witnessing silently while the respect of our motherland was being torn to shreds; the trauma of collective shame, outrage and pain while the stark dance of violence unfolded on the TV screens. While the mostly rabid and uniformly mindless media persons gave stupid as hell running commentary even as some innocent people were being culled like birds.

It has been repeatedly said that we as a nation and more importantly as a defense apparatus are ill-prepared for offensives of such magnitude, but there have been several questions that come to my mind. Facts say that not only the top brass defense personnel (read police officers, OK, KB?) were under prepared but they were practically stunned, and after coming out of the initial state of shock, it seems that they resorted to some mindless action, without actually being aware of the exact situation and got killed in the process. The first question that arises here is: were they not armed at all? If they weren't carrying any weapon, what they were doing there in the first place? If they in fact were carrying their weapons, what stopped them from using them even once? How they were planning to counter the terrorists? Were their reflexes so slow? They were in the jeep, the terrorists were on foot. (As the details appear in the media) Yet they proved to be sitting ducks. They seem to have perished without showing a semblance of resistance. Is this what we mean by martyrdom? Wars are not won by getting oneself killed, to win battles you are required kill the enemies instead. Correct me if I have my facts wrong, but we need more people in the defense sector who can actually liquidate at least a few of the attackers before succumbing than those who are caught napping. Second question that I would like to ask is, what they were thinking, all the three king pins traveling by the same car? Weren't they aware of the adage advising against putting all one's eggs in one basket? Saving a few litres of diesel shouldn't have been high on their priority list especially in a crisis situation. That they were unaware of the actual ground condition is no excuse. Before embarking on a damage control mission, they should have taken stock of the situation.    (to be continued)

This is what I wrote in response to Subbu’s comments.

First of all, let me thank you for your visit and the comments. Actually I was going to put that one remark at the end of my yet unfinished post: our tradition is not to speak ill of the dead. But here the issue has graver ramifications and a significant bearing on days to come, as far as combating terror is concerned. One positive that we can have (though it sounds like an oxymoron) from this postmortem is that we may be better prepared for such events (God forebid) if any in future, provided we learn something out of it. It is going to be far better to be objectively analytical about the events rather than being conventionally sentimental, as our usual tendency is. Anyways, the idea is to create an awareness, so all comments are going to help build that. As I have already mentioned, please correct me if my facts are not in order. After all, the mayhem is reported variously in different media. Please come back to read the finished post. Thanx once again.