Again...

The headlines are mile-high. The pictures are unspeakably horrific. The words are all the right ones. Anger. Shock. Outrage. Fear. Panic. Every one of these emotions is captured well. There is also an unbelievable sense of frustration. The bile rises in my throat as I read about the latest series of bomb blasts in Mumbai. I cannot swallow past the acrid taste. There is no room for feeling anything other than real disgust that I am the citizen of a country that cares nothing for its people. And of course an overwhelming sense of déjà vu...

For the question in everyone’s mind is “When is the next one going to hit us?”. We all know there is going to be a next one and one after that as well. There’s no comfort in numbers or in knowing that perhaps by mere chance one might not lose a loved one in the next set of blasts. India, being the eternal soft state seeks neither revenge nor retribution like some other countries – indeed this erstwhile centre of spirituality does not even seek to teach those responsible any sort of lesson but instead chooses to assume that all things will even out in the next world. Those who died in the most gruesome manner were after all victims of their own past-life karma. The wheel turns and life goes on. Forgive. Forget. Never ever take steps to see that this doesn’t happen again. There are enough of us so that a few more dozen such incidents will not matter.

And we are to raise children in this kind of a set-up. We are to leave them be and hope that they go out of homes and come back eventually. We are to let them go in trains and buses to schools and colleges or to friends’ homes with a constant prayer on our lips and a dull throbbing fear that the almighty may not spare our children from the fate of countless others in a country that cares less for its children than roadside garbage.

How can one reconcile oneself to such a fate? To live in eternal fear? To not know closure for the deaths already caused. To get up in the morning and see pictures splashed in the newspapers cruelly depicting the bodies of young and old missing limbs and bathed in gore and mired in trash. Nothing can take away the horror or the pain. No one can soothe away the hurt. But if we had a government with some sense of responsibility or even commitment to the cause of protecting the very people who put them in positions of power, we wouldn’t have to live so. India today should be ashamed of itself for in India, tomorrow, who knows what will happen? All I know is that if its something bad, we still will not be prepared for it. People will die, speeches will be made, the spirit of a city will be lauded and then all will be forgotten. The spots marked by the blood of innocents will become mere tourist attractions. Their deaths will be as inconsequential as a series of summer rains. And it will happen again.