I contributed to the Boston Globe blog again -- only this time, it's not a light-hearted post about driving in Delhi. It's about the more serious things in life - Mumbai, terrorism and where we're going with it.
Read the full post here and as always, let me know what you think.
11 people had something to say:
'We would rather use the bullet hole to attract attention to our little cafe than to change the glass that had seen so much death and terror'- sad state.
Well written but i would like to have yur take on the solution to this.A post which looks at the solutions.
TO me its like most of the things i have read..how we are so normal with terrorism..how we dont even remember the dates......
What do i do- is a perspective to look.
Am I doing my bit?? Am i contributing to make things better? becz if i am not doing even then i am contributing to not making things better.I am responsible for my inaction as well.Somewhre each I including me in this country did not do anything,we were tooooo busy..
@ Anon: I don't think it's okay to commercialize someone's death, no matter what. I really think they should change the glass up there, if that's why they haven't still let it be.
I agree with you 100% that if we're not part of the solution, then we're all part of the problem. And yes, I don't focus on any solutions. But that's because I don't really see this as a problem. In the piece, I talk about how there is no other way for us to be anymore, how this is natural. Yes, we can say that this is not how it should be, but anyone in our place would start behaving this way given the circumstances. This is an unpleasant but normal human reaction. And I think that's the main point.
Also, I get how you've probably read this a thousand times. But since this was being written for an American publication, I thought it would work and still have some novelty factor. They don't really know how we feel about this.
I don't think it's okay to commercialize someone's death, no matter what.- I strongly agree that!!!!!!! tabhi i wrote sad state..
But since this was being written for an American publication, I thought it would work and still have some novelty factor- I had guessed it but still expressed what i thought...
@ Anon: Of course. And I'm glad you did! The other post was just some random Technorati stuff I had to take care of, which didn't work, so I deleted it :P
Well written. Left me baffled! I still am. :|
Thanks Andy :)
Being overly concerned and paranoid about terrorism in our country is a crime because then we're giving in to the terrorists. But minding your own business and not giving a crap about such incidents is also a crime. Interesting.
@ Rene: Well put. That's just the kind of paradox India faces.
Most of the anger you are talking about wasn't anger but the idiotic and random banter of the Friangipiani Vetro class, who were simply passing their time while their favourite restaurants in the Taj were being rebuilt.
Amid the inane talk about national unity and the pointless,railings against politicos, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi actually was spot on, but he was fried for saying things as they were.
In short, the section of Indians which can access the internet, i.e. us doesn't care much about things like terrorism because it rarely affects us :| It's a mark of our pompous attitude towards the masses that we all made so much noise when 26/11 happened, but I saw not a single TV channel cover the CST firings properly, where most of the deaths occurred, and the victims were ordinary Indians.
Your roadside paanwallah who survived the recent terror attack might have been permanently disabled, and psychologically scarred for life. The same applies to the victims of the 11/7 train bombings. They're scared, terrified,angry. But they don't have a choice. They can't write blog articles. None of us bothers to ask them what they think.
We pass that off as resilience,spirit and etc. But the guy who broke his arm on 11/7 has no option but to travel by the same train the next day because he'll be thrown out of work if he doesn't. And he cannot afford a car.
Basically I want to say that the people who genuinely suffer/have suffered due to terror feel really strongly about it. Just that they don't have the same modes of expression that we do. People like us, who are essentially the privileged class can never feel strongly about terror, because most of us have never come face to face with it.
@ Akshay: I'm inclined to agree with some of what you said. Here's what I don't agree with:
I don't think that just because we have access to the Internet/more money/higher social status/whatever, terrorism doesn't affect us. When bombs explode, they don't selectively kill people. Everyone goes down. Also, they are placed where they'll do maximum damage: they don't care about what section of the Indian population we belong to. Being poor or coming from a weaker socio-economic class doesn't mean you feel the loss more. Yes, we probably can mope/rave/rant about it more, and they can't. But everybody feels it. I mean look at Leopold's itself - there weren't too many "ordinary" (by what I assume to be your definition) Indians inside right? You can't look at a person's clothes and tell how badly hit they might have been by any of the attacks we've had.
P.S. I really, really enjoyed reading your comment. You write passionately. Me likey :)
No I didn't mean that. Let's just say you're less likely to meet a terror victim on the internet/TV than in a government colony(or a slum.)
We do feel about terror, but only when it directly affects us, like it did during 26/11.
I was just attempting to rationalize why people have become so "inured" to terror. It's because we've rarely been victims in the first place.(notable exception being 26/11), and we hardly know the real victims. Except 26/11, the victims of most recent terror attacks have been normal middle to lower-middle class people. (Not to say that the attacks were "aimed" at them, but it was mostly they who suffered.)
Again 26/11 should have been a wake-up call, but like I said, every civil political discourse was hijacked by a bunch of irrational,raving,sloganeering idiots (myself one of them), with voluminous comments which sound great but are crap really, be it bombing Pakistan, surrendering Kashmir to Pakistan,or all the pathetic anti-politician rantings. In all this drama, the plight of the ten-year-old chandni chowk boy who died when a bomb exploded in his hands is forgotten.
Give the real victims some power, get them to speak up and I'm sure you'll see a great outpouring of grief and anger, far beyond our puny candlelight marches and calls for paradropping Raj Thackeray into Pakistan.(sounds tempting, though ;) )
If these people can claw their way up into positions of power, I think I can say we'll never witness a terror attack again. And I pray that happens in my lifetime.
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