Another weekend, another series of blasts rips through city markets teeming with crowd preparing to celebrate the annual festive season of Id-Dussehra-Diwali.
Another series of blasts, another evening of "breaking news" beaming on TV sets in drawing rooms of people busy drinking a peg of whiskey or smoking a cigar.
What to do? How can we react? Is there a chance of our survival? Who will secure our lives — the politicians? Or the rifle-toting jawans keeping a close eye on our movements? Or the people themselves? That is the first question came to my mind after Delhi 9/13. Are we heading for 9/11 or the numbers are just getting blurred with sheer intensity of the blasts that very often shake Karachi, Lahore, Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, and of course Srinagar. Are the cities safe anymore? Should we head for villages then?
Who is to blame? Who will take responsibility for scores of innocent lives lost in a moment? A press release would have been faxed or an email sent to media houses across the country, or even the world over, stating some terrorist groups have taken the responsibility of the blasts; condolence notes from the President and other VIPs would pour in; investigation committees would be formed; and above all people like us would again hit the road the next morning with a new hope to bury the past and "life must move on".
But think of the girl in jeans and tee being carried from Karol Bagh blast area to a hospital while the blackish-red substance still oozing out from her injured body parts. Most of us don’t know who she is; neither did we try to know whether she survived or not. By now, her family members would have been shattered: whatever was the outcome of her fate. Think of the teenaged boy who went to see the laser show in Lumbini Park in Hyderabad in August last year for the first time before something rocked the gallery to kill him on the spot. Think of the woman in green sari on an Ahmedabad road "sleeping" upside down: the only sign that she won’t wake up again was her head in a pool of blood.
Think of the thousands of frames of bloodshed that we have accustomed to watch since that "Terror Tuesday" evening on plasma screens installed on our beige walls. The scene of a plane hitting one of the world’s tallest buildings that morning in Manhattan, followed by another aircraft full of passengers crashing into its adjacent tower is quite fresh in our mindscape.
Seven years. But i am still scared. Probably, this fear would give birth to courage to move on with life, no matter how much threatened the existence is. Being coward won’t help rather we should gain strength from people around us; people with creative minds, constructive wishes and an intention to care fellow human beings.
©Supratim Pal
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