(Warning - Religion has been discussed in my thoughts below. If you know me and are offended easily by religious discussions, then please ignore this post)
The sound of gunfire is a rarefied phenomenon in real life, occupying its own realm in movies and far-off hellholes like Iraq, Afghanistan and Kashmir. But it kept me glued to the TV last week, watching with cinemascopic horror the Mumbai events. A Thanksgiving holiday break became a painstaking viewing of the anarchy that spread like wildfire through the billion and more psyches that call India their motherland in some way or the other.
The hair on my hands stood up on its toes as I pictured myself locked up in one of the rooms of the Taj hotel, talking to a friend on the phone one minute and ripped apart with bullets from a steely-eyed maniac the next, and left to writhe and die with a grenade stuffed into my mouth. I even dreamed of it at night, picturing myself running down a smoke-filled corridor only to jump out of a burning window and keep falling - a fall that never ended while the clothes on my back burnt off and a thousand sneering faces looked up at me from the ground. Of much agony were some dreams, born and snuffed out in the throes of sleep, only to remain as fragmented memories the next morning.
Here we are again - watching ourselves die on the screen, abusing the politicians and cursing Pakistan in our sleep. While 183 people died live on TV, we were urging our leaders to 'take action'. The hapless leaders in Mumbai and New Delhi ran amok and pulled their political caps in all directions to make sense of the situation and to appear in control. Heads rolled and are still rolling, candles were lighted in cities across India and a collective assertion was done that Pakistan must be punished.
'India is great and we shall prevail', the martyrs who gave up their lives shall be a part of history, and the 'perpetrators shall be brought to justice'.
Hogwash.
Absolute, mind-numbing, fancy-coating, self-assuring, vanity-serving, pseudo-patriotic hogwash.
Nothing's going to change in the long run and more people will be shot and blown apart. It's a mere function of time and circumstances that we are alive unlike those poor people who perished.
It's simple. And I shall put my case forward in three points which cannot be measured in the traditional scales of 'right' and 'wrong'.
Firstly, our favourite scapegoat - "The Goverment". All fingers point immediately towards the Government, which is eternally inept for us.
They let security collapse,
they let intelligence go to sleep and
they are unable to come up with a solution. It's always
they who are to blame. That single driving thought fills our consciousness with a self-redeeming righteousness. 'Oh what can a single citizen like me do?' While we are busy pursuing our confused goals and working out the next best deal in life, the burden of governance and defence still remains on the shoulders of old men, harried bureaucrats and struggling middle-class security personnel. As long as they remain the dominant force in India, our country shall remain a third-world country. Forget the miniscule proportion like us who constitute 'Urbania' and vote for 'Progressia'. The swarming and teeming populace will face the same demons again and again. And again. And again. They shall continue to worship the Thackerays, the Modis, the Gandhis and images of themselves on shiny surfaces. While driving each other out of their cities, and mobbing each other to undignified deaths. And one day they shall die in a brilliant but insignificant flash. All this while, harbouring a volcanic hatred for Pakistan. That is the future of the country, which shall not crumble but shall never be at peace either. So it's not the Government, but us. Us, who from the cradle to the grave, rock in lethargy and are hardly awake throughout our lives to the truth that true emancipation comes from individuality and ownership. Not from road-raging, Bollywood-drooling, women-worshipping, backbiting and festive foolishness, but from a true understanding that in order to make a country wholesome, each and every individual must be educated, must be taught how to shoot firearms and must first identify himself or herself as an Indian when asked - where are you from?
Secondly, our bad old unfriendly neighbourhood masked crusaders from across the border, the very basis of whose existence is the crumbling of India - as a country and as an idea. If the ability and the motivation of Pakistan to watch the demise of India is removed, they have no fuel for keeping the collective psyche ticking. The helpless few decent men in their Government (yes I do hold the opinion that those men are well-intending though stupid) are but mere puppets in the hands of the militia which runs the country. It's nothing but a Somalia with a rich history. With the exception of the tiny fragment which thinks globally due to either having lived abroad or being amazingly insulated in their daily lives even while living amongst the hordes, that patch of land between India, Afghanistan, Iran and the Arabian Sea is a giant camp of disillusioned, fearful and often psychotic people which believes it is a nation because it owns a nuclear arsenal, has a seat at the UN and can pay its cricket team to travel abroad to bowl fast and score centuries. I do not fail to sympathise with one who is born as a Pakistani, into a life of history books preaching Indiophobia, anti-Semitism, and childish civics and legalities. If I were in their place, I would probably grow up to be what they are. For most human brains do have the logical nerve centre which makes him or her believe that he or she is right. The Pakistanis need to survive, to see another day. Their society is a bastard offspring of British political lust and the immoral recklessness of Islamic fanaticism. How do we expect them to change? Self-preservation is their right and the only means for them to try to achieve it while maintaining their identity is to continue to do what they are doing. Which is why we see today's blackmail put forth by them to move their troops from the Afghan border where they are fighting the Taliban to the Indian border, thus forcing the West to be shy of supporting Indian aggression. It's a desperate move which is frankly unsurprising. The icing on the cake is the manner in which the Pakistani media is hinting that just like the Americans engineered 9-11, the Indians have engineered 26-11 to turn the world fury onto Pakistan. The lines between truth and propaganda are icy trickles on a hot summer day.
Last but not the least, and turn away, all those who consider my atheistic side to be blasphemous - religion itself. For as long as religion rules in the minds of human beings, Islamic fanaticism shall grow, Christian conservatism shall breed in fear, Hindu self-righteousness shall cling to itself in spearheaded panic and Judaism shall keep its horns sharpened against the others. Each is a devious version of the others and none are worse. Islam has simply put the truth at the fore and is thus at the receiving end of the brickbats in today's world. No religion is free from evil for the basis of religion is fear based on fictitious supremacy of the unknown.
For these reasons, above all others - India shall continue to struggle as a so-called secular, multi-cultural, diverse idea while trying to keep terror at bay. Governments shall come, governments shall have votes of confidence and governments shall go, but the triangular deadlock of our lethargy, Pakistan and religion shall always keep us miles behind where we should be were they not around. We are not an example to the world - for every space satellite which reaches the moon, we have mobs rioting in cities, for every brave commando who dies fighting terrorists, we have an idiot who cheers for a Thackeray, for every dollar earned in revenues of the booming economy, we have a woman raped in some city or village, for every word that we write, we have a growing regret that we wish we had gone through military training and had held the gun that shot a terrorist dead.
For every scene of Disturbia that I see in the media, I hope I don't dream of it when I sleep tonight.
