we are like this only

I’m not very good at remembering dates, usually – I forget what date it is unless I am writing an official letter to someone, I forgot to wish A on his birthday this year because I just had a complete black out when I woke up…but last year this day has been on my mind all day. Bojjandi was a newborn, less than 2 months old, dad was out of town, and we were all staying at my parents’ place, grandma included, when mom switched to a news channel and we sat, horrified, for the next few days as the crazy, nightmarish events unfolded on national television. It was horrific, it was tragic…and it was unnecessary. Delhi, where I live, has been the target of terrorist attacks for years now, since the Punjab terrorism began all those years back. I remember, back in 1992, one of my classmates from the South came to Delhi for a vacation and two of us picked him up from the station. We got onto a DTC bus and he was startled to see a sign saying “Watch out for unidentified packages. There could be a ...

There was a proverb that said every dark cloud has a silver lining. I can’t think of one to the Mumbai attack by terrorists, can you? The only thing that the attack has done for India is to rip the mask off from the faces of our politicians and shown them up for the scheming, soulless, power and publicity-hungry creatures that they are. To my mind, they are far, far worse than terrorists who at least have the mitigating factor of believing so strongly in their cause that they are willing to sacrifice their own lives for it. Politicians on the other hand believe in no cause, no value and no ethic apart from the ones of money, power and self-aggrandizement. It is absolutely foul to see Mumbai plastered with hoardings by each political party in praise of the three police chiefs who died. The same parties which bayed for their blood when they performed their jobs in a way the party did not like are now trying to benefit even from their deaths by indulging in a gross game of friendlier-than...