I could have been there

An acquaintance from Delhi was in Mumbai on the 26th and I was to go to VT to meet him. I had an uncomfortable feeling in the evening and told the person I won’t be coming as it will get quite late and we made plans to meet next day. From work I went home instead and in the night got a call from my sister’s friend to inform us about the attacks. We turned on the TV and couldn’t believe what we were seeing. Just an hour back I had recommended Leopold to the guys from Delhi for drinks and Bade Miyan for dinner. Thankfully though they had gone to Leopold they did not wait there but moved on to have dinner. Small mercies for me! I was transfixed to the news on TV when suddenly my mom said if you had gone to VT today, you would have been there. Solace for my mom that I was home but I could not feel any relief. I think we have crossed the point where we can be happy that MY family, MY friends and I are unharmed. What about the next time!

I went to sleep that night hoping that when I wake up in the morning, everything will have been sorted out. I think it was clear to everybody by morning that it was not one of those attacks that we have gotten so used to, where there is a blast, we hear about it we call our loved ones and if they are fine thank god for it, feel a little bad for the victims and carry on with life. I feel it is not just resilience that puts us back on our toes the next day, there is a lot of numbness too; as long as everybody we know are fine we almost go about our business with robotic precision. It wasn’t surprising that so many of us were getting restless and impatient and couldn’t understand why the defence operation was taking so long. The longer it went on the deeper went the grip of unease. The frustration and helplessness of the situation got hammered into us and for the first time since so many attacks across India I have noticed people haven’t been able to shake off the sense of loss and carry on unaffected.

There is a lot of anger towards the politicians and of course towards Pakistan. But these are not the only factors that can be held responsible for the attacks we face time and again. Somewhere the citizens of this country are also responsible for the Government apathy towards our security concern. A lot of self-introspection is needed at the individual level. The only time we have a sense of nation and shared identity is when the national cricket team is playing. The rest of the time the state and language divisions are so important to us that even the Indian expatriate community can not overcome it and around the world we see Bengali, Telugu, Gujarati… committees and groups. It is so easy for a Thackarey or a Singh, or a Modi, or a Gandhi or a Yadav to instigate us against each other.

Sometimes I feel we got independence from the British at an inappropriate time. More of our masses should have been educated before we became a sovereign. Even today we have a large vote bank that can be bought for as cheap as 100 rupees per head. From our first Prime Minister to now we have had only opportunists governing us simply because it has been so easy to manipulate and divide on the basis of religion and language. What is disheartening is people still fall for it.

It would be ideal to live in a world with no boundaries and religions. We don’t, but how difficult is it to live in the real world by accepting and appreciating diversities. For a change can we stop hating or differentiating the other person because he does not speak the same language and think as one nation even when India is not playing cricket?