Just when we Indians thought things couldn’t possibly get any worse…
We got an opportunity to host the Commonwealth games. But instead, Kalmadi and his cronies stretched their luck way beyond the Milky Way with corruption. And the Prime Minister’s office magically stretched a sanction to several multiples of the same. Wish someone would do that with my pay too. How Rs. 70000 crore of hard-earned money vanished over a span of a few years. And into how many Swiss accounts of how many politicians, we’ll probably never know.
Yet somehow, the poor are still poor, people still pay taxes in the hope of betterment of the country, and politicians still spend it thinking its part of an inheritance their grandparents left them.
And while the CWG scam unfolds, next month it’ll be 2 years since the Mumbai attack.! Two years.! That’s seven hundred and thirty days. And with our judiciary system sitting with their thumbs up their ass, we’re still trying the terrorist responsible.
Perhaps that’s why most crazies (terrorists n many politicians) have the impression that everything they shouldn’t be doing, can perhaps still be pulled off with ease and gotten away with, if it’s in India.
Left to the citizens, we’d have tried and sentenced the terrorist in less than a week after the attack. Who the hell cares about the defense. He is a culprit. He killed nearly 200 innocent Indians, and the legal system gives a f@(& about what he has to say about anything? News channels still manage to keep debating. Courts will have hearing after hearing. And before we know it, we might even be talking about it at the third anniversary.
More than anything else, it’s an indirect way of humiliating those brave Indians who faced the terrorists in that fateful attack.
At the bottom of it all, guess more than anything else, we Indians lack self-respect.
Take any small attack on Israel or on Israelis in the past. It would tell you what or how a nation should be towards its citizens. They’d hit back so hard, not only would it not instill fear in the enemy, but also cultivate a sense of belonging among their citizens.
Reminds me of a hilarious dialog from the movie ‘Bad Company‘ which describes the incompetence, if I may, of the concerned authorities. In the movie, the hero, Chris Rock tells the head of an FBI team, “Man, you guys can’t even find Saddam Hussein! If you told a woman at 8 in the morning, that her husband was sleeping with Saddam Hussein, she’d find Saddam by 8 that night!”
Look at it from the point of view of the brave Indian cops who nabbed the terrorist in hope of a trial and execution. To witness or read about the inane tantrums of the damn terrorist, two years after the crime.
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The Dark Knight is by far the most outstanding Batman movie ever, but what’s even more spectacular, is the Joker.
The Joker, not only inspired horror, but what he said could run shivers down your spine.
Whyyy so seriouss..??
What I liked most about the Joker was the fact that most of what he said, like it or not, is absolutely true in the world today.
I’m still hopeful. Just like Batman was when the two ferries were rigged, with the remotes kept in the other barge. But when you look at the state of things around, the Joker’s words tend to cross your mind…
Hmmm? You know… You know what I’ve noticed? Nobody panics when things go “according to plan.” Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it’s all “part of the plan.” But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds! Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos.
Look at what’s happened in India over the past two decades. We’ve had bomb blasts ripping through cities, over and over again. People are horrified, shaken, paranoid even. The news channels have ‘field days’. Give it a few days, and everyone has put the incident into some low priority folder in their heads, and gone about with their routine like it never happened.
Now while resilience is a good thing, everyone’s missing the bigger point. Can’t the security forces, the police, the intelligence agencies, and even the common man become more responsible. Why aren’t we, as Viper in Top Gun puts it, ‘compelled to evaluate what’s happened, so that he can apply what he’s learnt’? And why do we always go back to being our usual irresponsible selves?
The another blast. And then another. So many innocent people who just didn’t deserve to die, lost their lives in the most gruesome of ways. And still, the intelligence agencies, the security forces and the police expected that if the bad guys are gonna ever attack again, they might do it the same way, so lets keep a watch out for bombs.
How can you just assume everything. The terrorists have been successful so far because of our ignorance. We checked random taxis, buses and trains for explosives or suspicious looking objects, but left such a damn big coastline unguarded.
And, once again, on Nov. 28, 2008, Mumbai (India) was hit in a manner least expected. And for what felt like a lifetime. Like the Joker said, the bad guys here too just introduced a little anarchy, a lot in fact. And that upset the established order. Nobody saw terror come in that form. And then, everything was chaos. And we, with all the security, and all the intelligence, were sitting ducks.
If not as back as 1993, at least by 2003, or for that matter 2006 all the way to the Mumbai terrorist attack, couldn’t the security and intelligence agencies have sat and thought like the terrorists, and prepared themselves accordingly.
There’s this Bollywood movie called Border, which is one of my all-time favourites. It is based on the 1971 war fought between India and Pakistan, where Pakistan decided to forcefully enter India and capture whatever area it could.
Now, whatever I’ve mentioned say here is based on what I’ve read, and parts from the film.
But well, here’s what happened. Expecting a Pakistani attack by Pakistan, a small regiment of the Indian army at Rajasthan was given a choice. Of holding the Longewala post in Rajasthan till reinforcements arrived, or to flee the post. Another strategic post, Sadhewala, had a much larger Indian battalion posted there. The Pakistanis had planned to attack the Longewala post with a much larger tank battalion. The Major heading the small regiment questions his commanding officer before leaving for the post. He asks ‘how can he assume that just because the Pakistani’s attacked the Sadhewala post in the previous war, that they would do the same this time’? Or ‘whether he thinks the enemy is expected to ask them where to attack’.
The 1971 war makes for one of the most amazing war stories, and one that fills me with pride for my country. And rightly so. This war is significant in the history of wars. To date, remains one of the few wars where a highly outnumbered army emerged victorious. Let’s put that in perspective. 120-130 Indian army soldiers guarding an outpost, were attacked by a 2800+ Pakistani tank regiment. At night. Indian fighter planes at the time were not equipped for night flight. They therefore had to wait till dawn to rescue the army regiment. This small Indian army regiment inflicted heavy casualties on the 2800+ enemy soldiers and tanks mostly due to a favourable terrain, accompanied by the soldiers, who courageously held off the enemies till morning, when the air force came and wrapped things up in our favour.
But to think about it; while we sure won that war, we sure beat the crazy odds, and we did what under most circumstances, given the odds, would’ve been nearly impossible otherwise, but; did it have to be that way.
Could we have perhaps had both locations reasonably well guarded. Or if troops could’ve been mobilized to either location at the earliest. We would have beat the enemy much faster. Or better still, looking at the strong army, the enemy probably wouldn’t have attacked in the first place.
A famous quote goes something like this – “It’s better to sweat in peace, than to bleed in war.”
Simply put, that means, if we plan well, if we anticipate things, if we do our homework in a proper manner, it would save us a hell of a lot of damage when things go bad. In fact, in matters of national security, I feel, if we do our homework, if we are more prepared on a continuous basis, there wouldn’t even be situations like that in Mumbai, or for that matter, all the attacks in the past few years across the country, or even in other countries abroad. Is human life so cheap, that people just take national security so lightly.
And if that was not enough, we made a joke of ourselves at the hands of Pakistan. When we kept providing them information linking the terrorists to their country. And they repeatedly deny it, making a joke of the entire thing.
Imagine the families of all those who lost someone to the attacks, or to the blasts. This would’ve just made them feel like a foreigner in their own country.
Now sure like any other guy, I’m crazy about first-person shooter video/ pc games; and absolutely crazy about recon games. And like most of us chaps, I’d love some action, etc. But it’s a totally different thing watching your fellow Indians bleed for absolutely no fault of theirs.
And while we are inherently a peace-loving country, over the years, why have we become so laid-back and meek? While I don’t suggest an Israel-style retaliation to attacks, though, believe me, Israeli’s absolutely rock at it. And while they sure do have a lot of crazy attacks happening there, at least their average citizen knows that their country doesn’t take things lying down.
We on the other hand, on that particular occasion after the Mumbai attack, made it appear as if we were at the mercy of the Pakistani verdict, which was absolutely ridiculous.
Lets think…
Be more prepared and pro-active…
Lets be alert…
And open to ideas. To logical reasoning…
Lets protect our country…
They say “The night is darkest just before the dawn.”
So why not stand together, and do our part in this fight against terrorism; to bring in that new dawn.
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