More Bullets please, We are Indians!

10:30 on the night of this fateful Wednesday, my flatmate told me there have been some shootouts at CST, my immediate thought was that none of my acquaintances could possibly be there at that time, I relaxed and slept. Next morning I was woken up by a phone call, it was my dad, "chhotu are you ok?", "what possibly could happen to me papa?" I was still half asleep, "they have taken down the oberoi, and killed hundreds of people" my innocent dad as every scared indian at that moment was worried, still oblivious to the gravity of the situation, I said "I don't dine either at Taj or Oberoi, my company doesn't pay me as much" and I asked him to relax and slept again.

This apathy of mine is not a result of my imperviousness to pains of death, It is because after being born in India and living in Mumbai, I have realised I live because I am lucky. Every one or two years Mumbai bleeds, a bus explodes at Ghatkopar, a bogie blown at Mulund, trains taken down at all major suburban stations, I am just lucky to not to be there. I just like many people in this country am too tired to care, I know nothing is going to happen, how was this attack new? Last time when local trains were bombed 210 people died, it was spread all across mumbai and one had a higher probability to die in those attacks. Why so much fuss now? why the likes of Shobha Dey and Prahlad Kakkar come on primetime and scream enough is enough? Not because this was an attack of bigger magnitude, it was because the elite died, instead of ramji aaptes and kripashankar pandeys, ravi malhotras and adaa mulchandanis died. It is different because english speaking media's favourite man of the moment who was leading the vendetta against saffron brigade died.

As a common man, I have become too cynic to believe something will change. Let's wait another couple of years, we may have another one of these. Somethings we hardly see in us, we are very self righteous about everything, but looking from outside it turns out, we are the most self loathing nation of the lot. We dealt with the situation in a bollywood potboiler way, we had the highly educated politicians who later (after the operation was over) came up with comments like "In big cities like these, such small incidents happen and they came to kill 5000, look we contained them in such small number", then we have the english speaking self righteous media which made it a 24X7 entertainment show cashing on the sadist morbid fascination of humans. They made martyr out of ambushed IPS officers who were on their way to "take charge" by putting constables on the front line and issuing orders, and to add insult to injury we had a prime minister who when was condemning the attack in "hard" words was so uninspiringly polite that I thought he was talking to in-laws of his daughter. I couldn't care less.

I know and pretty sure nothing can be done. We have as Indians always taken pride in hating the fellow Indian, for those who have been abroad know this very well, even for those who have not think about how upset you became when your friend made it to that esteemed college and you were left behind, it was not because "I didn't make it", it was more because "why he made it?". Every Indian in US voted for Obama, not despite that he vowed to reduce H1Bs from India, but because he did that. It is called lifeboat mentality, you can google that out. No other country i know of is adept in this, we seem to have mastered this art. So when BJP talks of terror and non appeasement it is saffron, non-secular blah blah blah, being a hindu was never so sinfull, but when Congress does everything it can to appease muslims, it is secular, social equality, not all terrorists are muslims, damn you Hindus. I don't blame the Congress for this, but my problem is with the media.

When Modi says we have loose terror laws, CNN-IBN reports it as "While are forces fight, Modi critices PM, BJP talks votes", while soon after that when Amar Singh criticised Modi they headlined it as "Amar Singh exposed Modi's double standards". Modi alledgedly killed 900+ muslims in Gujrat, the Gandhi family killed 10,000 sikhs in Delhi and to their audacity claimed "ground shakes when big trees fall". Congress realised this in early 50's that they can win an election just by Muslim and Dalit votes, why care about anyone else. They and their left headed, khaadi clad JNU, Jamia Milia historians systematically deleted every fact / occasion we could have taken pride in as being a Hindu, if you remember your texts, Brahmin was bad, Brahmin caused attrocities, but Muslim clergy was reformist, they were angels, Hindu rulers did no good to the country, thank god the Slave dynasty and the Mughals descended upon us other wise we were doomed. One of Delhi's most expensive roads is Aurangzeb road, which is named after Aurangzeb, who despite being the destroyer of thousands of hindu temples was a reformist according to likes of Romila Thapar. This was never a problem to media which took pride in taking the high ground of not letting minority feel like a minority, but when BJP introduced some reality into the text, it was "saffronization". For those who don't remember their school texts in CBSE, in class VII history textbook while explaining the islaam and mughals we had the lines "la illah il allah, muhhammad ur rasool allah" and the explanation and tennets of it, but never we had the mention of Gayatri mantra. Why? because minority appeasement is secular and non-appeasement is saffron, red and god knows which other hue.

The media made Mr. Karkare a hero, a martyr not because he died in line of duty if that was the case you should also remember the name of Surjan Singh Bhandari. Do you? He was one of the NSG commandos who "actually" died in line of duty while trying to contain terrorists in Akshardhaam. Let's try again quickly recall the names of two NSG soldiers who died in Mumbai...Trouble?? Mr Karkare despite being a gentleman of very high stature, may his soul rest in peace indeed died in an attempt to safeguard Mumbai's life, but the way his sacrifice was enlarged in people's mindspace by media could only be explained by his relentless pursuit of framing hindu groups in terror related activities. This delighted the english speaking, left headed pro congress journalists like Rajdeep Sardesai and Karan Thapar. Media made this entire episode a frenzy, they showed strategic and tactical movements of army, people all across India glued to their TV sets were didn't wish it should end, but with every new development we were morbidly excited. It gave us "masala" for 60 hrs to discuss and banish politicians and go back to our offices on Monday (not because of the spirit of Mumbai, bullshit!! it's because I don't have any other choice).

None of the media highlighted the fact that we are a failure of planning. When traffic increases we make flyovers, when flyovers clog we demolish and broaden roads. We have a habit of digging the well only after we are thirsty. In the luxury of post fact we boast a lot, but look at history, terror won't take the same route again. We have given the world a lot of successfull professionals, the truth is they were smart enough to realise how big a hell hole is this country and when they got the chance they embraced the "world" only to be boasted by India as her contribution to the world.

Talk of a revolution?? France had just one Loius XVI and Russia had just one Czar, we have an army of Czars and Louis XVIs in form or Politicians, IAS, IPS. So don't react by saying "why don't you fight elections if you are sick of politicians?", well to begin with I have not raped anyone, murdered anyone nor have I got millions of rupees to campaign (Lyngdoh was prudent enough to cap university election spending, dare he do that on general elections?)....The left headed and the media will keep on "debating", they will keep on looking at in different "perspectives", we will have a stand off with Pakistan, few heads will roll and then another Cricket series will come, we will forget all this and in another 2-3 yrs this will happen again.
So I am lucky, lucky enough to not be at the wrong place at the wrong time, lucky enough to have gotten an education that would lift me out of this hellhole and give me a one way ticket to the "world".