helpless

back to blogging. generally, its anger which brings me here; this time though, its surprise - genuine surprise which has quite shaken me out of my comfortable indifference. the mumbai attacks. and now i am tempted to launch into the obvious stuff about "worst attack ever", "shocking" etc but will cut it out.

so they are saying - is this the defining moment for mumbai? or even for india? i hope so. for india. for us to finally say a strong definite NO to terrorism. having lived with extremism (which i still contend is very different from terrorism) all our lives, many of us (speak for yourself i say - hence maybe i should say "i") have quite got used to killings, bombings etc. we ("i") shrug it off. i say it happens. it happens in india. thats life. right. wrong. wrong? well, not entirely. it is part of life. but it does not have to be. not at this scale. not to this point of lawlessness.

it does not have to be? how not? there must be a way. some way. maybe many ways.

education? yeah. but do we wait around for everybody (including everybody in our neighbouring countries) to get educated enough to understand that killing other people is not really a good thing. no please, we dont want to.

information? maybe. the assam blasts last month (yes yes always assam which really makes parochial assamese me think/care etc) frustated me into thinking about information as a step. a terror helpline. a terror site. with information about all extremist/terrorist groups operating in india. something like a wiki. and with telephone numbers. so that it reaches every corner of india (as pointed out by yoga). terror does not come from a big bang. it starts somewhere. like a small group. then spreads out, recruits, extorts, spreads its ideas. people know about it. from the beginning. there is information. that information we need to share and put out. somebody hears something, sees something - give that somebody a channel to put that information out.

one federal anti-terrorism agency? yes, definitely. an obvious idea i finally heard on tv today. a professional agency. with one huge network. well funded, powerful and everywhere. why is RAW something we rarely hear about? why does it not inspire confidence? maybe it should even inspire fear. why is it not something i can join?

give the people tools. an agency they can join. a service they can report to. security weaknesses they can point out and which will be taken care of. in my head, its a solution which will go some way.

that helpless feeling. that same feeling which leads an honest man to compromise on his way to power, another honest man on his way to extremism, another on his way to terrorism. and the rest of us to cultivating a shield of indifference.

or maybe we are all hindus. we leave it to fate. and to the terrorists. (oh, hinduism is apparently a religion. i meant it as a way of life. a way of life for all of us from every religious denomination in india. that way of life which leads us to fault fate for our own flaws. or is that a strength? yes. but not now please.)

i'm digressing. i'm helpless.