Sunday, November 30, 2008

the aftermath....

its been a full day after the seige in bombay has ended....atleast the worst of it anyway....i havent been able to do anything other than catch some glimpes on tv....read the papers.....and hope and pray that this will be the last that we see of this kind of terror .....

my heartfelt condolences to those who lost their lives.... in the line of duty ...and victims of circumstances....words mean nothing i know.... but that's all i seem to have right now.... i hope we always remember thier supreme sacrifice.... 

i am in deep gratitude of the men who defended and protected us....the Marcos, the NSG commandos, the RAF, the firefighters, the cops.... who showed us what they were made of....of what they are capable of and just fought on to uphold peace ..... i will not make a single joke about the armed forces anymore.... i will not crib about paying taxes...... if the bulk of it goes to finance the cushy lifestyles of the obese system, i will hope, that some part trickles to these men of valour who i know will defend my life.....

in  the staff of the hotels and ordinary people who showed amazing courage.... i dont know what i would have done...its a hypothetical situation....and i wont trivialise it by trying to suppose....it isnt easy...that much i know....while the live telecast on TV made it look like an action packed movie....the reality i far far from that.... to be crouched for hours.... sometimes hiding under corpses....biting on fear....in darkness....not knowing what will happen next....huddled together....even scared that the sound of the breath that you draw may be too much noise and put you closer to death.....of not knowing if you will be alive or dead....it isnt the things life is made up of....it is terrifying to put it mildly....and yet....in these circumstances, some men and women, put the lives of others before their own.....some of them live to tell the tale...some of them wont.....

i cant believe the news channels behaved the way they did....what began as breaking news....became peddaling of the "exclusive shots", exclusive footage and exclusive macabre that they had....each one trying to out do the other.... giving running commentaries when the commandos were being airdropped.....isnt that too much information being given to us? can that not be used by the very same people who planned this to the last detail that brought us to our knees? why didnt they shut up? or use better judgement?

each news anchor, goading the reporters onsite to get more and more exclusive sound bites....i wonder what kinds of sources they have......each one getting hoarser by the minutes.... more gore....the more blood and destruction, the more excited they got....i dont know if that was a good thing or bad.... i was just numb......

there are more questions.....how and why did the intelligence fail...collectively we have failed as a nation.... we either didnt know what the hell was happening....or we didnt pay heed.....what is the plan forward? is there going to be any concrete action taken, or is this too going to be milked for what its worth and then be forgotten?

one thing is obvious to me....we arent dignified even in our times of absolute destruction...our politicians land up with bags of money, to pay for the dead....they hold press conferences on the site where battle rages on, not caring for the complications in security they are causing.....they make irresponsible statements and shift the blame... and our people.... well what can i say...they resort to sloganeering.... they crowd behind reporters to come into the frame....i saw one man dressed as sachin tendulkar standing behind the reporter at the funeral of slain ATS top cop karkare....we want a good tamasha.....dont we care that we are contributing to a security nightmare....that the last thing we needed at nariman house, was thousands of people watching like it was film shooting.......there was an ocean of people there.....they couldnt even move the trucks and ambulances if a bomb fell right on them....and everyone seemed to be standing around....how and why did the authorities allow people to come so close to the site?? when will we learn??

there are so many things going through my head right now.... i have to stop ....

i just wish hope and peace to us all.....

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