Anger

For the last two days, since the news of the terror attacks on Mumbai (which is still not over as I write), I have been through a myriad range of emotions – deep sadness, sorrow for the victims, horror at the widespread carnage, helplessness, depression……and anger. Anger that such an audacious attack could happen in India’s most precious city with the intelligence community totally caught unawares.

And then I am further pissed when I read things like this….

Sources said though the plane carrying NSG Commandos was ready by midnight, it could not take off due to the delayed arrival of a VIP, who wanted to accompany them to Mumbai, at the Delhi airport. Worse, the Commandos had to wait for a vehicle at the Mumbai airport until morning.

Pretty much sums up our lack of planned response for such attacks – even though recent history  shows that such attacks could happen anytime.  Last time in India, around August navigating the bureaucracy, I was frustrated by the ad-hoc , highly disorganized method of doing everything. We  as a people, in fact sometimes even celebrate the fact stuff actually gets done in spite of the ‘chalta hai’ attitude.  Unfortunately, the lack of organization is severely exposed at such times of crises.

I am also angry at the foreign media – which suddenly seems to have woken up to the wider problems of Islamic terrorism in India, mainly because westerners were targeted (CNN since last night is  droning on about the Jewish community – now nothing wrong in that, but you would think that only foreigners died in this terrorist strike)!

And the refusal of news outlets like the BBC to call a spade a spade, constantly equating India and Pakistan as joint-sufferers of terrorism (more here). Even after reports like this.

And the less I say about the insensitivity and ineptitude of the Indian media, the better.

I am pissed at idiotic articles like this, that provides an half-assed thesis relating the mindless brutality of religiously-motivated terrorists to the social dynamics in India !!!

But the highly symbolic attacks dramatise a much wider set of struggles: the product of growing wealth for some and a revolution in communications.

I mean, could it get more WTF than this ? Even Somini Sengupta would be hard pressed to come up with such a mindless pontification like this.

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Perhaps it isn’t appropriate at this time to post rants like this.  Perhaps I should have waited for some healing to happen. But I need to get some of the feelings out of my system. And it is easier to write about these visceral emotions, than the much deeper sorrow that I am feeling at the moment.

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Before I end, a quote from Amit Varma that echoes another train of thought:

People are calling this Mumbai’s 9/11. In the sense that this city will never be the same again, I agree. But in terms of what we do about it, I’m not sure.

Once it was clear that 9/11 was caused by al-Qaeda, the US went after them, not bothering with niceties like their geographical location. From the information available at the time of writing this, it seems that we can soon be equally certain of who’s behind this. So what will we do?

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And finally, even though it may sound trite and cliched, a salute to those who fell during the counter-terror operations – Vijay Salaskar, Ashok Kamte, Hemant Karkare, Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan, and other unnamed policemen (more about them here)