A week ago, on July 11th to be precise, a piece of forbidden meat was found in a mosque in Bangalore. There was panic as news spread. Everyone expected the injured community to retaliate. But nothing of that sort happened. People have long realized the futility of reacting to incidents instigated on purpose leading to misery to the common man, inflicted by the common man.
Some months ago, bombs ripped through Hyderabad destroying a mosque and killing several people. If the terrorists expected a communal riot, they would have been disappointed.
The Mumbai blasts the terrorists thought would bring Mumbai to a stand still. But this is India babua…we cannot afford to be afraid. And even if we are, we cannot afford to stop and quake in fear. Life goes on for us. Those who stop will get left behind. Fear is a precious commodity for us.
Therefore your bombs and grenades will not stop us. It is not because we are a brave people. But because we are survivors. And survivors have long back realized that walking away from adversities is the best way to put a distance between it and us.
The recent Bangalore blasts were nothing but saber rattling. A desperate attempt to show that they are not beaten. But the fact is that you are. What do you do a nation that doesn’t stop! What can you do to a nation that keeps walking?
Your bombs will kill a few of us, injure as many. But the survivors will walk on. We have no one except us to look after us. So we cannot afford to stop and cry. We have ourselves to look after and that is a big job.
I hope the neighboring country that fosters their energies to destroy us and their masters who keep fuelling their armory making a deadly cocktail of virulent religious fundamentalism served by the Big Brother himself, realize that they are trying to scare a people that cannot afford to be scared. Short of complete annihilation, nothing will stop us from picking up the pieces if our lives and keep moving on.
21 comments:
Ah, so this is what you meant by the non-fazed Indians.
But perhaps this isn't unique to India alone? The same thing has been witnessed in Europe too with Madrid, London(multiple times!) etc: But they still move on. Middle-east, constantly. Even the 'neighbouring country', is troubled by such explosions far more than us :)
It seems to me, its just a modern trend to run after that train we are certain we are late to catch, though we don't know which train it is, nor where it is headed, nor why we are trying to catch it.
in complete agreement to what you have written here !!!
Angels and daemons - how relative two terms they are, on earth!
So true..though maybe it is not fair enough to assume everything happens from the neighbouring country in the west..an inhand help is something which was quite obvious..but then for such deeds nationality doesnt matter..we cant afford to lull over tragedies..so true..!!The beauty of our country is that we dont break up easily which would have otherwise stopped any other nation...
@karthik
What happened in London and madrid are just one off incidents..havent we been going through this over the years!!
"The one things I learnt about life is, it goes on..."
Something like this seems to be the attitude of the survivors... The show must go on, come what may!
Brilliant. No Words to comment on.
Hey silverine, I have been reading ur blog for some days now and have really enjoyed it...
life goes on? well, maybe for people who are not affected by it, but wht abt the millions who lost their life in the blasts? I was in Mumbai whn the blasts occured and i knw few families who lost the only sole bread winners. We all experienced the panic and anxiety of the safe return of beloved ones, the frantic calls made etc. Sure we go on with our daily lives but not without looking over our shoulder each time. We cannot ignore the fact that it hasn't affected us. It surely has scared me, coz i keep worrying for the safety of my friends and closed ones all the time.
And it angers me coz, we are so helpless and an easy target. Yeah, ur right we have only ourselves to look after, but that is not just in the matter of blasts, it is the same feeling during an accident, mass hysteria or stampede, whn ppl don't even think or stop by to help. Its the general society as a whole, who I think have become so apathetic...
And if we just disgard it like it doesnt make any difference, then maybe we have a problem here...
I agree to Ancy's above comment, Life only moves on for people who see the news of the blasts in the tv, but it stands still for a long long time for those who lost a dad, a son, a husband, a mother or a sister. They are the survivors, the brave one's. We're the lucky one's who're hearing about other's getting killed in the comfort of our living rooms. I hope the govt does something for those people and people don't support such fanatics in destroying their own country.
@Mathew: All the more reason for them to stop and fuss. Your statement only reinforces the point I was making, which is that people just move on, wherever it may be, and that there is perhaps nothing so very unique to us in this regard.
Is it that or are we becoming apathetic?
I don't really agree with the survival part. Unless the bomb doesn't affect you directly (or even indirectly in a remote sense of the word), you aren't even a victim. All you have is a sense of fear, which looks tame compared to your other issues...
But it's indeed a laudable fact that there were no riots post blasts.
All hail India! :-)
I don't think we are becoming apathetic..
By we, I mean the nation..
What can the nation do to show that we are not apathetic?? all of us take guns like the terrorists and hunt them down??
What should the victims of a bomb blast (and their families do)do...continue their lives in misery??
Of course we'll never understand the tragedy of losing our beloved, from the comfort of our living rooms..
But the way we react to such terror attacks speak a lot about us.. Americans were plagued with terror when 9/11 happened... mass hysteria, stringent control on public freedom by the government and what not..
It's in this regard I agree to silverines post.. We as a nation fare much better when faced with an adversity..
We are survivors..have always been..
In 1948, the world laughed at us... they said we'll disintegrate in no time..60 years later...they look at us with jealousy...all our problems notwithstanding..
When we did the nuclear tests..they choked us..
Today they offer us a deal..however disguised in friendship and strategy..
They called us illiterate and the land of snake charmers..
Today they outsource their jobs to us...(and this is not just in IT)
They said we cannot grow with our differences and diversity...
Today our unity in diversity is beiung proposed as the new world model..
As for terror attacks..
Ever since the Mumbai riots of 92, mumbaikars have displayed great resilience to acts intended at disrupting communal harmony..
The reaction of the public at bangalore and ahmedabad (after the blasts) were credible..
Locals in Ahmedabad rushed to the blast sites to help the survivors...
people in neither of the cities panicked or rioted..
well,..as silverine said..its no special quality in us..
And we can do so many things better..
But we will survive!!!
of course they succeed every now and then..like in Godhra..
But we will move on..it will not stop us, a nation, from marching to its rightful place in history.
Karthik: Statistics have proved it that India loses more people to terrorism than any other nation!
Om: I think these people have underestimated the progress our country in made in terms of maturity, as a people! :)
Tedy: True!! :)
Mathew: We don't break up easily as Indianess is a collective consciousness...in my humble opinion!
Silencekilled: "The show must go on", exactly!
Dhanush: Thank you! :)
Ancy and Abhi and Hari: Life goes on even for those left with memories of loved ones lost to these mindless butchers. People do not live in grief forever. The scars remain. But life goes on. I was talking about us as a collective body of people. How we held together and our collective behavior in times of anguish. Remember the Mumbai floods and the Hurricane Katrina. Both these events showed the resilience and lack of it in the effected. Thats the point I was trying to drive.
Vimal: No we are not! But we do take our time to act.
the layman: *standing applause*
Awesome observations!! Thanks a lot!! :)
I think a lot of people underestimate India a li'il too much !!!
even the Indians living outside India for that matter !!!
May be I am wrong. But I believe putting the blame on "the neighboring country" is stupid.The problem is all here,lets accept it.
Every bit of the bombs are apparently Indian.(Media says)
Hope things change for good.
-Nikhil
ohh ,the same mumbai spirit,bangalore spirit ,ahmedabad spirit ,hyderabad spirit etc etc which we salute eveytime there is a blast but are too afraid to take any action due to fear of losing few votes
its thinking like this that we are suffering from this since 25 yrs ,just once attack on US and they paid back in same way(for a moment lets forget whether it was right or wrong),they respect the value of life of their citizns
here ,we will keep saluting spirit of our cities
keep saluting :)
Om : You are right! :p
Nikhil: I am not putting the blame on them alone. But they are the ones motivating the "insiders".
Anon: Spirit? Who talked about spirit? I dont think you read the post properly. I was talking about our helplessness that does not alow us the luxury of stopping to grieve!
wow, mindblowing!! You could turn this into a speech, n people would listen. completly agree with what you say!
Life goes on. I agree. But at a price.
Our apathy to these acts will be our undoing one day. A problem does not go away just by ignoring it. People are angry inside, scratch just below the surface and you will see the venom. The more they bomb, the more this venom grows and finally one fine day it will all spill out... maybe as the mother of all communal riots, maybe another partition.. who knows?
A number of north Indian cities are witnessing the a re-birth of ghetto-ization. Hindus only live in Hindu communities, Muslims only in theirs and so on. Maybe the storm will just blow away... I pray that it does.. maybe it will not.
If we ignore all these bombings. All these mosque desecrations and demolitions, all these land transfer issues we may be in for a rude shock one day... after all there is only this much space under the carpet!
If the point you wanted to emphasise is that we are survivors , yes its true. But regarding communal riots I don't think we are still immune to that tendency and what is going on in Kashmir regarding the land deal is almost in same vein.
Lakshmi: Thank you! :) But I am afraid this was not a speech, just a reaction to the mindless slaughter.
Abraham: While I totally agree with you about apathy and its pent up backlash, I must admit that there is more open culture today due to job opportunities available to all communities. I can see the change in Bangalore itself where ghettoizing flourished till some time back. Now the mind set is changing and you have youths of minority communities joining in the mainstream. I don't know how it is in the North though. Reg ignoring the bombings, I don't think we do, but when you have a govt that is scared to offend anyone and thus defends such acts what can the ordinary man do? They are also caught between the devil and the deep sea i.e no choice of political parties!
sansaryan: What I was trying to say is that we do burst into communal conflagration like earlier. These acts would have led to communal riots some years back. Now it is different! Reg the land deal in Kashmir, I do not much about that to comment!
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