Carnage knows no limit!

Such posts, I realize, have begun to sound far too run-of-the-mill in the passing years, and though some bloggers would rather avoid such posts in the fear of boring their readership to death, I have my own resons for doing them, which I shall reveal later on in this same post!

A series of 5 serial blasts have rocked India's capital New Delhi, claiming 20 lives and injuring another 90 civilians in the process, according to current data : the figures, as you can perceive, are bound to change in the next 48 hours as several of the injured battle for life in various ICUs across the city.

I have gone to great lengths in previous posts to outline exactly how I feel about such mindless carnage, but the world seems intent on making me repeat myself : so I choose to focus on a parallel issue of the same ilk ! India is fast becoming a soft target for terrorism, and bomb blasts in metros no longer draw shock. After every such cowardly act, people in the media praise the population of the affected city for carrying on with their daily lives with utmost normalcy, and for "striking a firm blow to the miscreants looking to disrupt our daily patterns". Mumbai, in that regard, appears to be home to the country's most courageous people, followed closely by places such as Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Hyderabad, New Delhi and Varanasi. I have the deepest regard for people of these cities, but with all due respect, is it bravado that draws them back to their workplaces, or is it necessity?

The answer is simple : for 99.9% of this population, it is NEED! We simply cannot afford to live in fear in these competitive times. There is no alternative : living in fear in the sanctity of your home translates to hunger, and poverty! It's what drives everyday citizens in countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq to go on with their lives inspite of the frequent surges of violence. How do you expect India to be any different? I'll tell you what scares me most though : The fact that more and more people across the spectrum have come to ACCEPT it as a part of their daily lives. Yes, there is a need to restore normalcy as soon as possible after such meaningless acts of violence by fundamentalist psychopaths arrogant enough to believe that they read the Lord's intentions as clear as the night sky : but to be indifferent is to sacrifice our very humanity. The media is, to an extent, responsible for the growing apathy we observe among the masses. There are only so many times that a story can be recycled over and over again by an abundance of news channels before the viewer starts to lose interest. The outrage lasts only for a day, because the media itself is, for lack of a better term, ruthless, in its make-believe sympathy : delivering perhaps a couple of days of uninterrupted, repetitive coverage of an attack until the viewer is so disinterested that he'd prefer to watch an RGV Ki Aag for a second time......before moving on to stories of tiffs between film stars and UFO sightings and other inconsequential stories which seem to have greater appeal! No sincere follow-up is ever done : no detailing of the aftermath of these acts, no directives to the common man to help cope with such attacks, and identify miscreants who dare to plant bombs in broad daylight.

I write this post with a heavy heart. Not only has innocent blood been shed for the most illogical of reasons, but the soul of the country is itself perhaps withering away. The death-knell to my hopes was sounded by a political expert on one such channel, who dismissed the significance of this attack to the elections to be held in the city in 2 months' time, explaining simply : people have short memories. As part of the city reels under the after-shocks of the explosions, the other resumes its daily pattern, unaffected, and simply unconcerned!

I sincerely deny that I am a "holier than thou" sort of person. To an extent, the same apathy reflects in my own reaction to the blasts. My first concern remained the safety of my brother and my aunt living in the city : with their safety assured, the misery will probably fade within another 72 hours or so. Today, it seems terror fails to grip us unless it strikes DIRECTLY home, rather than close to it. Now, to why I really wrote this post : another 10 years down the line, when I would have a job, perhaps a family, and probably enough responsibilities to override any commitment I feel to my fellow man, I want to look back.......look back and see that there was a time when I DID care, there was a time when such incidents made my blood boil, and my heart race! I want to remember what it felt like to truly be human....My biggest fear, today and forever more, is to be swept up by the tide of indifference and inhumanity that's been gathering strength across the world with every passing year! You may call me an eternal pessimist or a "doomsday-prophesying maniac" for airing such views, but I'm only spelling out the misery and destruction I see all around me...only because I CARE to see, unlike many others! There is yet a fair deal of good in this world, but it is eroding fast, and will soon disappear completely, unless we introspect, and judge each other as harshly as our Lord himself would at the hour of judgement. I am no saint, but with the parents I have, I am obliged to be the best person I can be : and ten years down the line, I hope to still live up to that obligation!