Bomb in your garden

This is a vicious cycle of barbarism and bad politics, we, the people, did not make or create. And those who made it will not pay the price. We will.

Amit Sengupta Delhi, Hardnews

So how many times should a man look up before he sees the sky? And how many of those alive should return lifeless to the bowels of the earth, burnt, cremated or buried, before the bullets, or the rocket launchers or the damned RDX gets you - anywhere, inside a railway station or five star hotel, outside a cricket stadium or a middle class shopping zone, or just about on the street, while you are posting a hand-written letter in a letter box in this era of cyberspace?

It's numbing down after dumbing down. Desensitisation after sensitation. Despair after more despair. And helplessness. And the inevitability of acceptance.Everyone says it's most shocking. What's more shocking than most shocking? What's more mindless than most mindless? What's more organised and barbaric than most forms of organised barbarism enacted as a public spectacle? So which carnage is more heart-rending than the other? Gujarat, Mumbai, Kabul, Lahore?

So how is accidental and bloody death not inevitable in the current scheme of things anywhere and in any time and space? Is Indian democracy and its citizens (or cricketers) more protected in that sense? How? If so, why did they not anticipate and block all the blasts all over various cities and the terror attacks in Mumbai? Were not the elite too targeted at the Taj? And why is that the Batla House encounter is being widely perceived as fake? Hardnews has raised these issues time and again.

If 12 suicide bombers with rucksacks or armed criminals try to kill you, how can they be stopped? Especially if you have no jammers, or bullet proof vests, or armed commandoes of Z plus security, no intelligence machinery or sanitized streets, official residences and public spaces, not even the value of your life listed in the official scheme of things. That's what precisely happened to the thousands who have lost their lives in the sub-continent, post 9/11, even while the American policy-makers can only dare to protect its own homeland, leaving all the other so-called ‘strategic partners' to the wolves.

In Pakistan, this is precisely what happened outside the Gaddafi Stadium at Lahore, as it is happening in all parts of Pakistan, including the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and the Marriott Hotel attack in the past. They just don't care. It's impossible to imagine how the prime minister and the president and the army chief is protected in Pakistan. Who protects them? The ISI? As Imran Khan said, the interior minister might be having ten times the security protection as the Sri Lankan team. So what is ten times? Can he too escape the rocket launchers and grenades (or suicide bombers) as the Sri Lankan team, so fortunately and so miraculously did? But the cricketers got hit, the umpires, a driver, cops, they got hit. A couple of umpires were soaked with blood.