A Day that will Live in Infamy |26/11

It was like any other day for most of us. I personally was working when my boss came and told me that he was glued to the TV and found it impossible to leave. It was the first I heard of it. I finally reached home at night and my granny  and aunt too were glued to the TV. The horror of the incident sank it and it was overwhelming. 

This was unprecedented and utterly shocking. To add to the horror was my astonishment due to the fact that the various news channels had used the footage they had, added some music to it and splashed some text to emphasise their own message. There was yet another channel where the interviewer 'X' asked 'Y', a lady, as to how she felt knowing that her husband was trapped inside the Taj. I was infuriated and wondered why these people were so insensitive and how they would respond if they were in the same position.

I'm not the impulsive sort, I wish I was, because I had actually, honestly wanted to book a ticket and rush to Mumbai and be there as it happened so that I could 'feel' the pain. The whole country watched those three tumultuous days on the TV but to be there at that point in time was an entirely different thing. Otherwise, I felt this would be like reading any other headline in a paper and forgetting about it. I had also wanted to write an article to a newspaper, which I ultimately didn't, hence this blog. 

The next few days after the attack, reminded me, of a book by William Shirer, who was a war correspondent posted in Berlin before and during the first few years of World War II. He describes painstakingly the atmosphere in the months, weeks, days before WWII began. Part of it had an eery resemblance to conditions at home and the other side of the border. Was this it, I wondered? Endgame? 

Among an early barrage of rebuttals by our neighbour, came an allegation that India herself had been involved in the attack. It reminded me of the Nazi Fall Weiss (Case White) Directive whereby they faked a Polish invasion into Germany to justify their invasion of Poland in 1939. India's Case White apparently. Obviously we all knew that a long, endless game of ping-pong had begun in the subcontinent. In the course of the last few weeks, interesting theories such as Kasab's death, Bangladesh's involvement etc. surfaced and the only direction left for fingers to be pointed, was up.

Obviously the Nations involved know what even a slight slip up could result in, that being said, no real action has been taken and bombs still surface in various cities across the country. Security in majorly populately areas is still in a pathetic condition and there are still opportunities waiting for these terrorists to strike again. When will we learn? Will we ever learn? Diplomacy is necessiated at times but to use it at the wrong time is a tragic blunder. 

Unfortunately, we all know the state of affairs and the light at the end of the tunnel is nowhere in sight, in the end, everyone loses and by the time any action is taken, all those poor souls that lost their lives that day, civilians and heroes would have faded away into obscurity.

-Nikhil