Black diwali

You know that you are no more young when your younger brother wears three-quarters and you think it is childish. Well, atleast that's what happened to me when I met my folks for Diwali. Oh, by the way, hope all you guys and gals had a happy diwali !

Speaking of Diwali, it sure was a really black one for all of us. With the triple bomb blasts in Delhi, it was a tainted diwali for us Indians. Stuff like this has been happening for a while now. Innocent civilians have been dying every day, every week for many years now. Personally, my patience has really run out. Its really difficult to keep one's cool especially after seeing the gory scenes on the news. Its one thing to read a statistic in the newspaper and another to see victims' guts sprayed inside out on the streets and bodies of children everywhere. Its all so disgusting that its hard to feel anything but hatred. Faith in humanity seems to be lost. And then one hears about people, like the bus driver and conductor who emptied the bus and saved many lives. And some faith is restored. The driver lost one eye while disposing the bomb but many families will eternally be grateful to him.

One thing that hurts the most is the extremely low value we place on human lives. We read news of terrorist acts in the same breath as cricket scores. And we dont flinch. Not a bit. What does it take for the government to sit straight and take notice ? The parliament, the center of the democracy, was attacked not long back. And what did we do ? Move our troops to the border, made all kinds of noises. And retreated.

No, I don't want war. The lives of innocent people cannot be avenged by killing more innocent people. But something should be done to construct a very effective deterrent. A country of a billion people, a wannabe superpower, if it cannot protect the lives of its own, if a few puny mercenaries can make mockery out of its border security, such a nation will never be taken seriously.
Its high time we took off our Mahatma Gandhi robe and put on the garbs of Sardar Patel and Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose.