HAPPY ANNIVERSARY - 26/11

Happy Anniversary

How you guys are planning to celebrate 26/11? Some of you may have a day off and will go for movie, some of you may light up candles at gateway of India for footage, some of you will sit in drawing room and watch last year bizarre with your entire family.

It gives immense pleasure in discussing catastrophe happened on 26/11 with all friends and colleagues but did we realize that there is no escaping the reality: TERROR HAD ENTERED OUR HOMES.

Till 25th Nov Raj Thackeray and his people can be seen on every street of Mumbai, forcing non maharashtrians to leave Mumbai. He says that Mumbai belongs to MARATHI so where were Marathi people when terrorists were attacking Taj, Oberoi. It is very easy for 1000 MNS activists to beat 100 Non Maharashtrians…… but they got threatened by only 10 terrorists…what a SHAME!!!!!!

26/11 in many ways was not a wake-up call just for the Indian security system. Nor a show to expose the porosity of our security system but in real terms was as reminder of the disengagement of the average Indian from India. In “Mumbai Meri Jaan”, Nishikant Kamath said “if we didn’t took any step now then for next generation these explosions and blasts would be the party of daily life “
But we are still busy in making most use of 26/11 incident. Politicians are busy in increasing their vote banks by blaming govt for 26/11 incident, one of leading mobile service provider has very creatively found the way to propagate its product “26 nov ko aap 8:30 se 9:30 tak jitney call karenge wo Mumbai police ko jaenge. conditions apply* “ and so on…

Almost twelve months later, we are still quite befuddled by the David Headleys of the world and their exemption and at the lack of any co-ordinated intelligence gathering system that ideally should have been in place by now. But then as in Shakespeare's words, the fault lies not in our stars but in ourselves and that is the real point. We have sadly become a nation that is Teflon-coated because we genuinely believe this 'system' is cruel and there is nothing we as common men and women can do. This is perhaps the best way of perpetrating the evil of the system.
So where do we go from here? Shall we give up and wait for the next catastrophe to befall us? Should we send out armies of young men and women to light symbolic candles? Where neither the light illuminates nor the fire stokes our imagination into moving forward? Or should we decide that this nation as an integrated entity, cannot forget 26/11. Not because it was 26/11 but because it exposed every facet of our governance and security architecture and all the talk of GDP growth figures.
But I guess the time now is for anger. If people are not engaged then one way of getting them engaged is by getting them enraged: and here I propose positive anger which in essence is the inability to tolerate injustice and deceit and the complete abhorrence of both in our daily lives. The sad part is that tolerance is good in most areas but terrible when it comes to accepting lives being lost only because we as a nation didn't care (and even today perhaps don't as much) about lives being lost. About children being orphaned and women being widowed. 26/11 has a lesson, we should have learnt. And we still have time to learn it. It is this engagement that needs to occupy our hearts and minds. We need to fight for every Indian to live with dignity. We need to fight against being taken for granted. We need to fight for the memories of the Kangs, the Kamtes and the Karkares.