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Im scared of nothingness now. 

Was I craving for it only because I had everything?

Got a really fuzzy head right now.

It's just when you are prepared to lose everything, is when you stop fearing.

But, how do I know Im ready?

No Silent Night, No holy light

My Exams have started today, yet with all the chaos that has erupted with the recent terror attacks at Mumbai have made my fingers itchy and finally i want to get it out of my system.

Since the night of 26th November when I got the shocking news and minute by minute coverage of the horrors unfold in Mumbai, I was speechless. I was glued to the TV for a long time as I was at utter disbelief of witnessing a terror of such magnitude that was happening 500kms away from from my city. We always had this protective mental shield in our head that such things dont happen to us. Slowly that mental shield was being penetrated. The possibility of facing something similar here(also provided the recent blasts in the city) has never been this high.

Since I dont have much time right now to burst into an emotional monologue, I’ll just vent out my current train of thoughts:


1. Stop calling it “India’s 9/11”…the media has made this into a catchy title so that the people of our country feel that we are on the same platform as out American “brothers” were years ago. It’s just to make its sound more glorifying. Treating 9/11 as if it was the only terror attack that shook the world is what the media wants. There have been more horrible terror attacks around the world with heart stopping death tolls and damage that could not be narrowed down to the 9/11 attacks.

Somehow I find the “India’s 9/11” tag disturbing on how we are so keen on relating ourselves to Americans.


2. The difference between last post-terror attack speech given by our PM and the current one is only that he might have been sitting 2 inches to the left. The footage looks like it was last shot at 1983 and the sound quality made him sound like a grandfather announcing his final wishes on his death bed. This is National TV for crying out loud.

Plus with the usual clichés like “We will take strict and immediate action” and “We shall no longer tolerate such attacks” are no longer comforting for anyone. Everytime the nation is attacked all we do is tolerate it and hope that it doesn’t happen again. That’s what India has been. Yes, we are a peace loving country…yes, we are Gandhi’s children…but those principles don’t qualify at such times. You can show them the other cheek so long as that we don’t have any cheeks to show, and at the end its we who get burnt.

Everytime we end up like a dog licking its own wounds mentally satisfying itself that it has the strength to suffer more.

If we suffer more than this, there wont be a population to suffer later on. Our nation is on the brink on a violence similar to that of what happens in the middle east.


3. The day the 26/11 attack happened I had surfed a few forums for discussion and was shocked to find the vox populi with a “FUCK OFF PAKISTAN!” posts carelessly put out with a wide range of expletives (some I hadn’t heard of) and venom which just made me realize its all growing into a vicious circle. Now I have nothing against freedom of speech, I am not against the whole feel of the post (whatever that is), but this is what they call a ‘knee jerk’ reaction.

Now I am in no way defending Pakistan, since it has such a dubious repertoire of playing around cunningly with nations on the diplomacy game. But when people without any knowledge of the situation and conformation make assumptions and spew venom like this, its a sad sight. We call the terrorists bastards for they have no heart, why follow them when we have a logical brain to use. But to think without anger and hatred at such times is too much to ask for. For I am one of the angry people.

I had a friend in school who was a Pakistani and I remember once in school when she accidentally did something wrong one of my classmates’ first reaction was “Damn! Never trust these Pakistanis.” This was something that appalled me for a long time, and made me realize how the hatred had been hard wired into our heads. The current snubbing game was a rerun in my head.

Although with the current scenario people with strong opinions are all set and ready for the nation to “wage a war” on our neighbors, but there’s no point in reacting completely on impulse at times when we are so hurt.

The air no matter what will be tense now, and we as a nation have to be strategic and careful about our actions. Improve our diplomatic relations and other things which I don’t think I’m qualified enough to discuss.

4. People saying ,"Terrorists dont have any religion, they dont have a nationality!" .

Well guess what suckers, statistics disagree.

Also Javed Akhtars statement saying something like, 'This is not a time to play the blame game. We should help each other and rise...blah blah blah!'. Found it funny. When you get hit so bad the first thing you would not want to know is who did it to you? Weird Logic man!

Frankly, this is not time to get all cuddly and lovey dovey and release doves into the air...its serious now.


5. The media! With ample number of news channels to chose from, not one… I repeat…NOT ONE had refrained from putting a cheesy title and a theme music + a trailer of the events taking place.

Plus each channel was more interested in who got the sound of the gunfire’s, grenades, glass shatters rather than focusing on the details of what exactly was happening. Now I know, not showing the actually “action” would be like hiding the truth for some people…but when news presenters yell out, “Look Look, [insert news channel here] has the first exclusive shot of the bullet fired/glass shatter/terrorists hand…” that’s when you realize that they they’re not there to tell you the truth and give you information. Its business.

I swear to god it was a pain in the ass. The moment some news info comes in the presenters would beat around the bush buying our valuable time waiting for ‘THE’ moment to tell you the ‘real’ news. Now I may be counter argued by the fact that they have to buy our time since they don’t get confirmed updates for all info. Well I would have have agreed, but when I saw BBC was showing more pertinent news happening in our country(with really bad pronunciations though) I was shocked at what our 20 news channels here had been singing about.

The whole filmy style news reporting had become a farce, a parody. And it was unbearable. Unfortunately since I didn’t have any other sources, I didn’t have any options. Thank god for the remote though.

That’s when I understood that at the scenes of terror some local people had gathered to watch the “tamasha” as if it was a ‘Big Boss’ episode, but it might have been that even they found the news channels bullshiting them.


Whatever events happening, its sad but the harsh reality is the coming few months might not be that bright.


That’s it for now. Have to study.

More on this later!

Peace!