“We are paying a price in this crazy war, and nobody in the civilized world cares”

Entirely a piece of fiction… the emotion attached to it is of course very much real…

Hasan Jaber, Palestinian journalist

“We are paying a price in this crazy war, and nobody in the civilized world cares”

It wasn’t the flesh or the blood that scared him. Nor did the guts ripped apart by bombs, strewn on the streets, tingle his nerve. If there was one thing that made his hair stand up on the end, it had to be the deadly silence that filled the air in the aftermath.

For Tariq, his green eyes were a source of astonishment in his community which was filled with black eyes. But the eight year old now realized that it didn’t matter anymore because never again in his entire life would his people squeak in delight and say, ‘Look, there’s the boy with colored eyes’. He had lost one eye in the war, he wasn’t sure if it was the bomb that ripped apart his leg or if it was the one that killed his infant sister whom he had been trying to protect. Of his kin, he could only find the ones that were now dead, the alive ones were either prisoners or were indeed dead, only he wasn’t aware of it.

Tariq was too young to understand that his world had literally collapsed around him and that the world that still existed wasn’t his at all. But he knew one thing, he had lost a lot and there was no place else to go.

He went back to his house. He knew it would be empty but it still had the belongings of his family. He wanted to weep but something inside him had died. Years later, when he would be a different man, he said, “That afternoon I died. I couldn’t feel anything inside me. They had taken all I ever knew to be my own. I wanted to be bitter, grief stricken and cry for my loss. But it didn’t work that way. They just made me immune.”

For me this story ends here. But it doesn’t for Tariq. War is indeed an ugly thing. I have never been in the midst of it, so I don’t know the terror, the pain, the anger or the multitude of emotions that go with it. But I read about it. I hear about it. Sadly it is now such an everyday, everywhere thing that it has stopped even registering in the minds and souls of people. War has ugly connotations, unless it strikes close to our homes, it doesn’t strike close to our hearts.

Another black strike….

I have in my life so far been witness to a number of terrorist incidents both in Mumbai and beyond. But nothing beats the nightmare that began 20 hours earlier. The sheer plan of action being executed by the terrorists seems brazen. Fanned out across South Mumbai targeting a hospital, a café, a railway station, a residential complex and two extremely posh and popular hotels, where the terrorists continue to lay siege, has come under the attack.

In this past night I have watched as top cops lose their lives in gun battles, numerous explosions and fires break out, people die, people are rescued and the heritage building of Taj keeps going up in flames.

I’m at present out of the city but I have lived there long enough to have my heart beat to the rhythm of the bustling noise of the city. And I know today must have been a freezing day for the denizens.

Of course there are tons of people with tons of ideas to deal with this. Some say the government is weak, some blame the inefficiency of the law enforcing forces, some believe in shoot-at-sight funda while others continue to be apathetic. I don’t see why anyone should think otherwise, but knowing & having loved the city as I do, it breaks my heart to see anything disrupt its glory and glamour and make it so vulnerable in this manner. I’m no better at devising strategies and bringing up a foolproof plan but as the hours tick away I can only hope that what we lose in this battle doesn’t mar our souls and spirit too badly.