365 days later..

26-11-2008. It was the day that Mumbai – the financial capital of the nation came under attack by a handful of militants who came to kill and be killed. I remember having felt strongly about it then and made an entry on this blog about Mumbai being under siege. A month later I followed this entry by another one about agitations and protest while the flame was alive.

365 days later, I wake up this morning to see an interesting headline on one of the leading dailies. It read “31 crores and counting”. Apparently this was the amount of money that was spent on the trial of Ajmal Kasab – the only terrorist who was captured alive and put to trial. One year later, the trial is still on and the judgment is yet nowhere in sight, and this is when there is video and photographic evidence available where he can be seen wielding a gun.

Apart from the above, there were innumerable accounts of people who survived the 26-11 ordeal, there were stories of others who were not as lucky, about a stray dog who was wounded (I am amazed at the editor who approved this one for print actually), about a constable who was hit by a bullet in the stomach and still can not eat without experiencing pain and many other tales that would invoke empathy and sympathy from the reader. (Things that sell like hot cakes in India – tragedy and sorrowful emotional tales and accounts of life of ‘others’). There were still other accounts where singers and people from entertainment fraternity were organizing shows in commemoration of the martyrs of ‘that’ day, someone was planning to produce a film on the subject.

Somewhere along the line I guess, the questions and the lessons learnt from 26-11 have got lost. I still don’t see any political party, any leadership stepping forward to answer the following questions: Are we safer now? Will this fanaticism ever end? What happens to the victims? Will the culprits to such acts ever be punished?

In the last one year, there have been agitations against film stars and their films, media offices have been ransacked, people have been beaten up on the roads on pretext of language and accused of being outsiders in the country where they have been born, political parties have tried all possible ways to gain mileage on the issues that supposedly affect and interest the common man, real estate prices have shot up again, Pakistan has been handed out nuke weapons and know-how by China, Naxalite menace in the eastern states have been on an upswing and I have changed three jobs…

However, questions that matter still remain unanswered.