I’m angry. No, angry doesn’t begin to describe how I feel. I’m furious. Incensed. Livid. Fuming. I’m every single word in the thesaurus that describes the condition we all know as anger, and a lot more that no word can really describe.
But it isn’t the terrorists who’ve reduced me to such a state of gibbering rage that, till this morning, I thought this column would consist only of expletives. And though the urge — no, the need – to disembowel people with my bare hands is very strong, it isn’t the terrorists I want to take apart. (Though I do want some revenge on those silly little boys who think that, just because they have guns, grenades and explosives that the people they plan to massacre don’t have, they’re such heroes.)
It isn’t terrorists I want to vent my anger on. It’s another set of people altogether. People I consider worse than terrorists because they’re the ones who create the situations that turn the average adolescent idiot into a wannabe ‘hero’ in the first place. Politicians.
As I watched the horrifying events of the last few days, I realised one thing. We have no leaders. Only politicians. Not one of the people in charge of our country, state and city, said or did anything constructive. Nor did anyone in the opposition. The only thing that came across when Mumbai was under siege is that elections are on or will happen soon, and our ‘leaders’ are terribly concerned about who will get what gaddi on what basis and how after this attack.
{{/usCountry}}As I watched the horrifying events of the last few days, I realised one thing. We have no leaders. Only politicians. Not one of the people in charge of our country, state and city, said or did anything constructive. Nor did anyone in the opposition. The only thing that came across when Mumbai was under siege is that elections are on or will happen soon, and our ‘leaders’ are terribly concerned about who will get what gaddi on what basis and how after this attack.
{{/usCountry}}There’s another set of people I want to lynch. Us. Myself included. Because we created these politicians. Either we buy into their often divisive rhetoric because it’s useful, or we ignore them because what has politics got to do with us?
Well, politics has a lot to do with us. In case we forgot, this is a democracy. The people who lead us are people we choose to lead us. And, at least since I first got my vote 20 years ago, it seems we’ve consistently chosen only dirt.
Last week I read The Crow Chronicles by Ranjit Lal, a brilliant satire on India — its people, politics and passivity. In the book, the birds of Keoladeo National Park, ruled by a corrupt, though democratically elected government, are taken over by an ambitious white crow and his cohorts, leading to chaos and many, many giggle-worthy scenes that are so recognisable in our everyday lives.
But though I loved the book, I’m sure I’d have forgotten it if my city hadn’t been subjected to one of the worst terrorist attacks in the country ever. Suddenly, The Crow Chronicles didn’t seem funny. Because Keoladeo National Park is so India, it seemed very, very scary.
I’m all for us trying to get back to normal. But if the normalcy we achieve is the same passive, unthinking normalcy we had before the attacks, we’ll have more silly little boys gathering guns and grenades and setting out to be such heroes.