WE CANNOT HANDLE THIS

Usually, I would have spectacularly dissed Singh, Advani, Sonia, Deshmukh etc and the so-called intelligence officers, I would have cursed and abused them freely with no editor around to censor my cuss words, but I won’t. Because I am no longer furious, I have lost that emotion. I feel humiliated, depressed, mind-fucked and impotent.

Not just because it’s one more massacre of my city, but also because of the places that have been brutalised. The Taj and The Oberoi are hotels I have grown up with, they have been a part of my life, as I am sure is the case with many of you fellow Bombayites. I have dated inside their romantic restaurants. I have fallen in love inside them. I have held and participated in events and ceremonies inside their glittering halls. I have shopped in their happening arcades. I have done many interviews inside their corporate offices. I have surreptitiously gone to pee inside their glitzy loos on broke evenings. I had my first ciggie on the steps of the Taj on a rainy night. Hell, I almost signed up at the Taj as a management trainee, but opted for the ad world. So when I see these two members of my ‘family’ burn, I burn inside. There is no rage, only a sense of mourning, the loss of a loved one, the rape of a loved one.

There’s another reason for loss of anger: I have now concluded our mantris and our spies are not competent to handle the terror issue. Which is why we get impudently attacked every other day. They are irrelevant to the solution to this menace. In fact, they compound it further by politicising every bomb and every bullet. But we cannot change our political system for now as there is mass illiteracy in this nation, and till such time the masses become more educated and aware, we will continue to be ruled by these jokers.

My belief is there is only one way forward: we need to set ego and pride aside, admit that we cannot deal with terror, and we need to invite the Yank, the Brit and the Israeli specialists to come and take charge of the anti-terror wing of the nation for a couple of years. They lead, they take decisions, we follow and learn, as simple as that. Sounds blasphemous and crazy? Not really. If we can have their CEOs to run companies in India, if we can have their coaches to run our sports, if we boast of a global world, why can’t we extend that to terror, especially since we clearly aren’t capable in that field. That America has not been hit for seven years, tells us why they seem to know this gig better. Just as the Mumbai police could not handle these criminals, and the NSG had to be called in, why don’t we use the same diagram on a larger, international scale?

There’s one more reason I suggest this: If the world finally discovers first-hand that it is Pakistan that’s directly behind terror in India (right now no one believes that claim, because Advani blames the Pakis when he finds a frickin fly in his tomato soup), they are more likely to support us in a full and frontal conflict with our neighbour. Which, at some point, could become an inevitability.

If you agree with this idea, write to me, will help launch a pressure campaign on the government to make this happen. We have the power to do at least that. To put pressure.

There is no point getting furious and all worked-up. It’s time to find hard solutions, to act. We must. Because our netas won’t on their own.