Back to Normal

After 3 days of terror and gun battles, I heard on television that things are returning to normal, but my question here is why? Why are we hoping that the things will return to normal or why are we expecting them to be normal? We have witnessed one of the worst acts of terrorism. Hundreds of people have lost their lives. Our armymen fought for about 60 hours without food and sleep. We have suffered a loss of about 4200 crores in 3 days and we are hoping and expecting that things will return to normal. Another question here, till when? Till when we can hope things will be normal, till next strike? Till next bomb blast? Till next plane hijack? I think we are becoming more like a herd of cattle rather being a nation which can raise its head against the atrocities done against it. I will try to prove my point here with an illustration. I hope many of us must have seen wildlife programs on national geographic channel at times, or say Discovery channel where they show a herd of buffalos being attacked by lions. Have you ever noticed how they behave in that scenario? I will tell you, first when the lion attacks there is chaos, then he set eyes on the weakest of the lot and concentrates his energy to chase down that one and kill it. When he is chasing his prey, the others either run away or stand there doing nothing, and when the hunt is over and the lion has started eating his prey, the other buffaloes start grazing nearby as if happy that they survived another attack and will get another day to live. This is how we have been behaving, but there is another side of this story, sometimes back only I saw a video in which two water buffaloes chased a lion attacking their herd to save their calf. The lion beat a hasty retreat when chased and attacked by the buffaloes. Can’t we expect ourselves to do that? Since last 4 days I am hearing people from different walks of life voicing their opinion on the attacks. I heard some of the prominent personalities, talking about the failure on government’s part to curb terrorism and to stop these kinds of events from happening. Everyone has an opinion but none is ready to take action. I urge all these people talking on the national television so passionately about changing the scenario in India, to come down on the streets and take charge of the movement against the terrorism and the rotten system. I have my doubts that anyone will come forward. It’s very easy to blame the government and the system for whatever wrong happens, but it’s very difficult to take charge and lead a revolution. One of my friends made a very interesting point, he said that we may curse George Bush for attacking Iraq and Afghanistan, but one thing to be noted is that in last 7 years after 9/11, USA has not suffered a single terrorist strike against it. I don’t support Bush on his War against these nations completely, but I felt that somewhere my friend had a point. He may have not won the popularity vote in the world but he was successful in doing what he was suppose to do in that kind of scenario, take the battle to the home of enemy and tell him that for us, the lives of our countrymen matter a lot. We have suffered loss of hundreds of lives within a span of one year only. Our so called leaders have tried their best in these scenarios, to cash on them and try to swing the vote pendulum there way, they have become so shameless that even the death of their own countrymen seems a good opportunity for their personal gains and we have become so senseless and incapable that we elect them in every term for representing us. Innumerable bomb blasts have rocked some of the major cities of our country in last one year but we have always felt, hoped and expected that things will return to normal, and to top it all we name it as “Indian Spirit” which terrorism can’t kill. I personally feel it has been killed much much earlier and now whatever remains is just a hope that whenever there is next strike me, my friends and relatives would be safe and after that things will automatically return to normal…..till the next strike.