IDENTIFYING ONE AMONGST US
After a heavy dose of IPL match, I was surfing channels on television to cheer up my soul on an otherwise boring Sunday evening. Suddenly a ticker flashed across the TV screen on one of the news channels. It said the ATS had nabbed a terrorist suspect from a posh residential area in my city, Ahmedabad. In a country where glamour and cricket were the only two TRP grabbers, lately terrorism is the third and regular limelight-hogger. And today after cricket, yet another terrorist had successfully managed to hog the limelight, I thought.
After zooming in the camera on the suspect’s covered face (God knows why do they cover the faces of such shameless creatures) and showing pointers on him, the footage shifted to the residential apartment where the culprit lived since past couple of days. My heart skipped a beat when I read ‘Parishram Apartments’. That’s exactly the same place where my uncle’s family lives. It definitely came as a shocker to me, while my other family members panicked.
As we made calls to uncle, they too were equally shocked to hear about it could not believe that a terrorist suspect was staying within their compound, few feet away and yet they were not able to identify him – seemed as it they are blindfolded. They also mentioned that they heard similar stories of a suspect staying somewhere around but dismissed it as rumours.
Through this incident my mind concluded many things, which otherwise I would have never zeroed in on:
- Going down the memory lane I remembered my school days when a group of boys was rusticated from school for one week. Their fault was that they burst a cracker (‘sutli’ bomb) in the school’s toilet. Fortunately no one was harmed but the notorious group was punished for their behaviour of misconduct. But today the sight and noise of bombs have become so common that no one pays any heed to tiffin bombs, cycle bombs or pepsi bombs that very conveniently destroy not only public places but also personal lives. How good it would have been, if our government was as strict as my school principal – suspend the culprit!
- Terrorism has become a daily affair and managed to creep into our lives so conveniently that we are hardly affected by it. We have become so immune to the terms like ‘bomb blasts’, ‘terror’, ‘guns’ and ‘attacks’ that we have the guts to discard it as rumours.
- We realize the meaning of the word ‘terror’ only when it happens to either us or someone close to us. Most people hear or watch it happening somewhere else… gossip, crib, play the blame game and forget. But people who have suffered, have almost lost their world.
It’s time to wake up and look around… but for whom??? Would we be able to identify him if he comes face to face? Does he have horns on head or tail behind?
He has no different face than ours; no different place to live. He is one amongst us; he is always around us… Either he is nabbed or is successful in his act, but every time such incidents occur they remind us about only one thing… that he is omnipresent, watching us with scheming mind and always on the run to pierce our lives… to destroy mankind as well as nature and they think that Allah unko jannat naseeb karen???!
After zooming in the camera on the suspect’s covered face (God knows why do they cover the faces of such shameless creatures) and showing pointers on him, the footage shifted to the residential apartment where the culprit lived since past couple of days. My heart skipped a beat when I read ‘Parishram Apartments’. That’s exactly the same place where my uncle’s family lives. It definitely came as a shocker to me, while my other family members panicked.
As we made calls to uncle, they too were equally shocked to hear about it could not believe that a terrorist suspect was staying within their compound, few feet away and yet they were not able to identify him – seemed as it they are blindfolded. They also mentioned that they heard similar stories of a suspect staying somewhere around but dismissed it as rumours.
Through this incident my mind concluded many things, which otherwise I would have never zeroed in on:
- Going down the memory lane I remembered my school days when a group of boys was rusticated from school for one week. Their fault was that they burst a cracker (‘sutli’ bomb) in the school’s toilet. Fortunately no one was harmed but the notorious group was punished for their behaviour of misconduct. But today the sight and noise of bombs have become so common that no one pays any heed to tiffin bombs, cycle bombs or pepsi bombs that very conveniently destroy not only public places but also personal lives. How good it would have been, if our government was as strict as my school principal – suspend the culprit!
- Terrorism has become a daily affair and managed to creep into our lives so conveniently that we are hardly affected by it. We have become so immune to the terms like ‘bomb blasts’, ‘terror’, ‘guns’ and ‘attacks’ that we have the guts to discard it as rumours.
- We realize the meaning of the word ‘terror’ only when it happens to either us or someone close to us. Most people hear or watch it happening somewhere else… gossip, crib, play the blame game and forget. But people who have suffered, have almost lost their world.
It’s time to wake up and look around… but for whom??? Would we be able to identify him if he comes face to face? Does he have horns on head or tail behind?
He has no different face than ours; no different place to live. He is one amongst us; he is always around us… Either he is nabbed or is successful in his act, but every time such incidents occur they remind us about only one thing… that he is omnipresent, watching us with scheming mind and always on the run to pierce our lives… to destroy mankind as well as nature and they think that Allah unko jannat naseeb karen???!
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