To Santa Claus?

This morning to Santosh Desai...and to you...to whoever it is who visits here and reads this post.

Dear Santosh :

I react to 'to gather with the rage of others' in today's City City Bang Bang.

I am angry like the rest of us and I want to be able to 'do' something. I believe ( naively?) that there are many other people like me. So yesterday, I spoke to a friend who is a celebrated, young army officer, on a quick climb up the army ranks. I also spoke to a young IAS officer working with the revenue services in Delhi. I asked them what we could do to channelize this rage, since my limited understanding of how things work limits my abilities to act. Both said nothing could be done by anyone. The defense services and the bureaucracy is infested at every level with people wanting to earn brownie points and promotions. The high rage after Kargil took just a few months to be completely forgotten. And that Kargil was equivalent if not more offensive in its damage to our country. As with Kargil, it will take a few weeks for our collective memories to fade. Ditto for the collective rage.

I told them that to me both of them represented the highest calibre of what young India stands for and it was disillusioning and heartbreaking that both of them speak a common language of indifference and defeat. The army guy said " things are not so bad". Whatever that may mean.

I have been thinking ever since that the ONLY was to keep the collective rage alive is if people with media clout ( like YOU) and Bollywood takes it upon themselves to endorse this cause. The rest are dead and we have to bring them to life. If Aamir says often enough that muslim is not equal to terrorist and so does Salman and so does Shahrukh there will be no market for terrorism in this country. And if you and your likes will keep writing about the outrage of what happened last Wednesday - way beyond one month, 6 months and 12 months from today - there may be hope of change.

I am helpless and angry, I can only vent angst by writing to people who I think are a bit more empowered than myself. And I can hope they read obscure blogs...

Rambling on

I hardly have time to watch any movies so I guess the next best thing thats happening to me is that I read the morning papers and howl ! Its actually not a bit funny but I am surprising myself every day by how close I am to blowing my lid. The 'Peace train' from Delhi to Islamabad got blown up on the 19th by a suitcase full of death that went off near Panipat. Some 68 people died, most were Pakis. Yup, I really do hate that word and all that it stands for but I cried when I read about the despair and heartbreak of families who were waiting for a son, a husband or a mother to come back home ! And the abject poverty of some and the situation where some may even not get to see the dead bodies. I watched on TV, next day the Paki Foreign minister Kasuri with wife in tow, arrive to grieve the dead and console the injured. I saw TV bytes of him visiting Safdarjung Hospital and praising the Indian Doctors. I wondered what he felt like to see his poor country men suffer and I felt reassured that he would facilitate those who were still looking for their lost ones. All that forgotten of course under piles of work, household chores, Rayyan's sickness, my own familiar head aches till yesterday afternoon I arrived to catch a meeting at the Taj with a couple of eager 'gora's' who were just back from a very stimulating visit to the Reliance Retail outlet. I have a rather weird way of traveling from the most engaging conversations to anything else that catches my fancy - on the next table, or out of the window, or on the carpet. I need to make quite an effort to bring myself back to where I am supposed to be...but the point is that over enthusiastic discussions about how many crates of onions they saw being taken inside the Reliance Store, I suddenly noticed Mr Kasuri and wife on the next table with their entourage. They seemed waiting for someone and it may have been the merriest group in the lobby ! Mrs Kasuri would admire her manicure, adjust her pashmina and then walk importantly around the lobby making loud noises while Mr Kasuri sat fixed to his seat almost as if he was taking a nap after a heavy meal. She would occasionally whisper things to him and laugh and then again get up for some more kissing in the air to some 'TV anchorish' looking women who probably were setting up an interview. They were all a vulgar bunch of indifference. A few looked bored and sleepy while Mrs Kasuri looked as if she was about burst into a song and a dance ! Maybe I was being judgmental as usual. ....On another table was a large collection of a sikh family sitting quietly staring at everybody else. I saw a short plump girl in a tight sleeveless kurta and a plump sikh boy, looking very pleased with himself sitting next to her on a large table under the canopy. The other women with them looked pensive while 2 old men were huddled in one corner in a secret dialogue. Obviously there was some match making happening here. I looked at the plump girl again. She was staring down at her red shoes. Even Mrs Kasuri was wearing Red stilettos. When I glanced back at the Paki table they were all gone towards the lifts with the camera crew following them. The goras were asking us which other market in the world would draw a parallel to the Indian retail market. We started explaining to them that India was not just one country but many...