25 November 2009

26th November, remembering and realizing.

Today is the 26th of November, 2009. One year after the Mumbai
terrorist attacks. For some reason, a lot of the people who died in
those attacks are being paid tribute to, in various forms, from candle
light vigils to the formation of human chains.

I wonder why we don't pay such tributes to the fifty thousand or more
people we lose in road accidents every year, making us the country
with the most road fatalities in the world. Or to the thousands we
lose to malnutrition, inept medical care, snake bites, murder,
communal riots, food poisoning, disease outbreaks, illicit hooch, and
the myriad ways in which we can reinvent death in our special Indian
way.

What is so freaking heroic about dying at the hand of a terrorist?
And why are we so worried about forgetting them that we keep on
parroting "Lest We Forget"? After all, whether you die in a terror
attack or a road accident, they are both horrible enough, and caused
by some ineptitude somewhere.

When does a victim become a figure worthy of enshrining? Certainly,
it can't be because our news channels suddenly decide your death is
worthy of lighting a candle every year, but the poor sods who consumed
poisonous liquor aren't worth mentioning in the same breath?! After
all, we're all humans and not all of us are going to die of old age.
So, what makes terror victims so much luckier than victims of swine
flu? What the heck qualifies some kinds of death for this exaggerated
show of recollection on the anniversaries?

I think I may have figured this out. It's emotion. We are not very
vocal or expressive about fifty thousand people dying in road
accidents, because it is below our emotional sexiness. It just isn't
as sparkling freaking global in attention grabbing ability as a bunch
of terrorists going crazy with guns and grenades. And, god damn me
for being so picky, but whatever did the people who died from the bomb
explosions in trains in Mumbai some years ago do or didn't do to not
get the same treatment as the rich folks who happened to be at the Taj
hotel when it got attacked? See, again, it is the "sexy" thing! The
Taj hotel under attack looks a lot more like America's sexy Nine
Eleven! Heck, it even has "eleven" in it, only with the date and
month reversed in order.

Now that "eleven" has occupied the top spot for macabre sexiness, it
is easy to deduce that there are, certainly according to Indian
electronic media, only forty one sexy days to attack us on! Any day
in November, that's thirty days, and then the 11th of each of the
remaining 11 months! That's forty one days to get top tier poster
picture attention from the whole country, year after year.
Terrorists, please make sure you got these days marked. Our media
will be really pissed if you attacked us on the 5th of June, for
instance, for it might be a little more awkward to say 5/6, even
though that might total 11! Yikes.

On the subject of paying tribute - why do we pay tribute to poor
victims of barbaric acts? It is not that they died fighting, or died
in any cause for the nation or the human collective. Some of them did
some extraordinary things when under attack, and that is to be
appreciated without a doubt, like that nanny who saved little Moshe,
but almost all others died without a choice. Just like victims of bad
medical care. But there is something really chilling about knowing
you are going to die, isn't there? Like the victims of the
Jallianwallah Bagh massacre in 1919. Those were heroes since they
were fighting for India's freedom, but I wonder how many of them would
have turned up if they knew they were going to be shot at.

This whole "celebration, heroism, tribute" thing bothers me. How many
of these freaking tributes can we handle? Every single day, there is
someone dying somewhere, and the human spirit is being tested like it
has been for centuries. A moment of silence here and there, fine, but
this publicised call for forming human chains, a lot of clowns showing
up with candles and showing "solidarity" with the dead - come on.
That is not even real, unless you share grave space with one of the
victims. It is superficial, fake, emotional feel good mileage that
the living are getting out of the dead. We're fucking delighted and
full of glee that we didn't get shot, but somehow we think those sods
died in our place. It could so easily have been us, couldn't it? So,
we've got to thank them. It doesn't get simpler than this.

It is bizarre enough to dig up old memories repeatedly with the inane
interviews of the survivors on television. Many of them have neither
forgotten nor forgiven. Fair enough. Oh, wait a minute. How about
showing some real respect? If people are unable to forgive and
forget, it is because the karmic cycle has not been completed. It is
a story hanging in balance. We haven't bombed the crap out of our
enemies. We haven't got our REVENGE. That is why we're all souls in
suspended non-violent, unnatural, unfulfilled ambiguity. We are
repressed by this whole system of systematic response. On the other
side, the system of terror must be delighted.

By giving so much attention to these attacks, we're giving terrorists
a place in history. This must be something they salivate over, for
being treated as something so freaking important. That is what
bothers me the most. These fuckheads coming over from Pakistan are
dreadfully ignorant, pathetically regressive in their thinking, and
should be shot for stupidity as soon as they show some of it. But we
not only allow them into our country, we let them shoot our people,
cause mayhem, and then we enshrine them in the media that has a
freaking appetite for celebrities and viewership. A road accident
can't give us that viewership, can it?

We have this readymade orgy of media, public sentiment,
oversimplification of emotional reactions, and uninformed but popular
notions that is ready to jump into action at any time, so long as our
TV looks as compelling as foreign TV. And then all we need to do is
open up these avenues of expressions, catchwords, and public events
that are very easy to subscribe to - and a lot of clowns will show up
with tears generated specifically for this occasion, and candles, and
all kinds of mushy overtones to feed the orgy some more. Tring,
tring, tring - easy viewership, easy money, stay lazy, get a good
name, it is all freaking good, good, good! As in, we're against evil,
evil, evil. Sounds too much like that idiot GW Bush if you ask me,
and we're loving it. Won't be too hard to get some companies to
sponsor these events either. In fact, they would love to come out
officially, "in support of" whatever cause you can con them into
becoming a part of. Trust me, they're dying to be conned into
something simple, just like many of our freak show participants.

Then the TV "personalities", ugh. A bunch of them showed up
yesterday, and said they really want to do something, to show they're
against showing the other cheek, and that they're really angry with
terrorism, that they won't give in, and that they will fight to rid
the world of this menace. What the fuck are they going to do, attack
Pakistani terror camps by themselves? More of the same orgy.

Here is what I would like to say to our victims of terror if they
could listen in - "Really sorry we let this happen to you, brothers
and sisters. Hopefully we will learn from this, and really go after
the bastards who brought this upon you, but this doesn't seem to be a
popular wish right now. Too bad you were born in a democracy, and a
really slow one at that. Don't expect too much from us. May your
journey onward be a more peaceful one."

No comments: