Monday, August 27, 2007

Revisiting India's endless misery

Where are the hosannas to Hyderabad’s 'spirit'? Last heard, life went on as usual in the city that many consider as a new face of modern India. Nameless faceless people were blown apart on their trip to a Chaat House. Yes, in India you cannot even go out to have a 'samosa' or a 'vaada pav' without having to fear being blown up. After injuring and killing close to a 100 people, it has been reported that bombs have been found in close to 19 different places in the city. God forbid if even a few of them had gone off the extent of tragedy it would have caused.

I am not sure if the police setup in Hyderabad (like everywhere else) was sleeping when people went about devising and implementing such heinous plans. The usual routine of blaming everybody in the world but for oneself has begun and the Indian State has begun its favorite merry-go-round routine. Last heard not one person has been arrested, charges filed or punished for the macabre blasts that resulted in a massacre on the local trains of Bombay a year back. Yeah apprehending the real culprits does not serve a purpose... does it?

The trivializing of this gruesome tragedy has already begun in our (not worth a paisa) Indian media. The much vaunted Rajdeep Sardesai's CNN-IBN, the types that bleat elaborately and loudest when some Muslim is arrested in Australia helped the cause of the victims and the enormity of the tragedy with a song routine singing praise of Hyderabad. God damn cheesy...Can it get any worse? But yeah, in the selective amnesia that routinely envelops India media, the life of nameless Indians (may I say Hindus) does not affect the larger scheme of things. Where are all those usual 'liberal' suspects, the Arundathi Roy's, and Shabana Azmi's, Mahesh Bhatt's etc who routinely put on a face of victim hood when it suits them only to turn the other way around when it does not? Not one word of condemnation, a word of sympathy for the victims. I guess its too much to ask for all of this in their otherwise busy schedule.

Why the heck don’t we see serious journalists, looking to find what the heck is going on in our country. What are the countless channels in India who swing around with cameras at even petty house hold fights doing at this moment of a national tragedy?I am pretty sure people in India would be more than interested in seeing the perpetrators of such tragedy brought to justice. Why can’t our intrinsically dumb but intelligent sounding liberal elite of India ever learn a lesson or two from the West on how to protect the national interest? India has seen better days when it comes to serious investigative journalism. I can only think of a Ramnath Goenka and the fabled ‘Indian Express’ of yore to think of a time when journalists actually fought for a worthy cause. It’s downright pathetic that the stupid Indian public consumes the worthless drivel that gets dished out in the name of news and entertainment.

The shameless tamasha that goes around a.k.a the Government of India continues to chug along as Indians are getting blown all around. If one needed any more proof for this, a latest report ranks India as the second (yes second) in a list of countries affected by terrorism only after Iraq...

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Indias_terror_death_toll_second_to_Iraq/articleshow/2312796.cms
I only wish we had an Olympic event for this category... At least we can aim for a gold and puff our chest in pride. So much for the peaceful land of an emerging "superpower" called India...

India continues to devalue and demean the lives of its citizens at its own peril... There is nothing 'spirited' about people being killed and life not being valued. It’s a farce that is being played out and its time we as Indians let go of this ‘I don’t give a damn as long as I am not killed’ attitude. My prayers go out to each and every one of those faceless nameless Indians who have been killed for no fault of theirs except for being born in this hypocritical land called India.