ignorance or apathy – don’t know, don’t care

So there has been another series of bomb blasts in Mumbai.  That it has happened is absolutely horrible and terribly tragic.  That it continues to happen with regularity is utterly outrageous and absurd.  And unfortunately, that it will continue to happen seems to be just as inevitable.  As per the accepted norm, political parties will now try to gain political mileage out of this tragedy and score academic points over their rivals; jingoistic appeals to patriotism will be made as vested interests seek to advance their own political agenda by putting an appropriate spin on the tragic happenings; government spokespersons will be asked so-called tough questions by the media and they will easily duck and dodge these with the agility and quickness of nervous cats in a strange alley; hitherto obscure security experts and their uncles will come out of the woodwork for their fifteen minutes of fame and advise visibly angry and upset TV anchors about what we could have done, what we should have done and what we ought to do; and even radio jockeys will jump on the media bandwagon and run inane opinion contests on their respective stations in a bid to grab the largest share of earlobes.

Meanwhile, ordinary citizens will furiously vent their ire and angst on national television with the news anchors goading them on to even greater heights of vitriolic oratory; bollywood celebrities and many other fortunate netizens will update their preferred social networking statuses to express extreme emotions ranging from acute rage to complete despair and helplessness; some of the more hot-headed among them will even call for a full-scale war to finish this menace once and for all; others will demand measured surgical strikes into enemy territory to wipe out terrorist hide-outs and training camps; and there will also be those, albeit in a minority, who talk about how peace is imperative if we are all to survive another decade.  The overwhelming tenor of public sentiment, not surprisingly, will be that it is high time the government took some “action” although, if questioned, no one would quite be able to articulate exactly what that action should be; still, some of the more liberal intelligentsia will organize candle-light rallies and marches, and read each others poetry at joint peace conferences in five-star hotel ballrooms, as examples of concrete action.

Responding to this strong public sentiment, the government will of course set up an investigation team, and possibly a commission or two, to probe into this latest outrage (whose report with any luck could be expected anytime in the next decade or two); there will be shrill posturing in international fora for a while as the government mounts an international diplomatic offensive; world leaders will express sympathy and condolences in public even as they are secretly glad that it is not them who will have to fix this crap – at least in this instance; the appointed commission will eventually recommend measures like having even more bureaucracy at state and national level to coordinate law-enforcement efforts of the half-a-dozen or so agencies involved in various capacities – agencies that are already trying hard not to step on each others’ toes or get into political turf battles (at least publicly); and some of these recommendations may even be implemented by the time our children grow to adulthood.  Last, but certainly not the least, even if there is any significant progress in the investigations and some alleged perpetrators are caught there is always the criminal justice system to take advantage of in a bid to delay the proceedings until the accused pass away into a happy afterlife, most likely of natural causes.

All this will go on for a few days until eventually even this horrific incident starts fading from public memory as more mundane concerns – like making a living – start taking up more and more of the collective public attention span; the media will find some other story to grab eyeballs (like the ridiculously high legal drinking age, to take one example); government spokespersons will quickly move on to hooking or ducking some new bouncers; the opposition will go back to trying to destabilize and topple the government so that they themselves can get a chance to show the voting public how much more inept they can be; until finally only those who have suffered in this tragedy, those who are no more and those whom they have left behind, will continue to remember and grieve and hope that time will really heal …

until the next time.  and the next.  and the next.  and.

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