Who are the real terrorists?

I always thought that I would write a blog one day, but never knew that it would come after and for the terror attacks in Mumbai (I prefer calling it Bombay). These attacks shook the entire state of my ‘being’. I stay in Pune n yet I feel so scared. It makes me feel that anybody can come around from anywhere and kill me, in my home, in a mall, in a restaurant…..absolutely anywhere. 

But my question is WHY? How did these people have the audacity to come inside our country and kill us? How were they able to step a foot on our land, in the first place? What was our intelligence doing? And if they had passed some information, than what was our government doing? Even a day after attacks, we see on television, how people on coast guard duty are sleeping and taking a day off on Sunday! Daily wagers are being appointed for patrolling!..…God-damn you all……terrorists are better than you people who are dedicated towards killing us and they are very much successful in what they do because of callous people in the administration - be it the ministers, the officers in RAW, IB, Police, Coast Guard, Navy, practically almost every person in the administration. The entire system is CORRUPT. What is the use of sacking ministers like RR Patil and Shivraj Patil? They are being replaced by other good-for-nothing people. What good can PC Chidambaram do as a Home Minister when he has been able to do nothing as a Finance Minister, except for increasing prices of every commodity that a common-man uses? 

Ministers are being sacked. Fine, but next WHAT? We want some concrete action. Not the sacking of ministers in the wake of elections. Public announcements have been made that four zones will have their own NSG. Our question is, WHEN? We want a deadline. We want a confirmed date, and don’t give us that crap that it is a long drawn process and takes time. We know that. But that time should not stretch over years instead of months. And a suggestion for Raj Thackeray and his Sena - if you really want to do something for Maharashtra and Maharashtrians then be a part of Maharashtra NSG. As it is, you and your people are very fond of fighting and killing people. Come out of your hiding and be a true ‘Marathi Manoos’ and do something for your motherland, your Janmabhoomi, your karmabhoomi, your Bombay, your Maharashtra – as you claim it to be.

However, is it enough to create NSG bases in four zones of India?......NO. We also have to secure our international boundaries, be it the coast or land. This time the terrorists have used sea-route and Mumbai’s coast. What is the guarantee that they will not cross boundaries on land? My husband had once met a person who was on-duty at the West Bengal-Bangladesh border. The things that he told were shocking. He said that for miles and miles there is NO wired fencing on our international boundary lines. (Though it is present on Bangladesh’s front!) Secondly, there are hundreds of people who are crossing that border illegally EVERYDAY. And when this BSF guy tried to take some action, he was asked NOT to, by his senior. Can you beat that? And if that was not enough, when our people try to cross the border and go to Bangladesh they are Killed, women are Raped and throw in the no man’s land. When a country like Bangladesh can be so strict (or rather, inhuman) while protecting their border, why can’t we be the same? Why there is always some corrupt senior, who for some money lets these people come inside our land and kill us? 

On an afterthought, I am compelled to say that it is not only the people in the lower rungs of the system who sell themselves for some money and are irresponsible. With such meager wages, I guess there are very few people who would not do the same. The people who decide such paltry wages for them are equally irresponsible (oh! I forgot. If they do not decide such scanty wages, how will they fill up their own pockets?). We watch on television almost every day, the rising earnings of ‘superstar’ actors and ‘cricket-stars’ who earn in lakhs and crores. But do they really deserve to get so much money, when we compare them to our soldiers? Doesn’t, their conscience prick them when they audaciously demand so much money from movie makers, who in-turn extract it from the ordinary movie-goers or from cricket-fans. Isn’t it our soldiers who should be earning in lakhs instead of the actors, cricketers and corrupt politicians? The various cricket boards in the country are so quick to reward money, cars and bikes to someone who hits six sixes or becomes a man-of-the-match. Why can’t we see such promptness when the soldiers put their lives at risks for saving us, as they did recently in Mumbai? Why is there so much disparity in the earnings? 

It is very easy for them to say that we are paying our taxes and now the government should do something fruitful with it. What they are forgetting is that they are public figures and are inspiration for a lot of people. They can always take the first step towards not only bashing the government but also for doing something on their own. In fact, we all can do it. It is we who have to be patient if we have to stand in long queues at the airport, in the malls and multiplexes and go though security checking. We all should take military training for a year so that we are prepared to face challenges. We should let our sons join military forces and serve the nation. (It is applicable for the netas, actors and cricketers too.) We, being common citizens, are wrong at the lower levels. They, being public figures and netas, are wrong on a much higher level, especially the people who are a part of the government and the organizations working for our security. They are not only wrong but responsible for these deaths. It’s high time that they accepted their mistakes, callousness and irresponsibility, learned from it and took severe measures not only to rectify these mistakes but also to see to it that these mistakes do not happen in the future ever again. It is a question of our LIVES for heavens-sake.