The Strange World We Live In

Well folks, the terrorists did it again! After spoiling my birthday for ever the last time they struck in the pre dussehra-diwali period, they have targeted the markets again. The truth is, we are all sitting ducks. Out of the teeming millions that throng markets it is next to impossible for the police to weed out the terrorists and these guys know it! These young boys feel a sense of power, doubtless, at the easy way in which they can gain notoriety. The police are clueless and other than finding out what sort of explosives were used and what vessels they were put in, AFTER the event occurs, they are helpless. This time the guys were also wearing black, they are doing it in uniform and yet nothing will happen! What can happen if stringent laws are passed is that a few innocent chaps who happen to belong to a particular religion will be caught and tortured. I do not claim to know the solution but neither the BJP demands for terror laws nor the watered down approach of the government has satisfied me in any way. There is the lurking feeling that we can be blown apart any time, we and our children are not safe. Never before was death more powerful that life. The finality and inevitability of it never so stark and real. It has become larger than life itself, breathing down over shoulders all the time. Is live so meaningless, then, to be sacrificed at the alter of hatred and religious bigotry and assertion of political superiority. What is all this for, after all, why was religion and God invented in the first place? So that human beings should live.. they shold love each other and enjoy the world they are in, but primarily for the preservation of life. Now, religion is a means to end that same human life. None of us know what happens after death, neither us nor all those saints who have come before us. The saints essentially have taught us how to live on this earth and that is with love and tolerance. It is ironic that their teachings are so contorted that they have come to mean the exact opposite-intolerance and violent reactions. We have slowly become a rigid group of people scarcely able to stand each other having to share -due to the lack of choice-the same planet! Doing one injustice after another upon our fellow beings, thus perpetuating this chain of injustices. This hatred of the other nagates the essence of the Indian culture which is -unity in diversity. After killing everyone who thinks differently, if the fundamentalist finds himself alone with just another co-believer, given time differences will crop up even between the two living beings. So what is the solution-a separate planet for every individual??