Life and other weird things

Like millions of Indians, I spent the weekend in a mood that can best be described as 'pissed'.

A place in Mumbai which I loved was marred by murderers. People like me were gunned down in a cafe. A railway station I frequented often looked like the aftermath of a bad slasher movie.
To make a bad thing worse, there were monumental bastards like R.R.Patil saying things like 'Small things like this happen in big cities' (he used the word 'haadsa' or 'incident' to describe the carnage), Vilasrao Deshmukh taking a 'terror tour' in the Taj Hotel with sonny boy Ritesh and film maker Ramu Varma, and political parties in Mumbai placing billboards in the city with their party logos on them while ostensibly venerating fallen policemen.

Though I respect Manmohan Singh as a formidable intellectual, he clearly lacks any attitude required of a national leader. His speech post the all party meet in the wake of this mass murder ranks among one of the most lackadaisical public speeches ever. It even led me to think that George Bush - a man who made dribbling morons look like prodigies - showed more spunk and raw passion when he promised a serious ass-kicking to anyone who harbored terrorists post the 9/11 massacre. Dr. Singh on the other hand was reading out a script and looked like a tired schoolboy reading out an essay on 'What I would like to be when I grow up'. At least the much maligned 'foreign devil' Sonia Gandhi was gutsy enough to say that the government led by her party had failed to provide a sense of security to their employers - the Indian people.

In the middle of this piles of incompetence and injustice, I couldn't but help admire some people.
First - the Mumbai Police, the ATS, NSG commandoes, and any other forces who put themselves in the line of fire to flush out the murderers. Second - the many staff of the Taj hotel who tried to save their guests, many times at peril of their own lives. Third - the group of people who stopped Azam Amir Kasab near Girgaum and pumelled the shit out of him.

After many discussion with friends and family, here are my two bits about this carefully planned bout of sadism.

• Terrorist outfits can supply weapons of any kind, but the level of training, planning and determination shown by the group of mercenaries in Mumbai can come out only as a result of professional army training. It's simply impossible that a group of people can gain such courage, expertise at urban warfare, communication and intelligence into building topology without active assistace from an army. I seriously doubt if Al Qaeda or Lashkar e Toiba or Deccan Mujahadeen or whoever has the technology or the skill to impart such excellent training.
• It's fashionable to say 'the government had intelligence about attacks on hotels but did nothing'. Undoubtedly, the coordination between the intelligence groups and the state leaves a lot to be desired. But we need to realise that the intelligence on hotels was one among many intelligence warnings. To follow up on each and every percieved threat is much more difficult for the state than we think.
• I would strongly support an Indian army attack into the 'indigenous freedom fighters' training camps in Pakistani Kashmir. I'm sure the Army knows exactly where many of these are located. Just missile the sons of bitches. No questions. Show them that we mean business. Show some muscle.
• The government needs to get some good diplomats into the US to do some active lobbying on behalf of India. Get some good fundraisers out there. Build support for India there.
• Citizens need to be made aware that any suspicious behaviour needs to be reported to the police. And of course the police should be made aware that they need to get off their asses and work on these reports from the public - no matter how many hoax calls are made. When our politicos make their next free visit abroad they could learn how the English and Singaporeans do this.
• Barkha Dutt is getting on my nerves. Her fake emotions, her dramatization of events and her loud screechy voice is irritating - to say the least. It wouldn't be wrong to say that I hate her.
• If I hear another word about how Muslim militants still remember Ayodhya and continue to kill people, I am going to throw up. Remember, apalling though the destruction of the Babri Masjid was - NO ONE WAS KILLED DOING IT.
• The defence forces need to advertise themselves more to recruit the cream of the Indian youth.

I would like to believe that this attack on my country would not be brushed off by my elected leaders like so many other attacks have. Hell, we need to send a signal to the enemy. And let's not kid ourselves - the enemy is Pakistan. It may not be Asif Zardari as a person or even the ruling class, but it is Pakistan as a country. It's sections of the Pakistani army which arms and trains murdering youth. Yes, they have terrorist attacks on their own soil. But that doesn't change the fact that these men are trained in their country, by their citizens, and with active help from rougue army men and the ISI. The Indian government needs to send a clear message to these criminals that it's not going to take things lying down. And that message cannot be in the form of a strongly worded letter. It has to take the shape of a well loaded missile.

Was shocked to read that one of my favorite authors Michael Crichton died of cancer this morning.

Crichton was one of the best writers whose works I have read.

I was in about 10 or 11 years old when I saw Jurassic Park on screen (Plaza, Bangalore - Rs 17.50 for a balcony seat). Within a week, I had raided the school library to read the book. The library didn't have it. I went down to the principal's room, and told him that I thought the library should have this book. I was lucky to be in a school which encouraged this sort of thing. The principal, Mr. Benny Joseph, told me that I could buy the book and bring it to the library; the school would reimburse the money. Over the next few years, I ended up buying Jurassic Park, The Lost World, Sphere, The Andromeda Strain and The Great Train Robbery for the school. Each time I bought a new book for the school, I was asked to review it at the morning assembly.

In later years, reading a new Crichton book meant about 3 days of unadultrated pleasure. I can remember where I was when I first read Timeline, Prey, State of Fear and Next. A new Crichton story was an event in itself. The combination of science, general knowledge and a smacking good story line was not something to be found in the works of any other writer I knew.

I remember the last time I felt this bad was in 1992, when Satyajit Ray died. I was in my grandmother's house in Calcutta when we got the news. I hid in a corner and cried for about a minute. I just couldn't believe there would not be any more Feluda stories.

Just like I can't believe there won't be any more gripping science fiction thrillers from Crichton's pen, which will make me lose all sense of time as I read them.

Michael Crichton, you will be missed.