I vividly remember this early morning bus-ride to school. We had divided ourselves into groups of four and were playing, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” Our team, we had called it ‘Bombay’, had said, “Win battles!” I never challenged this statement since fourth grade. I didn’t, even over the last weekend.
Bombay seems to stand above these dastardly attacks of reproachful helplessness, untouched. Bleeding physically, but untouched in spirit, in soul; tears well in its eyes, but it stares the enemy in his eye with a mocking astonishment at the discovery of his cowardice, at the discovery that his power is only an orchestration of his mind.
There had been premonitory echoes of this currish scheme of the enemy throughout the year, in his half-hinted attempts to shake up the nation, in parts. All along, the nation smiled its characteristic smile, the smile that is a man’s substitute for breaking into tears, a smile of patience, of holding back even under grave provocation.
Holding back is a matter of pointless indulgence now. It is only parochial sentiment. It is a virtue wasted on this enemy.
The nation feels a stab of regret; regret over the million lives lost over its glamorous virtue.
But the seeming corpse has awakened to life and to power, and in an oddly quiet aggression is saying, “No more!”
In the Muslim neighbourhood clustered around Chandni Chowk, from behind the chick-blinds of her window, the widow is saying, “No more!”
Amidst his insistent rattle on ministerial resignations, the non-descript opposition member is saying, “No more!”
The fancy-peddling young rickshaw-wallah who spent too much money on liquor last night is saying, “No more!”
The school girls at the bus-stop, giggling uncontrollably at the prospect of saying something in unison, are saying, “No more!”
The Seth, shooing away the little clustered whirlwinds of flies around sweet-meat on his counter, is saying, “No more!”
The itinerant street vendor, packing berries for the little urchins in twists of paper, is saying, “No more!”
On the CST train platform, the clerk, standing wreathed in smoke, waiting for the 8:10, is saying, “No more!”
The flicker of candles lit to pay tributes to the Hemant Karkares of India, the hope of the hundred million Muslims of India, the prayers of middle-aged ‘satsang’ women, the indignant voices of media reporters, the angry jostling of boys in bus-queues, the force of the teacher’s beating on the knuckles, the restless honking at traffic signals is saying,
“No more!”
---End of an era---
Sensational end of the sensational silence of the nation against terrorism!
