Hitting Home?

The recent Mumbai violence adds yet another chapter to the history of terrorism in our country. As a generation that has grown up on live telecasts of inhumane perpertrations I would say that we have reached a level of immunity of sorts. Many of us would not even blink an eye if we were to a see a death toll figure of 10-15. Should it touch the 100s, then probably we would watch a couple of bulletins more. But for some reason, these Mumbai riots seem to hit where it hurt the most. This was no longer about some nameless faces that would anyways have gone down in the banal histories of the slum world. This was in hotels we could possibly have been it, restaurants that we could have been eating in, places where we could have been taking a late night stroll. Scenes of families with small children coming of hotels after harrowing hours of captivity made me want to hold my daughter more closer. It made me wonder whether I would ever want to allow her to go out for lunch with her friends when she reaches that age. What if she never came back? What would it be like having to stand outside a hotel being pummelled with grenades and not know whether your child will make it out of there alive? Would the resignation of a Home Minister make any difference to the people whose lives will no longer be the same? Will empty promises of better security measures be any kind of salve for a heart that is broken beyond repair? When you hear of how the terrorists wreaked their horror on innocents it makes you wonder what you would have done if you were face to face with them?
You don't need to be formally educated to think in such ways. These are feelings that almost everyone across the country are feeling right now. So it makes me wonder ... don't the powers that be introspect in such ways? Bad enough that they waited for a Kashmir to happen in Mumbai ... but does that mean that there is no end to this? If a lone terrorist could hold a column of the commandoes at bay for more than 24 hours, the dark sense of determination is worth applauding. Why then can't the powers that be have the same zeal when it comes to protecting the very people who put them where they are...
At the time of writing this post, politicians are being taken on walking tour to survey the damage within the hotels that came under strike ... spotlights are being held so that their hallowed feet are not scratched on the shards of glass. The same exercise has been done millions of times before ... shouldn't we have, by now, reached a stage where we were not faced with a situation of having to conduct such terror tours ....