I survived... yet again!!!

I cannot help but write my thoughts on what my numb mind saw and heard on television the last three days. I saw, I heard and what played in my mind was a different story. I do not know why but all my mind could actually see was the images of a destroyed war-struck Afghanistan, as potrayed in the book – “A thousand splendid suns’. I can’t help but dread the possibilities of India turning out to be a disaster story like that. I may be stretching my imagination a bit too far, but isn’t the best way to plan is to plan for the worst? Isn’t that is how the wars are won? Isn’t this how we should as a country prepare ourselves? There I go on again, but these are some of the questions that come to my mind.
Experiencing, discussing, accepting and forgetting such attacks seem to be becoming a way of life here. I cannot even remember the last time blasts made news in India. This is a scary thought. After all how can we solve a problem if we fail to remember? But then, remembering alone doesn’t do any good does it? Neither does writing blogs on this subject. What about cribbing every time a security guard at a movie hall asks to check your bag? What about getting impatient when security personnel demand your id to be displayed in office? Does this help at all? I have always understood that these measures are important and have tried to co operate, but despite the understanding there have been times when I have been irritable on being faced with these situations. If nothing else, these pictures of horror flashed on the TV screens are going to make me more compliant to security measures (whatever little) being taken in the country.
There have been times when we have laughed off the lags in security in the past, only this time am sure there is no one even smiling, except ofcors who wrote death in this drama. I distinctly remember how we made a joke of an incident where when one of our colleagues just walked straight into a Hyderabad cricket ground with the security guards shouting from behind for her bag to be checked. She of course was unaware of the guard and therefore did not bother to stop. Now I wonder what if it wasn’t a normal person unaware of the surroundings and in a rush to watch a cricket match for the first time. Is this how easy for someone to breach highest of security arrangements? The incident did seem funny at the time. Now, after witnessing the terror attack for three days it doesn’t seem so funny.
And now as I sit at 1.30 am in the morning, my mind is playing games with me. Some I sit and try to see forward in the future, and I see streets with blast debris, I see ladies in their darkened houses grieving about their recent losses and taking pride in telling the stories of their old ones. I see a house with smoke coming out of it. Smoke not from the kitchen chimney, but from where just a missile hit it. I shake my head and I see a green valley. I see a girl standing near a stream, the sun turning the stream into sheets of gold. The girl turns and I see a smiling happy India, an India we made. I just want to close my mind, and freeze my thoughts on this happy scene. Freeze it and remember it. So that we know what we need to work at!
PS: Do read the book – A thousand Splendid Suns – by Khaled Hosseini