Let us not light a few candles this time. I hear about candle vigils and lighting lamps and whatever the F. And we will then go on living our lives like they were before, because we have no choice.
Soon, a number of us will be out of jobs. There won’t be anything to do, so we’ll do something more than lighting candles. That something will involve violence. And it will be incited by jokers like our politicians who sat through the entire drama without showing an ounce of the real Indian fire in their belly.
And why should they? What am I doing? What right do I have to complain when some of them are actually visiting the site and talking to people, while all I do is twitter what comes on TV?
(I respect RR Patil. The Maharastra Home Minister was there at 2 AM, at the Taj, talking to people, figuring out the action. THen he left, which was again sensible because he’s a minister with very little op-expertise of this sort, and the cops would have had to protect him.)
But I respect nobody else. The Thackerays were conspicuous in their absence, and no one seems to care, because we now know they only attack helpless people who can’t fight back. Modi, who has a record of battling terrorism with terror, isn’t much solace – and he went political, which was taken in bad taste. Manmohan Singh said something in such a sissy way I feel ashamed to have him as my leader. Advani has josh but that crackling voice and age of 80 – I don’t know man, I don’t want to have our army provided leadership from a hospital.
Our president has absolutely no clue, and she’s supposed to be the ultimate leader of the army. We have a bunch of jokers out there leading our country, and all we can do is light candles.
What is the point of lighting candles? Candles are frikking exact photocopies of our stupid response. We’ll stay lit long as long as the wax is around, and after we die and are forgotten.
We’ll light candles? And that will somehow convince the families of all those dead that we mourned for them? That such a thing will not happen to them, or indeed, to us anymore? We’ll light a frikking candle?
If we have to light something, let’s light a fire under our own arse. And under all those who were supposed to be working but weren’t. Under A K Antony, our defense minister, who had mentioned in April 2007 that since we secure road and air, the next attack could come from the sea. Under Manmohan Singh, for not firing that sissy Shivraj Patil. Under ourselves, for not voting and for not standing up against the establishment. And for not finding someone worthy enough to vote for.
And let’s actually do something. Let’s work on what went wrong, and how we can fix it. Let’s find out who’s willing to do this at the political level, and root for him/her. Let’s find out why the military is underfunded and what we need to do. Let’s provide technical and physical support to our starved police forces. Lighting candles is all fine, but the fire can’t just go off like a candle.
Lighting candles makes us feel like we “did something”. We did not. By lighting a candle you contribute a sum total of: NOTHING.
Let’s start a revolution. But not by lighting candles.