Aise ek-add Haadse

As I write this, Mumbai, India and the rest of the world is reeling in shock with the incidents of the last couple of days.

As almost everyone must know by now, Mumbai was attacked by a group of terrorists and two of its landmarks were badly damaged. Almost 300 people were killed and 600 odd injured. As I write this we have just recd. news that Mr. Shivraj "Dandy Jim" Patil has resigned.

Of course we have Mr. "Pay bill in Goa" Rudy from the BJP showing his face on television saying that Mr. Patil's resignation shows that he was responsible for this mess and ergo this is the failure of the Congress Govt. and the whole Govt should resign.

(Thats funny coming from a party which till yesterday had their guns trained squarely on just S Patil saying that he was guilty and must resign. The moment he has resigned , they are using it for leverage. Do we now understand why no Government ever cracks down on its erring people. Chances are if they do the jokers standing on the sidelines will call it a sign of guilt of them even though they are the ones who initiated the crackdown in the first place.)

Now I hear that BJP is saying that Congress is soft on terrorists and scratch my head. As far as I remember the BJP does not have too good a record with terrorists as the IC 814 incident will testify when the NSG did not ge their act together till the flight had taken off since they were waiting for instructions from the government for HARD action. They then gave a VIP escort to the terrorists under the pretext of freeing hostages. I also remember that it was not the Congress which allowed 5 terrorists free in order to release the daughter of a home minister.

This whole incident has brought to the front a series of shameful incidents which synopsis the whole issue.

One is Mr. R.R. "bar girls are nono" Patil. This joker had the guts to come on television and say" Bade Shaarion mein aise ek addh Hadse hotain rehte hain". {In big cities 1-2 small incidents happen all the time}. I saw him say this on television and almost hurled my mug of tea at him. I would like him or his family member to have been in one of the hotels so that they could actually face the horror of such a "aam Haadsa".

Folks, this is the time to stand up and say , we do and will not accept terrorist attacks on our cities as an "aam hadsaa" from politicians like him who are better off chasing bar girl skirts.

Second is the sudden absence of politicians who are talking about Mumbai and their "baap ka maal", till the third day when the all clear is announced.

Third is the anger of the citizen when he sees A Narendra Modi who till 24 hours previously called Hemant Kharkare al kinds of names for implicating "Sadvhi" now suddenly announce 1 Cr as compensation to him and calling him a "honest man".

(I would ask for a standing ovation for Mrs. Kharkare who threw the offer of 1 Cr in Modis face thereby showing the world how honest her husband really was and what she thought of politicians who think anyone can be bought with money)

Fourth is Lal Krishna Advani staying away from all party meet called by the Congress to brainstorm saying he is "busy" campaigning. Campaigning for WHAT ??? What is more important than trying to find synergy in this time of grief. This is the person the BJP wants to make our next PM.

(Advani sent Mr. Jaswant Singh, who was sent according to him was the foreign minister at the time of the hijacking of IC 814 to Kandhahar. I am amazed that Advani would think this qualifies him as some kind of authority since we all know how that ended with the Govt at that time kow towing to terrorists by releasing prisoners.

IMPORTANT - This Jaswant Singh is the same person who acted as personal escort to the terrorists on their flight to Kandhahar. Hmmm.......Kandhar the city , Kandhar resturant at Oberoi, hmmm perhaps thats why he thinks Jaswant Sinha has the experience )

Fifth is the posturing by Pranab Mukerjee who blasts the Pakistani Minister at a press conference in Delhi and then today does a volte face saying it never accused Pakistan of being  involved. If that is the case this is the worst case of politics I have seen. There was even talk of SUMMONING the ISI chief to India and we were given the impression that he would be coming soon in the interest of co-operation.

Of course Pakistan did a volte face on that. Guess he didn't get anticipatory bail like most accused people do before they land in India.

Lastly, with all these antics first blaming Pakistan and then backtracking, I dont know if I'm the only one but I see the war clouds looming and the words of Nostradamus ring in my ear  when he talks of the person behind the third world war:

"He will enter Europe wearing a blue turban."

Folks, my flippancy is a cover for my anger and let me not belittle the horror the hostages went through since there are no words that I can write which will in any way describe the horror and terror they went through.

Let me not belittle the enormous hurdles the cops, then the MARCOS and finally the NSG had to go through keeping in mind the three main agendas they had:

1) There are foreign nationals involved and this could have major repercussions. Make sure the foreign nationals are harmed as little as possible.

2) There are hostages involved, as many of them are to be saved as possible

3) There are landmarks of the city involved, as much as possible these structures should not be damaged.

Keeping this in mind, I think they did a marvelous job. I think the closest we have come to this internationally in my recollection is Operation Entebee. That took almost 7 days and the terrain was less complicated although the location was in an unfriendly state. So 50 odd hours to complete the operation is not so bad in my book.

My biggest agony in this whole issue is the equipment of the anti terrorist squads. Anyone who has seen American serials is familiar with equipment such as gamma ray scanners, thermal imagers, optic fibre cameras, robot cams / radio CC cams , the list is endless.

Had our NSG, our police force or our MARCOS had any of this equipment the fight would have been much much shorter. Now there's talk of an equipment upgrade for the army / anti terrorist groups and guess who will do the purchasing ? The same people who bought the shitty stuff they have now.

As to planning and co-ordination. We saw the sheer anarchy that happened with each joker wanting his 10 seconds of sound bytes no matter if even whatever he was saying was pure rubbish.

In all this what I found admirable was that the emergence of the real Marathi Manoos. It was not the hooligans but the common man who put his life in danger to man barricades outside the Taj to ensure that the public stayed a safe distance. It was the common man who wiped the blood off the brow of an injured man at Metro cinema. The so called protectors of Marathaism of course stayed a safe distance away.

( I know this is in bad taste but I can't help but repeat these joke I heard yesterday - Vilasrao Deshmukh is a fool, he didn't have to even wait for the MARCOS and the NSG, all he had to do was call Raj T and he and his goons would have gone into the Taj and thrown the terrorists out in 5 mins since they are not from Maharashtra.

Second joke I was told when the TV reporters said one of the terrorists spoke to someone at the Cama hospital in Marathi was, See how sucessful Raj T's movement is, now even Mumbais terrorists cant operate here without being able to speak Marathi)

Under this layer of laughter lies the sheer anger and frustration at the confusion which reigned when first of all the cops came in, followed by the MARCOS who were then replaced by the NSG who were awaiting their C11 Hercules aircraft.

Each of these groups were badly briefed since to date there is no central agency in charge of the briefing in cases such as this. There is a very strong rumor that the NSG were kept waiting for almost 45 mins for their briefing since the people who were supposed to brief the NSG were busy briefing the Chief Minister.

What makes someone in India who achieves any kind of public post think that they are so special ? I hear now from these people is that security must be tightened, and can we guess what happens when a Minister arrives at a 5 star with bags of money. Do you seriously think that those bags will be Xrayed or checked ?

Folks, I think there are far better people than me who have written far more eloquent stuff about what they and I would like to do to the freeloading politicians goolies with a blunt knife. All I can do just reproduce the pictures of the horror hoping that it ignites the spark in someone somewhere to do something about it.

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/11/mumbai_under_attack.html

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I have just recd this email which says what i'm feeling much better than I ever could:

Why India ?

* Because we are Gujratis, Marathis, Punjabis, Bengalis, Malyalee....not INDIANS.
* Because our leaders protect themselves with 350 police personnel & 50 cars. Who cares about the common man.
* Because politicians will run to console families of slain terrorists merely to earn some brownie points.
* Because we are scared...........scared to execute one measly convicted terrorist.
* Because we elect a PM who is more of an academician than an administrator.
* Because we believe that social equality can be achieved not by teaching a man how to fish but by providing him fish for days to come.
* Because democracy in India enables us to condemn anything & everything whereas the propounders of the Magna Carta restrict speech against God & the Queen.
* Because for most of us, nation building is restricted to compiling the Indian Cricket team.
* Because we let Mandir & Masjid run our daily lives not roti,kapda or makan.
* Because we let tolerance lead to impotence.
* Because in a nation of a billion people it is difficult now to find a single "man".

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