A face in the crowd


Its deja vu and the frequency is now alarming. Serial bomb blasts are now more frequent than Indian test defeats and in both cases, more often than not there is a foreign hand. As I had written in May 2007,the govt and related pillars seem to have perfected the reaction to a blast scenario. Its both amusing and saddening.

All this happens so perilously close, it could be you next or the time after that. What seemed so distant when blast reports used to come from Israel, Iraq, Kabul or even Kashmir is suddenly upon us, staring us in the eye. The perpetrators also seem to be increasingly like you and me. Laptops, emails, for all you know he travels with you everyday and plots your death too. He went to the same school or the same kind of school, chased the same dreams and ate at the same wada pav stall. You might have brushed past him at the crowded marketplace or asked him the way to a particular address. He might have been part of that cricket team that you fought with many years ago over who gets first right to play at the ground. Maybe you shared the same first class compartment, the same milk vendor, the same barber and the same supermarket. He might wear Allen Solly too and work in the same Corporate Park. He has a home loan, maybe better interest rate and wants to win at stocks. He has a child, a faith, a religion and family. He is a good man, prays for others and fends for his fellow beings. He has dreams of a future that is brighter and better. He has a bit of cholestrol, a growing paunch, that same glazed look every work day and the same stubble every weekend. He breathes the same air and runs to the same clock. He too feels that the world has to change, the kind of feeling that all of us get when we are treated unfairly, when we miss a signal or get jostled out of an overcrowded train. His means of change is a timer device, for us its nothing.

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