Precarious predicaments

New Year is embraced with high hopes. I believe this is the time to forget our mistakes but with the lessons learn from it to live stronger and safer. Every New Year provides an opportunity to change our life. With New Year come hopes of realizing your dreams that are either not fulfilled in the previous years or newly knit.

India faced the worst of its kind of terror in 26/11 towards the end of the year. The memories of the carnage still haunt us. The massacre had claimed the lives of 179 including women, children and people from different countries. The whole country was made to stand at gun point for 3 days by 10 militants. Our 100 thousand police and commandos were helpless against the blood thirsty terrorists and we battled for 60 hours to bring them down sacrificing the lives of some true patriots. All the 9 perpetrators were killed and one was caught alive.

Jan 1st 09 : I wished things would change by next year with tightened security, but no, I was wrong, we didn’t wake up to the alarm calls. The country was shaken with serial blast on the very first day of the year. New Year started with a serial blast in Guwahati killing 5 people and injuring more than 30. The accused was later shot dead.

Jan 5th 09: No year goes by without a natural calamity. Heavy snowfall and cold wave in north India claimed 46 lives. We accept natural disasters as we are helpless against it and there is no one to turn to against it. No matter how many lives are lost in such disasters, there is hardly anything we can do about it. It’s a simple law – The weak succumb and the strong survive. We humans are weak against the strong forces of nature; we succumb to disasters letting the nature dominate us.

Jan 9nd 09: Ongoing gun battle between security forces and terrorists continues for the 9th day. We have succeeded in blocking the terrorist from infiltrating into our territory, but at the cost of 3 lives, which includes 2 soldiers and a special police officer. The terrorist belong to JeM as per the intercepts received by the army. The army called off the poonch gun battle after an eight-day-long nonstop gun battle. The terrorist are believed to have escaped under the cover of thick fog.

There is not a single day we could live in peace. Let there be problems but not violence, bloodshed and killings. Who can be held responsible for all the unrest in the country? Is it us? If not us who else? I would say that all the trouble and agitation are posed by a minority group, an isolated group, called the fanatics or rather “undesirable elements”. This is like tumor, if you don’t kill it, it kills you. Lacerate the tumor before it proliferates. The only way to eliminate terrorism is to fight it. It’s time we stop playing the defensive game. The need of the hour is to attack. Resort to action when words fail.

Iam sure the whole world would stand by us in our effort to cull these “undesirable elements”. This is the time to unleash carnage on their territory and incapacitate them from any more heinous crimes. I know this sounds simple but tough to execute. Let’s go that extra mile in curbing terrorism; if not now, when?