One month later ......

Today is the one month anniversary of the Bombay terror attacks.

For the most part, one is principally interested in two things after such an attack:

a) The perps are brought to justice
b) Such attacks are prevented in the future

For the (a) part, intellectuals are still not sure who the perps are. As usual, the blame was put on us. After all, if you wear revealing clothes, you are liable to get raped. Isn't that an axiom firmly believed by a set of people whose arguments are found by a Tehelka reporter to be "complex and sophisticated"? Many of our intellectuals expressed satisfaction that we were taught a lesson for our intransigence and for our inability to ensure justice.

Soon after the attacks, the Pakistani media started reading like the Onion. We thought they were trying to cheer us up by running jokes. Our illusion was shattered when our media actually plead guilty for indulging in jingoism and offered apologies for hurting Pakistani sentiments. It was a bit hard to find jingoism in our media when Barkha Dutt became a veritable Mother India, offering to hug anyone and everyone in her studio. It is sad that they don't appear to share our romanticism, and they are unlikely to reciprocate the love of our media.

The bottom line is that, this winter is going to feel a bit more chillier with the cold realization of our vulnerability, and the fact that there is not a thing we can do.

Meanwhile, India Inc. can't wait to hang the sole captured militant, in what will amount to the most transparent miscarriage of justice in front of the whole world. They have actually lined up up to 40 witnesses for identifying a man whose picture was splashed across TV screens and newspaper pages non stop for the past one month. It is not too late to declare Ajmal Amir an enemy of the state and keep him in detention, if not for anything else, just to annoy the heck out of Pakistani leadership.

For the part (b), we seemed to have fixed the politician issue by sacking a few state and national level ministers. The UPA has introduced an amendment to the UAPA law, making it into a POTA lite. They will also create a national agency (NIA) to fix terror related issues. The home ministry website was updated to put Shri Chidambaram's pictures. The home ministry has issued tenders for night vision equipment. Also boot polish.