The Blasts

ETERNALLY CURRENT.

Everyone on the tele-connected part of the Earth now knows about yet another terror incident in Asia. This time in the heart of the Indian Economy. Mumbai was bombed on July 11th, 2006.

But then, it is not really a new thing is it? Bombs go off every now and then. Most people (in India) didn't pay much attention to the fact that bombs went off in J&K on the same day as well. Also, few probably remember that the same ghastly synchronization last Diwali. The festival of Lights held darkness of many types for many families last year. The 'jashna' will probably never come back into their lives.

The tourists noticed though. And that is when the media played a sob story about how such incidents were hampering foreign tourist inflow. The fact that people were put at risk, was also mentioned.


I guess loss of human life has become altogether commonplace on Mother Terra. Come to think of it, I believe almost all of human history has been marked by some form of massive violence. So why do we hold on to such notions that human life is Sacred?

When people have always been killing each other, where does that seemingly stupid notion of the sanctity of Human Life come from in the first place? It could be argued that it was the gift Religion gave to us, but then why the duality?

Almost all humans believe in the sacntity of life in one form or another (their own, if no-one else's). But so much killing goes on nonetheless. How is that? Why is that?



SOLIDARITY

Coming back to the Mumbaikars for a minute, they took to the streets the next day, in a show of so-called solidarity. Solidarity about what? That we weren't hurt?

India was hurt. Of course we were. To deny the fact verges on the criminal, not just on the stupid. As a newspaper column pointed out a few days ago, why are we so afraid to admit it? Why? Do we believe that admitting this strike struck a blow to us will render us somehow weaker in the eyes of the world, much less our own?

I cannot stand the attitude some of the media put up, and are abetted by some celebrities in displaying. What good is a peace march? Who are you going to convince NOT to bomb us next time by taking to the streets on a march to show the power of peace?

WAR

The advertisement campaign from the telecom major Airtel carries the punchline 'a hundred thousand candles can end a war'.

What nonsense. Which hundred thousand candles ever ended a war? Unless they were Roman candles, lit and thrown into a barbarian camp at night by a cunnining subordinate of Caesar's?

War ends only one way. In Loss. Did the USA win Vietnam? Or Korea? Did the Bolsheviks win? Did any of the Allies in the Second WW?

I'll tell you who won. No-one. No-one at all. The very fact that war has broken out somewhere shows that the human race has failed in all its capacity. Why else would we be killing our own species?

So many days out of every 365, there is only one fate for my and my kind that looms. Extinction. That isn't scary, for what is death? But it is saddening. For what is annihilation?


THE FUTURE

No man can know the future, I said in one of my earlier posts. But I think tonight, most of it is clear enough if you look at time the right way. From before when Jesus was a little-known carpenter from Nazareth, to this very second that you're reading these gloomy words of mine, one thread runs constant...

What is it? To answer that, let me end with a quote from Albert Einstein:

"There are only two things that are truly infinite: The size of the Universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not so sure about the Universe."