Column

If the government cannot help, we must enhance our alertness, caution

The nightmare that began on Wednesday may end soon. But the memory of the carnage will haunt many Mumbaikars each time they treat themselves to dinner at a hotel, take a train, or just walk down a street.

After the horror unfolded on Wednesday, many commentators began to say, "Please, don't use the cliché 'resilient Mumbaikar' again. We have had enough." That feeling is shared by most citizens. Although we do not let terror attacks stop us from going to work or sending children to school, we are now beginning to ask how long we should go on pretending that we are immune to trauma and grief.

Sadly, it is a question that no government will bother to answer. In fact, politicians talk about terror the way they would comment on agriculture or employment because attacks on India have become so common.

Our netas, protected by brave commandos, may not have a ready plan to fight terror, but they certainly have ready lines of condolence. "Stay calm, our prayers are with you," is the summary of our prime minister's response to the mayhem in Mumbai.

So my fellow Mumbaikars, time has come for us refashion the idea of our beloved Mumbai. We must imagine that we are living in Somalia - with better restaurants, infrastructure, and services.

We must not consider any site to be safe. Let us hire armed security guards for our housing societies, let us lobby schools and colleges to set up sandbag walls, let us persuade our offices to frisk every employee and visitor.

We have to enhance our levels of alertness and caution because the police cannot be everywhere and NSG commandos cannot be deployed without bureaucratic bickering. Besides, terrorists do not abide by any civilised convention on warfare; for them, civilians are enemies.

And civilians, people like us, have two choices: depend on God, or luck, to keep away from terror sites; and if misfortune makes us victims, ignore the physical and mental bruises to carry on with life.

Neither choice was available to the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93 who took on one group of the 9/11 hijackers, and prevented another attack, possibly on the White House or the US Capitol.

I sense that the extraordinary men and women who challenged the killers would have shot a dinner-interrupting terrorist and then would have gone on to finish the dessert. But in India, only dodgy politicians seem to get gun licences easily. Time to change that system? May be a gun for self-protection.
raghu@dnaindia.net