Bullets with Coffee

The night of 26th November 2008 remains indelible forever in many minds. As I was sitting at a posh café in Chennai few days back, I just imagined the horror the diners at Leopold, Mumbai would have felt, when ignorant young men with rifles showered them with piercing bullets. A gush of red blood splattering across the pure white whip cream and the taste and smell of coffee and beer, overpowered with the scent of human blood and flesh. Horrifying screams of death deafening the once merry music of the café.

“Leopold” an identity of the bourgeoning upper class, which till then was caught up in the frenzy of back packing foreigners, hip college kids and floating art lovers of the ancients, were treated to a nightmarish night in the hands of a few poor urchins carrying high end guns and bombs, arriving all the way from an illiterate village in (they say) Pakistan. For those who believed bomb blasts were restricted to crowded market places and shrines thronging with worshippers be it Hindu or Muslim, 26/11 was a clarion call. It showed terror can happen anywhere to anyone.

There would be even more Qasabs and Ismails being trained in distant camps across the globe, brainwashed with video clips and fiery speeches, drugged and derailed in life, to carry out someone else’ destructive desires. While a few ambitious Mullahs sacrifice the unsuspecting youth, for martyrdom, harbouring wishes of Supremacy over the globe, the common man, be he from the lower, middle or upper class with his daily toil to survive becomes the credulous victim. After Mumbhai, it could be any where-Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Delhi….

As the Government tries to amend past mistakes, the news channels rest on their breaking news campaigns, as the security lightly sighs a relief, as the cloud of 26/11 becomes hazy, as Qasab’s figure in the Versace T shirt dims down from peoples’ mind and as they settle down in their daily routine fight for financial survival the terror may strike again.