Life as I find it

Update: After getting praise mails that I am, as a journalist encouraging war, I need to state specifically that I am NOT a journalist, and my knowledge of politics is minimal. What I am is a concerned and distraught citizen. My posts are not informed political opinions or advice about policy, but thoughts that cross my mind as I follow this crisis. I am against war and violence. I even feel pity for the poor captured terrorist for that matter. This is only a perspective and reaction about the threat of a nuclear war from Pakistan. This threat is actually explained by recent news about a hoax call that led to the Pakistani government thinking India was about to attack them. More than that, any comments like “kill the Pakistanis” will immediately be deleted, as I have no wish to encourage the circulation of such views. So, if you find that the comment you posted has been deleted, that’s me in action. If hostile comments recur, I will delete this post. This post is about the Indian attitude toward the threat of nuclear war and what at that time seemed an insane attitude to me and not about hatred for Pakistan.

Current worry is that Pakistan is apparently never in the wrong, even as many Pakistanis raise questions about the ISI in their daily lives. Strange that the average Pakistani believes that their ISI can sabotage their own country but no other. Strange kind of organization to have, no? But I don’t think logic has anything to do with the Pakistani response at the moment.

As for the Pakistani government not being involved, no one believes that. I doubt if the Pakistani government was ever directly involved with happenings in India. I doubt if it ever was in the loop. For that matter, the government was clueless about the Kargil conflict. Doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

It is transparent that Pakistan WANTS the excuse of war with India to escape from its “coerced commitment” to the war against terror on the Afgan front. So I don’t really think any actionable cooperation is ever going to come from there beyond demands of proof. Even if Zardari wants to cooperate, I doubt if he has the power to do so, when the army has another agenda. He is the sitting duck for pressure from his own country, the army, US, India, world opinion…… with no real power to do anything, because doing anything on this front will mean hurting the unofficial ISI weapon against India, which the ISI will not allow and I don’t see how Zardari can make them, even if he wants to, even if he accepts that LeT are the culprits, even if he commits to getting rid of them.

A country that disowns terrorists as non-state actors (after first denying their existence) is willing to go to war over protecting them – anyone else find that incongruent?

Meanwhile, India is pissed and frustrated that its proof is dismissed and proofs are demanded. Terrorists wanted for causing harm in India are not to be given over. Pakistan speaks of strikes being seen as acts of war, and nukes are laid out on the table straight off. For someone cooperating, its a strange attitude of denials, refusals and threats.

Meanwhile, US and the rest of the world is shitting bricks at the thought of a nuclear war between India and Pakistan, and doing all it can to prevent it.

What I literally see is a world held hostage to Pakistan. No one is convinced of their innocence, but no one also wants to provoke them because they have *melodramatic shudder* nukes, you know?

Pakistan is not the only country in the world to have nukes, but it is the only country to act against the interests of the world and then threaten to use nukes if it thinks there will be retaliation.

For that matter, it does the same with its own people. The threat is not nukes, but its own extremist and army agendas of power to control that hold the common man hostage with threats of physical harm. For example, in this current scenario, what the Pakistani common man thinks is as irrelevant as what Zardari thinks. The situation hinges on the army deserting the war on terror and threatening nukes and the militants talking of defending the country they were relentlessly destroying, which incidently were both irrelevant to the talks happening between the governments.

Perhaps I’m direct, but this is how I see it.

As long as the Kashmir issue is resolved, India and Pakistan will never be truly at peace. Pakistan has nukes and doesn’t even consider an option of no-first-strike as a part of its “defence”, so that problem is unlikely to be over, ever. For that matter, I don’t even think Pakistan really wants Kashmir resolved, because that will take away their reason for acting on their hatred of India.

From how I understand, Pakistan sees nukes as any other weapon, and one of the most powerful in its arsenal. Its not particularly bothered about the damage it will cause to India, because that is the whole idea in any case. It counts on this attitude to be a deterrent in itself, with the entire world pressurizing India to avoid war, because they sure as hell know that there will be no reasoning with Pakistan.

My approach to this is different. Much as I hate violence, and my dream of a good world includes armies dismantled because they become redundant, I hate being held hostage by bullies even worse. I am aware that I could be one of the casualties if Pakistan makes a nuclear attack, and one of the more likely ones by virtue of living in Mumbai. Yet, I do think what India and the world needs to do at this moment is a nuclear war. Pakistan needs to go to the stone age before it can become a civilization.

I thought long and deep over it, considered my abhorrence of violence, the situation with Pakistan…… a whole load of things. I know it will be terrible thing. It will harm Indian economy, lives, morale, and cause a whole load of pain.

Yet, as I consider:

• Pakistan is never ever going to stop harming India directly or indirectly.
• Even if the LeT is finished, the reason for its creation is still there, and it is only a matter of time before it is resurrected or something else created to fulfill that need.
• Pakistan has nukes and will continue to have them till they are destroyed or used. 50 years from now, we will still be bearing attrocities exported from that country because it has nukes. It will still be operating without a conscience, because it believes that its irresponsible attitude toward human lives will continue to protect it from those who value them.
• India is a strong country. It will be devastated, but it will regenerate. Hopefully, it will regenerate without the hanging sword of Pakistani nukes over its head. I may die, but the future of hundreds will be safer from threat.

It is with a heavy heart, and against my instincts that I admit that a nuclear war between India and Pakistan is what India and the world needs, provided that we are able to work together and take out their nukes completely.

Rather than cringe and tolerate endlessly that which has no intention of ever going away, we need to face it and conquer it. If we pay a price, it is the price of a future of not being held hostage and harmed.

What is needed is for Pakistan to be conquered, and reorganized under a stable country (preferrably not India) and led to prosperity. It needs to find a future in creation rather than vengeance for perceived attrocities. It needs hope and well being.

The other option is to sit and do nothing. Ignore the attack completely, strengthen internal security, hang the terrorist and leave Pakistan alone to collapse under its own weight or in the “war against terror”.

If one good thing can be said to have emerged from this whole nightmare, it is that many perceptions in Pakistan and other country Muslims about India seem to have been broken.

The first and very important is where Muslims are harrassed and arrested every time there is a terror attack in India. Not only have there been no arrests this time, there is no communal ill-feeling either. We are all uniformly shocked and appalled. While anger and resentment are there in both Hindu and Muslim hot-heads, this kind of cold-blooded wholesale murder is revolting to all.

The other assumption I think should have broken is that of the militants “protecting” or fighting to avenge atrocities against Indian Muslims. Nothing states this more clearly than Indian Muslims refusing the terrorists to be burried in their graveyard. If that doesn’t send a message of “we don’t like you and we don’t approve” I don’t know what does. I hope any wannabe terrorists read this and understand that this is a massive population of Muslims we are talking about – bigger than your entire country (unless you’re from Indonesia). No matter what the propaganda tells you to believe, terrorism is not an acceptable solution to an honorable Muslim either.

You may be punishing countries in your mind, but you are making dignity difficult for the very people you aim to protect. Therefore, please find something better to do with your life. Its one life we all have, and making it a work of beauty and pride is a good goal.

Out of all these ashes one good rises up – we get over petty differences, and our similarities shine through.

I don’t deny that there was great bravery shown on all fronts against the terrorists. Yet, as we move on from the tragedy, the urgency is blurring. At this time, I want to take a moment to look at things that could have been better.

Equipment and training: I put these together, since it would be even more embarrassing to have an armed hawaldar disarmed by a criminal and his weapon used to create further harm. I think it is not enough to just arm our cops, but to instill in them certain standards of professionalism and pride in their roles. This needs to be backed up with adequate training. Not a small task, but necessary. Cops waving lathis chasing terrorists armed with AK47s is an image that doesn’t instill respect, no matter how brave they are. And it isn’t only about terrorism. In a world where every self respecting criminal has fancy arms, its about the cops feeling empowered enough to be a difference.

Emergency responses: Our emergency response needs designing. Note that I’m not speaking of updating or overhauling. If it takes over half an hour for the local cops to respond, its not a design worth keeping. Scrap it, work from scratch, and come up with something that allows the police response to be as near to the travelling time from the nearest presence as possible. This basically means that cops being trained to respond ASAP and their routines planned to accommodate at least one quick response team at any given time from any station.

Media: This has two sides. One is the media – there needs to be a plan about covering emergencies like this. This plan needs to include boundaries of what is not to be broadcast to the public. It wouldn’t even harm to continue with regular programmes with regular updates instead of creating a live test match out of a sensitive situation and compounding it with unconfirmed, contradictory information, rumours and speculation, which perhaps was a blessing if the terrorists were indeed following it. The other side of this is PR people for the cops/armed forces if their representatives can’t resist giving out information. Obviously the people of the country want information, but how much information is necessary to give immediately and what can wait till the end of the operation? What kind of information will help the country more in the situation? I imagine that I’d have preferred a blank screen rather than live telecast of commandoes rappelling to the top of the Nariman house for example. A simple statement like the army has been involved would be far better than details of which commandos, how many, and shots where their equipment is clearly seen. Go ahead, shoot it, and edit it into a breathtaking special after its all over, but not at a time when the criminals can get tactical information directly. There was a hue and cry over twitter which is full of rumours and tough to decipher with over 80 messages a second, yet clear shots of the commandos and their weapons continued, including direct statements like “bodies being carried out of the back entrance of the Taj”. No one is going to blame an official for refusing to share potentially sensitive information in the middle of a situation and no one is going to blame the media person who refuses to air it till safe.

Intelligence: We need to figure out a system for wading through all the information we get and working with it. Too much information was wasted that turns up now likehints of this plot coming up from terrorist captures in Lucknow, Kashmir, fishermen….. Nothing seems to have been done out of it. Ignoring intelligence defeats the entire purpose of gathering it in the first place.

Citizens: We have a concerned community alive to the dangers of terrorism. Is there a way that we can harness the helpless frustration of those camping out on twitter (for example). Can we engage volunteers to find out information, report things, sift through reports to remove the random chatter from the potential information, spread awareness, work on social integration objectives……?

Politics: Is there a way that we can bring parties together quickly in an emergency and work in collaboration to reassure, organize and manage the country by working with their audiences that support them?

There is so much potential for efficiency without even creating new structures. Can we try and ensure that things work as they should?

Ok, yet another post inspired by happenings related with the Mumbai terror situation.

Came across this photo – Photo from AP Photo by Ajit Solanki – Daylife from a rally in Ahmedabad by local Muslims protesting the terrorist attacks in Mumbai. Nice white pigeons being freed as a symbolic peace message. While I admire the fact that there was a rally to protest the attacks, I’m more than apalled at the message in the photo: “atankwadi nahi atank ko khatm karo” – Finish terror, not the terrorists!!!???!!!

If they have been looking at their TVs, how do they propose to finish the terror without finishing those terrorists? And why is there a placard raised for them not to be killed anyway? These 10 guys killed almost 200 innocent people indiscriminately. Obviously if possible, they would be captured alive for information. So why protest if they obviously need to be killed to be stopped? Or should there have been a hundred more victims for them not to be killed?

Don’t tell me that killing these bastards also counts as an opression of Indian Muslims!

Really, we need to get a handle and some kind of rational perspective on sympathy for terrorists.

PS: In all honesty, I think it is someone with an inadequate grasp of what it conveys who wrote it. They probably meant to finish terror and not just stop at the terrorists. I hope so.

He’d throw a fit at his granddaughter calling him an awesome guy. “Disrespect!!!” he’d call it, while chuckling about this post if he reads it. Must ask my cousin to show it to him.

Ajoba, if you’re reading this, its Soni. Gundi shared the post on Sobati about you, and I’m very happy and proud to see you featured there. I’ve saved your video clips.

Since that post is in Marathi, I thought I’d write something for these day’s young people who don’t read Marathi fluently.

Sobati is a group in Vile Parle. It means “Companions”. This group has been an important part of Ajoba’s (grandfather, as I call Mr. Balwant Godbole) life or as much of it as I have seen. Their get-togethers have always been a high point in his social life, and I remember many times as a child when he used to rehearse some song or the other to play at their meet ups, with us three grand daughters listening and providing unrequired feedback.

What I find special about him is his energy and enthusiasm for his interests, and his ability to be at peace with what is irrelevant to him. I have never seen him unnecessarily voice an opinion or gossip. His chief interest in life is music and recital of religious texts.

I grew up with him, and I remember countless nights when I slept to the soung of the Ramraksha or Gita….. I don’t have any religious inclination, and studied in a convent, but I know a surprising amount of Shlokas by heart just from having listened to them so many times in my childhood. Its strange. Someone asks me if I know them, and I say I don’t. Then I recite right along as I hear the words…..

Another of his loves that he passed on to me is music. He plays the violin really well. As kids, music was a big part of our childhood. Learning to sing, play the violin, keyboard…. were all highly appreciated things a child could do. I learnt to play many songs just because he played them, and I wanted to “copy”. Slowly I developed a ear for music (and it has been in my blood ever since) and as a teenager, the sounds of ajoba’s chanting in the dark were replaced by Kishore Kumar songs being played on a keyboard by me. To date, when I meet him, this subject comes up. He wants me to sing or play some song.

There’s a whole slew of memories, but one that my husband will remember forever is the first time he met my grandfather. A lot of Raka’s friends are into music, and he had heard a lot about ajoba from them before we even decided to get married. He was slightly awed when I took him across to meet my grandparents. Aji (grandmother) was alive at that time.

After some pleasantries, I suggested that ajoba play something on the violin. I knew Raka was dying to hear it. As ajoba got out his beloved violin, Raka put himself on alert to recognize some fantastic classical piece from some ancient times. Imagine his shock when the tune that hit his ear was “Aika dajiba” (for those who don’t know, this was a current “pop” song doing the rounds with an extremely peppy beat)!!!

This is classic ajoba – no stereotypes – he goes with what he likes. I’ve known him to play latest Hindi hits happily when I used to live with him. He thought that a young “javai” (son-in-law) would want to hear something from his generation, so he went for that. Raka still hasn’t got over that surprise.

What more….. there’s so much.

Once when I spoke with Ajoba, I was in Bangalore. After exclaiming that he could hear my voice as clearly as if I was next to him, and some trivial stuff, he ended the call with “Have a jolly good time!” How can anyone call this 88 year young man old when people a quarter of his age end calls with insipid murmurs?

If you’re reading this post Ajoba, I want you to know you’re totally awesome and that I love you and am very proud of you.

BTW, head over to that post on the Sobati blog if you want to hear Ajoba play the violin.