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Terrorists.. The word sends a shiver down the spine.. Whenever I come across this word (and I come across very very very frequently these days) I feel my entire metabolism going kaput. My heart beat sounds like Rajdhani express. My stomach churns more acids than it can handle. I feel afraid and I close my eyes. I feel enraged and want to kill those terrorists when I recompose those trembling legs. Even as I am writing I can feel current passing from tip to toe of my body. But then, I feel in a similar way for a lot of other things too.
I feel the same rage when I hear a politician making absurd comments on television about women protestors. I feel the same fear when I hear about a train being burnt killing many people. I feel the same disgust when I hear about false encounters by our protectors for the sake of medals. I feel the same shock when I hear about sati pratha (yes, its still there), child marriage (not just a figment from a popular soap), torturing and murdering daughters-in-law and female infanticide. And I believe there are many people out there who share these feelings.
So who do we call a terrorist? Someone who holds an AK-47 in one hand and grenades in another hand, mercilessly spraying bullets on innocent lives? Or is a terrorist someone who kills people and is capable of evoking these feelings of rage, disgust and shock in us? I believe that someone from neighboring country with the mission to kill is not the only terrorist in our country. There are many of those who just need to make a gesture to get hundreds killed. Those who go about the local neighborhood ransacking houses and killing residents. Those who drink, drive and kill pedestrians. Those who kill spouses for reasons of dowry, infertility or infidelity(assumed or real, that doesn’t matter here). The list is endless, but if we combine these murders scattered over a single year in these so-called small incidents, the figure would be much larger than the number of lives lost in terrorist attacks in last 5 years.
We are afraid of terrorists, right. We want to fight against them, good. But what about these non-terrorists all around us, who are equally capable of killing us any day? Why are we not afraid of them? Why don’t we fight against them? Life lost is a life lost, whether it happens in a hostage situation or in a burglary incident. If I were to lose a dear one, it would not matter whether the killer was a certified terrorist or a drunken driver.
Instead of organizing marathons, lighting candles and, if you get a chance, deliver fight-terror-talks on television, shouldn’t we look around us and find out the ways to stop killings that take place without bomb-blasts? Should we not stop blaming the system for once and see what we, as common citizens of India, can do?
We can start this mission from home, or neighborhood if all seems well at home. We can have more traffic sense, obey signals and stop mixing drink and drive. That will alone save hundreds of lives lost on roads. We can stop being gullible and influenced by some political wing or self-declared-guards-of-our-culture to create havoc and play with lives as a ‘lesson’ to the god-knows-who. We can be more careful and invest in better security devices when we leave our wives or old parents alone at home, who are easy preys for burglars. We can report to police anonymously (it is really ok not wanting to come into picture when something happens) about any odd figure in the locality, instead of it-doesn’t-affect-me-attitude. We can raise our voice when we see physical assaults in families around us. We can do a lot more.
So the next time we want to change the system, curse it, we may want to think what is our contribution towards our own safety. Instead of relying on others to protect us, we may want to become more alert, responsible, careful towards ourselves and those around us. The smallest step taken by us will show results in a big way