Since my childhood I have observed that our country has lived with the horrors of terrorism much to ou
r helplessness. Countless encounters with bomb blasts in Punjab, Kashmir , the north East and more recently encompassing the entire country in a methodical carnage has been news which has become chronic and would capture your attention for a hour or two and then fade into the annals of memory only to be awakened by talk shows on television etc.
For long we were witnesses to the terrorism sprayed by terrorists who were either suicide bombers or whose stealth of depositing the bombs was then lost in their mingle among the crowd, most of them never to be located. While it was always a case of being innocently caught in the wrong place, in recent times the general strange feeling among the middle and lower classes was never to be in the thickest of crowds for too long. For terrorists have a penchant for bombing largely populated areas to inflict maximum damage and catch maximum attention of their achievement.
But things were starkly different last week. The visit of these mercenaries to Mumbai was not stealthy. Neither were they on a suicide mission. Atleast not a quick one. Their plan baffled everyone including the brave and valiant chief of the ATS who sadly was cornered like a lamb in his own den. They were not
in a hurry to execute their task. These were brainwashed terrorists with no remorse, no mercy and bereft of any emotion. They sprayed bullets on the stations and streets of Mumbai like confetti, which amply exhibited their random motive. They were here on a long haul . A rare strategy of terrorism. Probably a new strategy to inflict random merciless damage. Something which our lazy intelligence never smelt.
However they were well planned. It seems the plan was very meticulous and almost executed to the T . Bombs, grenades and explosive material was probably being deposited in various havens in Mumbai like apples and oranges, for t
ime unknown. Reports also indicate that some of them were also posing as guests and employees of the hotels in which the mayhem took place. It is therefore clear that such a deep rooted plan was designed to ensure the grand fall of the Taj hotel and the Oberoi trident much on the lines of the twin towers. The question is therefore how the plan failed to reach its conclusion. And that’s probably the only favour they did to the establishment in India as a saving grace to swallow.
Their attack was aimed at proving that nobody, regardless of their social status, is safe in India, suddenly converting bastions of high luxury, heritage and comfort into bloody grounds of brute butchery. Where wine and delicious cuisine normally laid was replaced with the splatter of blood and a procession of corpses. The siege captured the worlds undivided attention and international channels beamed the news on a continuous basis relegating every other issue in their own country to the backburner.
For me, those 60 hours watching on television were probably the longest hours
that never seemed to pass. For the innocent people trapped inside the hotels they must have felt they were like 60 days. It is no denying that our intelligence has been a massive failure for a terrorist attack of this magnitude to brandish so skillfully. For a moment it sounded like fiction and I rubbed my eyes and pulled my ears to enable the flow of proper stimulus but everytime succumbed to the reality unfolding on a continuous basis.
The guns are now silent. However we need to gun down all the possible loopholes in our intelligence, our security and our swiftness to respond to such a calamity. If Mumbai can be attacked so wantonly, Goa is a lame sitting duck waiting to be devoured .All claims of our politicians of preparedness and readiness to repulse all attacks is political rhetoric being bound to be drowned in the post attack helplessness of terror unless our leaders show willingness of purpose and confront the smallest of lacunae in our security system with the most diligent vigilance.
Else another bloodbath is just waiting to happen.
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