So, has anything really changed?

November 24, 2011 by Usha Pisharody 9 Comments

 

We’re on the eve of observing yet another anniversary of the horror that we went through with Mumbai, on 26/11/08.  We’ve killed most of those who carried out the attack, nabbed one, and are ineffectually attempting to get at the real perpetrators who enjoy a rare status in another country, where they have all but blatantly admitted to to their collusion in the event. Oh, that is a weak word. Too darned polite. Their masterminding the event more like!

Three years on, and many deliberations, and reams of paper (of Judgement, Media, to name a couple) later, and pointed references in investigations (thanks to Wikileaks too), which should be sufficient to nail the coffin of the lone arrested, we still are rather lost, though the pathway is illuminated. I am a humble layperson, who has not much “sense” of things around, but rather responds when suddenly it all gets too much. (I remember how “sense”less several journos were back then, 3 years ago, on ground zero, asking families and friends of those trapped in Taj and Oberon, to give them a “sense” of what was happening to them! BD was the Queen of ’em all!)

Three years on, this humble layperson cannot understand why Kasab’s star-hotel-type-internment is still being paid by humble Indian taxpayers. This layperson cannot understand why the Judgement cannot be carried out still. She cannot condone the fear that runs through a ruling class that will not play executioner when they so need to. She is otherwise non-violent, but she fears her threshold of tolerance has dipped alarmingly.

Three years on, a vigilante (so says Arnab Goswami of the man who slapped Pawar today) who dares confront a minister might suffer throes of agony once the said Minister’s henchmen are through with him, but Kasab will continue to enjoy his peace in the quietude and comfort of his space.

Not three, but more years will pass before Kasab is either freed, paroled, extradited or sentenced (again!), and we shall have to watch mutely. I have never wished as hard, when I saw “A Wednesday”, for the second time recently, as I did that day, that we could do this, in real life too, just as in reel life. And while there is this jaded feeling of expecting the inevitable delays in delivering justice, there is hope too, that renewed proactive responses will find a way to let justice happen. For even though Lady Justice is supposedly blind, those who serve it might at least open their eyes, and be faithful, loyal seeing Dogs for  the Lady.

Hope springs eternal, they say, in the human heart. I still hope, though the spring seems to be running dry, a bit, each year.

 

24 November, 2011

(Word count, 455. Smiley, none.)