'Accidental Existence' - When I was really angry

November 30 2008

“Someone has to take responsibility!”... “Politicians are the bane of the society”….. “X should resign”…… “Y should take over”…. They keep on crying and yelling on a debate on National Television. They have been doing it since the faculties of my mind first learnt to think. My parents do it. My teachers have always done it. My friends learnt the same tape from their family. I used it too to win many debates and Model United Nations.

When I saw Major Sandip Unnikrishnann’s mother at his funeral I thought he ought to be stupid. Stupid to have caused his mother so much grief for saving impotent and immobile little creatures like us. I am sure he could have laid down his life for a better nation and better people. He must have thought it was his duty to give us a sense of security so that we sleep peacefully every night. How I wish, I could tell him that his efforts were futile because these people are besieged by insecurities of much more monstrous proportions. Insecurity that they won’t be fucked if they have pimples, that their hair are not straight enough or that they would be embarrassed if they failed to pronounce a particular item in the menu of a famous French restaurant.

Everything that has happened to me, every blast, every attack and every act of injustice is because of me. The sole responsibility lies on me. I am responsible for every crime that takes place in my neighborhood, my office and in my house. For years now, I have been a mute spectator. I have lived courage less existence. Everyone around me instilled fear, anxiety and insecurity in me, and I let it internalize. Every time I tried to fight back I was told to be sensible. I was told to be ‘practical’. As time passed I went into a slumber. Woke up every time a blast took place but had strong enough sleeping pills to go back to sleep again. Perhaps I am waiting for someone to barge into my house and put me to sleep forever. Do not get me wrong. I am not afraid. I am not worrying. In fact, I feel stronger than ever.

I have woken up, ready to ‘live’. Ready to take a stand without fear, ready to fight back with all my energy. No, I don’t want greatness. I just want to be able to see myself in the mirror with respect. No, I am not dramatizing it. Nor am I being a romanticist. I just want to bring reality to the romanticism.

The attacks on 26/11 I hope have at least evoked reactions. Because it is the ocean of indifference that I have seen, felt and been a part of for so long. People like the NSG Commando Sandeep were guarding the borders when you, the wealthy Indian were busy making money (lots of them in South Bombay), when you were busy making schemes to bed another beautiful woman, when you were making pseudo-secular speeches to win admiration of your dim-witted friends, when you were busy taking your dog for spa treatment, when you were smoking pot on the terrace of your B-school in the jubilation of you being placed with the highest salary on campus, when you thought you had contributed to the society by just being emotionally involved with a movie like Rang De Basanti, when you thought you were a true patriot by sending an SMS to NDTV congratulating the Indian Cricket team on T20, when you were busy making business plans assuming that you do not depend on anyone for its success, when you were driving around abusing BMC for the potholes on the road, when you were puking around on Christmas eve party and urinating liquor on the walls of ‘third world India’. I am not saying you should not have done all that. Just that there could have been some courage also to take responsibility for what has happened.

It has been this indifference of yours that has caused it. When the trains were blown up in 2006, it did not matter to so many who thought they will anyway never use a train. I hope we all realize that ‘no one is safe’ and no amount of money can buy you immortality. Any one of us could have been at the ‘Taj’ or CST just as anyone of us could have been in the Delhi markets or in the Mumbai trains. If the last 3 days did not stir you, nothing will. Not even the blowing up of your own family for you are random matter in existence in this universe.

I would like to end with some hope. Hope that young and energetic citizens like me will take matter in their own hands. Not leave it to the system or the government. Try and be a part of the process that decides our fate. And most importantly, not sit on the fence watching the action all our lives. For one day that pointed fence will cut right across your backside and paralyze you enough for you not to be able to fulfill any dream of yours.

- Ankit Doshi

(Please do not send me SMSes asking me to relax and for god’s sake do no use the words ‘chod na’. I might actually cause you physical harm and I will be even more motivated than the terrorists. I am perfectly normal unlike a lot of you.)