Okay, so everyone has a right to this. And I exercise mine.
Rants!!
1. I am getting a little sick and tired of the following words:
- Iconic structures (about the Taj and the Oberoi): good for a while, but gets on my nerves as they keep repeating these words,
- Resilience and spirit: enough is enough. With these two words, I mean.. !
2. It’s easy for the rich and famous to say that there is no prejudice in society. Yeah, maybe it does not matter as to who it is that they party with, at the Taj or the Oberoi. The reality of prejudice is with the common man. So poignantly shown in Khalid Mohammed’s Fiza, when the educated Muslim youth, played by Hrithik Roshan, could not get a job in Mumbai! If some of these youth then succumb to brainwashing and go to the other side, who is to blame for that? This society, who else?!
Would YOU hire a muslim youth to work in your organization almost as comfortably as you would hire a Hindu? Is there an inkling of bias in the back of your head? Until that is there, let’s not pretend that the prejudice does not exist. Also let’s accept our role as a society, in this situation, then.
3. I have seen some very shocking reactions, which I hope, are only the result of these special circumstances and the stress caused on account of that. From highly literate Maharashtrians who are even more convinced now about Raj Thakeray’s anti-North Indian agenda, to celebrities like Simi Garewal advocating war against Pakistan and also advocating action against slum dwellers en masse, because few of them have been seen to carry Pakistani flags. When will we raise ourselves above all these petty matters, and take up the bigger challenges confronting us?
4. Is there anyway that a proper chain of command can be spelt out, on priority, just in case, such or similar incidents occur in future as well?? All of us who are familiar with government departments, including the police, are well aware of the heirarchies existing there. And how it takes ages for papers and files to move from one table to the next, just because of those hierarchies. About how the left hand does not know what the right is doing, in such departments. How then, will one government body interact with another, or take a person from the other department as his commanding officer, during such events.
I am sure time went by, just in straightening these things out, when events transpired this time. And when we had the Mumbai police, the ATS squad, the Naval Forces, the Coast Guard, the Army and the NSG, all involved in this exercise. Who was calling the shots? And if there was no one person, it was bound to be chaotic. At least in terms of their press briefings, all of these agencies were interacting on their own with the media, and giving out at times, different messages!
Please let us have a defined chain of command in place, for the future.. !!
Random Musings 