Why?

Is the question I've been asking myself for 3 days now. It started with the Shiv Sena creating hell on Sunday for somebody splattering a statue with mud. I still don't understand it - would the next initiative be to kill all the birds in the vicinity, because they have dared to do their business in the air above a statue?! It continued in the wee hours of Monday morning, as Zizou's head butt left me both anguished and curious, as to what could so push a man, a hero even, to that level of anger.

But nothing beats yesterday. I can't imagine a group of people so single-minded in their pursuit of a goal that they could kill 200 innocent people for it. It is one thing to warn people through shows of power, quite another to do the damage. Why? Is anything in this life that important, that somebody could be killed for it?

In some ways, this was a disaster bound to happen sooner than later - there's no more evident target in the whole country than the Mumbai rail system. All I wonder now is there any way to ever prevent it from happening again? There is almost no safeguard against this, given the tremendous strain that the rail infrastructure takes and the sophistication of the damage possible these days.

In hindsight, I feel most unhappy about writing this piece about airport security. It was meant to be a sarcastic piece, more a result of an early Monday morning than anything else, but what just happened has mocked my own cynicism. Damn.