A year on...

...not a lot has changed,” say people. The November 26 terror attacks of last year have been commemorated with plaques here and junctions being renamed there with a few installations being set up at the theatres of terror. People say the attacks should have served as a warning and yet, they add that nothing has changed. Everything is exactly the same, they say. The government/authorities are still bumbling about with Band-Aid® solutions to compound fracture situations with some unGodly sense of misplaced pride about these solutions.

A case in point is the city’s fire department, which admittedly found itself fighting fires amid a hailstorm of bullets and grenades in the 26/11 attacks. This is not a typical situation. It’s a damn anomaly and as such, should be acknowledged as that, one would imagine. Now, under this misguided idea that firemen will regularly have to deal with being shot at, bulletproof vests have been ordered and received by the department. Honestly, bulletproof vests. And yet, helmets fitted with oxygen masks are too much to ask for.

It’s like a concept in cricket captaincy called “ball chasing”. What happens here is that as a captain, you set a field for a particular bowler and if the batsman happens to pick a gap and hit the ball through a vacant part of the field, your first instinct is to plug that gap by picking up a fielder from somewhere else. Playing catch-up, basically. That is exactly what this bulletproof vest plan is. Some quarters also wanted firemen to receive military training. Thank heavens then for the chief fire official who put his foot down and said, “No! Law and order control is not the fire department’s job. Fighting fires is.”

Digression aside, people also believe that the attitude of the police hasn’t changed despite losing some of their best men in the attacks. They’re still the same callous and corrupt lot, people say. To serve and protect? Ha! “They’re serving themselves an extra helping of tax payer money to protect their well-fed belly” is a view one is more likely to come across.

The government hasn’t changed, the cops haven’t changed, the security of the Nation hasn’t changed, Pakistan’s refusal to take responsibility hasn’t changed. Nothing’s changed, people scream.

I beg to differ.

Something has changed and this change has been quite massive. Last year, I had written about the way people responded to tragedy, specifically, the terror attacks. (Feel free to have a look. I’ll wait.) The biggest change I’ve seen and I’m dead certain that I’m not alone, is that people have turned so incredibly stupid. Which, it must be said, is quite a feat, considering they were already pretty damn stupid to begin with.

First, there were the candles. Those infernal candles. You remember the candles? Then, there was the hysterical news reporting, all that shrieking and bellowing like someone had trapped the anchor’s testicles in a car door. Then came all that “We will not forget!” bull-honkey.

And now, this year, news channels had the same sort of retrospective news reports. “What happened on that day...” and junk like that. People brought their candles out. (I’m convinced that the city of Mumbai has some underhanded dealings with a major wax manufacturer. Everywhere I look, it’s those damn candles) Some people — like this one woman on a news channel who was crying, because all the people who lost their lives, made her feel like she had lost her son and husband — cried, postured, talked about the increased need for accountability etc. etc.

But wait... There were TWO elections held this year. One of them was on a National scale and one was on a state assembly scale. With all the effort these fools could put into making banners and keeping those Godforsaken candles burning in the wind, one would imagine they’d actually go and vote. Nope. No chance of that. Voter turnouts were among the lowest seen by the city. Logic dictates that if you want all these changes, you’d change your representative or at least put pressure on your representative to deliver. Not miss the whole damn election process altogether, as these geniuses did.

And they still see fit to start yelling and screaming about change. Sigh... Such stupid creatures... and getting stupider by the minute.