(3 Days) Prince of Kurukshetra !

I had not watched the news headlines the previous night and on the Saturday morning when I saw the news flashing 'Nation prays for Prince - All out effort to save Prince'. I was puzzled and kept wondering who the Prince could be. My thoughts went back and forth and I tried my best to correlate the headlines with all the 'Princes' I had known. I couldn't remember of any of the crown prince either in India or the Middle East who could merit so much of the nation's attention. Could it be the Prince of Kolkata - poor dada, lady luck can't do so much of injustice to him. Could it be the funky pop icon, Prince of Little Red Corvette fame? But, I seldom knew he had such a mad fan following within the nation, who would gather overnight to conduct a mass yagna for his well-being. The Haryana CM, mobbed by a battery of media people, issues a status report on Prince and if I had heard it right, had sought technical assistance from experts in London and Holland! Young turk Navin Jindal, still trying hard to survive amongst the wily old foxes of the congress coterie, is personally supervising the entire melee and begging the media to stay away - more rightly so! An entire horde of dutiful men in the uniform lend their best hands in the rescue effort with mammoth machinery and air force coming to their aid. After few minutes of bewilderment, the news channels came to my rescue with a live report from the action site where a poor young boy by name 'Prince' had fallen into a narrow trench and there was all kinda harakiri over the rescue operation.

Aha, there lies our Prince, some 60 feet down below in a trench - thanks to the closed circuit camera dropped down the hole.

Needless to say, the sensation craving media - all trying to outclass each other - provided a breath by breath account of the incident. I even heard, it was one of the media house that managed to drop a camera deep inside the trench. I am not sure, how much it would have cost them to get this exclusivity of this entire incident. Giving a semblance of national harmony, almost every religious group had special prayers for the young kid. The PM and Sonia Gandhi all had a spot for Prince in their prayers that night. Needless to say it would have been a nightmarish experience for the parents of the poor kid, not just because of the precarious fall but the sudden prominence on the national radar would have definitely put them onto some discomfort. Almost every national daily carried a full-page coverage of the incident the next day.

What took me by surprise was the extent to which we have fallen prey to the sensationalizing of any incident by the media. This used to be a very common phenomena in the US where a kid getting sick eating a school meal would capture the headlines than a million kids succumbing to mal-nutrition or a landmine explosion in Africa. Least to say we are getting over-influenced by western way of living, especially the increasing middle-class society. Who else would have been awe-struck by the entire episode than the people sitting comfy in their sofa, enjoying a good weekend lunch and the entire media feasting their gory appetite of lunch time conversation.

I am not so inane to personally go against the help lent to save a poor life, especially the efforts of our brave men in uniform. But, the attention that was given to this particular instance, while similar incidents are a commonplace happening in so many parts of this country was appalling. How many Princes die of starving in so many tribal belts of this nation? How many kids languish in pain working in tanneries, quarys, restaurants and sivakasis, slogging out more than what their physical structure can allow them to - all in the need to feed their hungry soul atleast one meal a day? The single malady that exists in most of our villages is not just deprivation of food, but deprivation of vital nutrients in the food. What about the kids dying of starvation each day in Vidharbha? Thousands of young kids can barely get one nutritious meal a day or clean water to drink. Let us not lose the trail of the bigger picture while the media feeds us with fodder, minute by minute, with all these sensational stories. Let us not forget the millions of other Princes fighting for their own survival.

Amidst all this commotion was the news that 'Prince celebrated his birthday' in the trench and a mammoth cake welcomed him on the ground.

God save the Prince!

Its all of us - stupid !

Another ghastly terror attack, hundreds dead, good samaritans help each other, world leaders condemn attacks, politicians make a beeline, issue inane statements and make hefty compensation announcements in the air, blame thy neighbour across the border, media keeps talking till they bump into a more sensational story, 'experts' make their opinions known, almost anyone (m'inclus) has something to say or write and life goes on. But, is it really so?

Least to say, it was apalling to hear the rhetoric made by Mulayam that SIMI does not have any presence in UP or one of his mouthpiece's profess that SIMI might not have perpetrated this criminal act of the Mumbai blast. We as a nation may never learn to live in unity; except for the semblance of harmony displayed in smaller groups as witnessed in the great act of herioism and resileince displayed by the Mumbaikars in the moment of crisis. Leave alone the usual suspicions cast on the involvement of the neighbour across the border, when are we going to learn to lend one common voice in a moment of horror and national calamity. How can we ever fight the pervalence of terror with so much of divergence on the very definition of the phenomenon and the criminals inflicting it? An outlaw like the SIMI gets the backing of a major political party and the reason can only be mandated by the shameful requisites of vote-bank politics. The moment the central government asks the states to crack down on a suspected unit, how can a state government be so deliberate in its backing of the same unit with its ministers openly acquiescing the unit. Doesn't this amount to criminal activity of the same magnitude as the ultras who languished the terror on innocent citizens of Mumbai? This is not the only instance of political partisanship playing precariously on the lives of the innocent lives. The Kerala CM comes calling Karunanidhi all in the need - on Humanitarian grounds - to inquire about the well-being of a convict serving his cause in the jails for his role on the Coimbatore blasts. Where on earth would killing hundreds of innocuous human beings and spreading the menace of terror would demand humanitarian treatement? A forest brigand murdering dutiful officers, besides felling so many tuskers gets exonerated like a patriot. While the outlawed get so sophisticated, we arm our poor guards with antiquated weaponery. The enemy is not across the border - it is right next to us - our impotency to define and stand for righteousness. As long as we let the politicans play the game of selective favoritism in the name of vote-bank politics and create for ourselves myopic policies to remain oblivious to the need for a uniform anti-terror law, we are going to be soft targets for any criminal waiting to wreck havoc on us.

These blasts may not be categorized as acts of terror - it is a war and should it be handled like a war. We need fire to fight fire. Call it TADA, POTA or whatever, there should be one unshakable law that can strike terror on anyone including the politicans - if it need be. Does such dastardly act even deem a defense lawyer, a sessions court that is still trying to express its jurisprudence even after eight years of the cowardly act of the coimbatore blasts, while the poor souls of the frail victims rest in peace? With so much acrimony amongst the various political parties on working towards a national consensus, sans a semblance of it when it comes to the need to preserve their vote-bank at any cost - any such law would get shoved down the drain and god forbid there be yet another terror strike somewhere and we go in circles! What does the so called increased diplomatic pressure on Pakistan going to achieve - what has it delivered all these years? If not to take a cue from the Israelies, we should know how to defend ourselves and protect our soverignity. We need leaders who could show us that way and not try to divide the nation in the name of pitiful power game and shameful vote-bank politics.

Alas, we chose the kings and so our destiny !