It was 6:10 pm I just took a u turn in front of Lifestyle mall in Raja Garden and was headed towards Dwarka to celebrate birthday of one of our friends. Just then my friend received a call, the person on the other side was another friend of ours; She told her to reach to the safest possible location ASAP. I was anxious due to her replies to the person on the other side and her face too looked full of tension. Soon she informed me that there has been a blast in Gopaldas building in C.P. My first reaction was “It was coming” Though the tragedy’s news was shocking but to be honest it was not surprising at all considering the recent blasts in Jaipur & Ahmedabad. Even at the time when I heard the news of blasts in those places, I felt bad but couldn’t feel the impact; however this time when it happened right outside the building in which I started my career, I just didn’t feel bad, there was a wave of endless emotions and before I could react my phone ranged “Calling Dad”, I could understand his reason of call. He is otherwise less spoken and hardly ever talks in an authoritative tone but in the conversation of about 3 minutes, I could hardly speak and received orders to come back home immediately. I was more closer to my original destination and after numerous discussions, I finally decided to head towards Dwarka as safety of my female friend was equally important and I couldn’t have left her alone in these troubled times. We shortly received confirmed news of 5 blasts across Delhi, Karol Bagh, CP and GK; All the places where we could have easily been; In fact we changed the location to meet Raja Garden from CP to buy gift at the very last moment!
But quite a few others were not lucky enough and could not escape the terror strike. Official numbers say 30 people have lost their lives while 100 odd people were injured. News channels were carrying the disturbing pictures of blast victims and distorted looking blast sites, I was curious to watch the news but we decided to not to watch TV, The mood had mellowed down to a large extent but still we carried on with our reduced gathering while numerous calls poured in from all possible corners of the nation and we were glad to answer them and reply anxious messages ensuring we were safe.
Our talks endlessly digressed to the tragedy and we helplessly vented our anger out. I reached home early morning and on my way I saw signage written “India Gate” & “ Karol Bagh” while I was crossing Dhaula Kuan, For once my heartbeat became faster knowing the fact that I was quite close to all blast sites. Following the tragic event, one would expect heavy security; however to my utter surprise, I did not encounter even a single men in Khakhi and drove with out any checking till my house despite crossing sensitive places like dehli Cantt & Airport on the way. On reaching home I encountered another bad news of Cricket Australia giving a second thought about the upcoming tour against India due to security concerns
It is just a small illustration of how important is a citizen’s safety is to government authorities. India has always been subject to terror attacks and quite surprisingly, every attack has given boost to the evil powers and no learning to people in power, Be it Akshardham attack, Mumbai, serial blasts or Parliament attack, we don’t seem to have any system in place which can prevent repeat of such inhuman incidents in future, London for instance post blasts in underground stations has developed a system for preventing such attacks in future. The system includes a dedicated team including Dogs who are expert in tunnel activities. The CCTV’s have a wide range and work 24*7, In fact these cameras led to cracking the case; Govt. is equally concerned about people privacy and hence the cameras automatically blurs the image in case any building comes in its range but captures every single movement in public place. There is a team of experts set up who diligently watch movement of individuals These experts are responsible for pre empting any unlike event by studying body science 7 visual language of people. I know all of this can still not gurantee safety but says a lot about concern and efforts took to ensure it
We on the other hand are more bothered about Maharashtra’s Marathi and Up’s Hindi language barriers. Politicians have unmistakingly repeated similar comments and tirelessly given same assurances but to no result. The fact remains that common people are still burning. Every citizen has lost faith in security and does not feel safe while going out. Police on the other hand seems helpless, despite of early warnings; forces did not act to prevent such a heinous crime. Militant groups are openly mocking the security and challenging the administration to stop them. The recent e-mail from Indian Mujaheddin (IM) group who took responsibility for attacks declared, “the dust will never settle down”. Does that mean that thousands of lives will continue to get buried under that dust with no hopes of any one clearing it? I believe that with government, people are responsible too for the safety however the fundamentals of the current government looks very weak and any involvement from public might not get results that ideally should be expected. We don’t want Nuclear deal, not even strong monetary policy to control inflation, even eco friendly fuel is of least importance to us IF you can not guarantee or at least make effort to guarantee our survival, We don’t want tall buildings of rock and concrete All we need is a strong foundation which can blow the dust away and never allows to settle again
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