Requiem

We're living through everyone's worst nightmare. To watch helplessly as your children die - what can possibly be more soul damaging. The misbegotten terrorists, all young lads aged less than 25 years old, are that breed of youth that has been blinkered, brain washed and exploited for agendas that are truly convulated, evil and the unnatural bent of a dangerously rabid set of minds. Extremists are now so easily crossing over to the otehr side of everything humane - and all for a supposed ideology that by now even they don't completely understand.

But never mind the whys and wherefores. The last three days of devastation in Mumbai has revealed one thing very clearly. Terrorists no longer kill somebody else. They stroll into your backyards and shoot your children. You might be shopping for groceries at a mall, or watching a film at a theatre or eating dinner at a restaurant and you might pay with your lives for these banal acts.

What we need immediately is a ready plan for defending ourselves, our friends, families and neighbourhood should the horrific need arise. Lets get done with expecting our politicians, our cops, our special untis and our so called leaders to come up with a plan because clearly, they can't. And we have nobody to blame but ourselves because we put them in charge and sat back to live complacent, island like lives in complete ignorance.

I propose that every apartment building and society identify security gaps and plug them at once. Make sure all the places our kids visit - schools, activity centres pass stringent security standards set by US. Form core groups at our offices and workplaces for a practical action plan that takes us out of the sitting ducks category and puts us in charge of events and how they turn. I mean how did 15 men, a misguided notion and some AK47s wreak this amount of havoc?? The armed commandos alone far far outnumbered the terrorists, yet 196 people like you and me were killed and some unfortunate ones lived to see their families wiped out.

The world has changed, maybe beyond recognition but lets not hang back and expect it to sort itself out. Maybe we can't access the Al Qaida headquarters and wipe them out, maybe we can't check the sub fractions that are breeding like so many roaches and getting into our everyday lives - but we can be prepared to fight them should the need arise.

Lets not be caught napping.