Pray for Paris !

Sad-Sad-Sad; upset too, very very, with what happened in Paris last night.  It just never seem to be ending…not in clear horizon…one after other…so soon…so fast. We only notice these in the western world because of the accessibility and media coverage. Imagine how many are dying in the India subcontinent, middle-east and Africa, like insects and flies, every single day. There is no official count of all these. We tend to ignore these sad news but it only hits us, if the affected is one of ours.  Imagine how the friends and families of those people died last night, must be coping right now. Indescribable!!! May this never happen again…

Terrorist attack, it seems has caused all these in Paris. I was curious. What exactly is terrorism and what do they want; contrary to what we tend to believe.  My curiosity took me to Wikipedia and here is what I found about the purpose and objectives of terrorism:

• Terrorism is any act designed to cause terror. Terrorism is generally understood to feature a political objective. The word "terrorism" is politically loaded and emotionally charged.
• A broad array of political organizations has practised terrorism to further their objectives.
• It has been practiced by right and left-wing political parties, nationalist groups, religious groups, revolutionaries, and ruling governments.
• The symbolism of terrorism can exploit human fear to help achieve these goals.
• It sets out to inflame, to divide, and to produce consequences which they then use to justify further terror.
• Modern terrorists often calculate civilian casualties for a desired effect, as opposed to psychopathic mass homicide.
  Lastly, words like patriot and terrorist are not as antonymic as we believe. 
• To distract. Often, the spreaders of terror play the shell game, causing us all to look one way, while something more sinister is happening where no one is looking.  In the past, there is a possibility that Osama bin Laden and his cohorts knew full well that response to an act of war on 9/11 would result in us deploying military resources by the billions to countries halfway around the world. Same with the stories of Saddam Husain and him stocking up mass destruction weapons in Iraq, which today, those involved in the decision making public statements about wrong action with incorrect intelligence information.

In short; terrorism has five elements:

1. Terrorism is politically or ideologically motivated; it has no religion.
2. Conducted by members of the state, or not;
3. It can be lethal and nonlethal;
4. And it seeks to unsettle the status quo.
5. And create business opportunities, or otherwise

We are not in a war against terror! Are we? That’s the most absurd formula ever invented. It is also a sign for certain defeat, because  if we haven’t the guts to identify and openly name the arch enemy of freedom, they will win. “Terror” is a tactic. How can we claim a tactic as an enemy?

Over last 100 years in particular; we tried to emphasize growth/greed over humanity, growth/greed over sustainability.  Just imagine, education system being evolved as a profitable industry; health-care system being evolved as a profitable industry; political system being evolved as a profitable industry; law/justice system being evolved as a profitable industry; defence/armaments system being evolved as a profitable industry!!! Anything we name, basically which should be a state run system with minimum capitalistic influence is a profitable industry today. When they were not, 50 years ago or before, our world was a comparatively safer place to live in.  Soon will be a time when like above, terrorism will be considered as a profitable profession or industry. Really? How absurd? Exactly!!! That’s EXACTLY what I think, when I think of Education, Politics and health-care systems, have turned into profitable industry sector. Think about God-man-ship in India….it is some multi trillion dollar industry in total. Every other person in our community considers himself/herself as an incarnation of God.  Wherever we can a scope to implant greed and implant fear in people’s mind; we have an opportunity to start business there and make money. Business of fear is the most profitable business today!!! Agree?

How do we stop this?  That will come later. But question before that is; do we want to stop this?  It has to dethroned fundamentally. Fear has to go.  What is right must be selected.  We need to make ourselves less infatuated with fashion, charm or outer-glimmer. We need to be realistic. It is not now about current generation. It is about future…about our kids and grand-kids generation now. Our action now will see the result perhaps in a generation’s time. So do we care or we leave it as it is. It is perhaps a better thing to think about and take action than saving wealth for your future generations. Wealth will have no value, when sustainability is a serious question here.

The word Kingdom is often associated with a ruler, the king and his ruled countrymen. Raja aur praja.  Raja rules and Praja are ruled happily by the Raja. Praja chunti hey Raja, aur Raja sambhalta hey Raajbhar. People mandate/choose a ruler/ruling party and the ruler only rules over the Kingdom based on the mandate of its citizens.  It is not the birth right of any ruler to take decision against the wish and at the cost of sustainability of the Kingdom and its fellow citizen.  JAB RAKSHAK BANE BHAKSHAK.  Don't you feel this is wrong? No one is allowed to unsettle the status quo of the Kingdom and its fellow citizen. If they do; - it can not be, it should not be and it will not be tolerated.  Selection is still in our hand, our voice is our vice and if we think we have bigger platforms today to voice our collective opinion and decision. These must STOP.

I shall end with a small story. Love telling stories.   Monday 8th of August 2011 will be the day remembered by all our local residents of London for the meaningless violence, which thrust upon our much loved streets.  Worst hit area was the Clapham Junction, around Lavender Hill. No one involved had any intentions of delivering a political of social message; they just wanted to enjoy themselves by destroying people’s livelihoods. It was disturbing to watch on television, and terrifying for some of our residents stuck in the thick of the violence. Personally, the worst image for me was that of the young girls in the attack laughing at their friends tearing a TV off the wall in Ladbrokes. Such a depressingly pathetic display of ignorance and stupidity.

But the local community has come together in a tear jerking response as residents supported those affected today with broom in hand to clean up.  Something to be proud of. And guess what…since the collective campaign started by the local residents in the Clapham high street, the rioters backed off, disappeared and Clapham came back to normality than some of the other areas, within London, where residents were dependent solely on the police forces and government.  Remember; evil is always scared of the good, not the other way round. We don’t need courage to be in the good side but we definitely need some to be in the wrong side, the evil side.

My good friend from Kiev wrote to me on the occasion of Diwali;  Bikash How was your Deewali? Lena and I had a chance to have a small celebration ourselves, to mark this holiday you taught me about - Lena prepared somewhat-Indian spicy chicken for the occasion, and we shared some memories about you :).

Love you my friend. Happy Diwali to you. I shall rather respond to you here knowingly you will be reading this. I shall forward this link to you, soon as I post it.  Diwali   festival spiritually signifies the victory of light over darkness, knowledge over ignorance, good over evil, and hope over despair.  That’s exactly I have been writing here in this blog essentially. We Indians love little stories. We believe matters, only if it has a story. That’s why you see such difference in the contents of Indian and Hollywood movies. For Diwali as a well, it has some mythological stories behind it, why it is celebrated, when it is celebrated and what it signifies. I  shall explain these to you next time when I see you and Lena together. I can put up an act as well together with the story. Will that be good, you think?  For now I am glad you had a little celebration yourself. I am very proud of you. You know the we have 29 states and 7 union territories in India today. And each of the states and union territories has their own festivals, languages, state-holidays, food patterns etc.  But one particular festival which unites whole India and all its states and union territories is Diwali…the festival of lights.  Not only in India, has it become a phenomenon outside of India as well. That’s why you say the President Obama declared this as a holiday in America and all other world leaders such as David Cameron spoke so fondly about this festival. Diwali is soon becoming like Christmas, with no religion attached. It is for everyone, of everyone, by everyone. This is how we celebrate Christmas in our house hold, as far as my memory goes back, since my childhood, back in India.  And some lucky ones like you celebrate Christmas twice…a normal Christmas on 25^th December and an Orthodox one on January 7^th ?    May be one year, I hope I get chance to celebrate Orthodox Christmas with you and you celebrate Diwali with me. Thank you. Love you. Take care. Speak soon. My best wishes to Lena as well.

Chalo. My apology for making it a long read on this occasion for this topic (Paris attack).  I hope we understand the cause, we understand the objectives and we also understand our responsibilities. That’s all I wanted to say. Thank you for reading and your patience.

Until later...Lots of love and again my prayers and thoughts go to the victims of the terror attacks in ‪#‎Paris and their families ‪#‎PrayForParis