Speak-up, Mr. Khan!

The world saw what happens when security forces of a State concentrate on ensuring a movie’s release instead of doing their regular duty.

Terror attacks in our country have not bothered me before mainly because I think our Defence Services are doing whatever best they can with whatever resources they have. There is room for improvement and I think that progress can and will be made with perseverance (Yes, I am the eternal optimist where my country is concerned). But the Pune Bakery incident was different in many ways. My inbox saw a condolence message related to a bomb blast for the first time in 6+ years of working life. Our company had a lost a very young and brilliant man to the blast on 13th February. Post seeing the email, I looked up this man’s details on our intranet and realized that the country had lost out on an overwhelming amount of potential. Not only had this young man died a premature death at 23 years, his younger sister had met the same fate with him.

I might be prejudiced but cannot refrain from mentioning SRK here. Why is this man, who epitomized patriotism and freedom of speech in the last couple of weeks, not speaking up now? Can he not even acknowledge the fact that there was a lapse due to troops protecting his movie? And when will people realize that movies, along with actors, are just means for entertainment? They can never be bigger than a nation.

Terror, somehow, seems closer than ever today. But, I hope, for a stronger country to emerge out of all this chaos. Fanaticism can never always win.