FUCK IT...

(This post attracted quite a bit of concern from two very close friends... I'm going to take their advice and tone it down. Their concern that this might be construed as "hate speech". tells me that in my haste and anger, I may have gone off the deep end. For, the fact is that I'm not hateful... just very angry.)

As I usually do, I read a news story (on the web) and then I’ll scan through the comments from readers for insights and views. As much as I’m interested in the pure reportage itself, I’m also interested in what people think and have to say about whatever’s going on in the world.

And the biggest news today is the terrorist attack in Bombay.

I flip to the National Post. Skim through the story. Nothing new here. I’ve seen most of it elsewhere already. Scan down for comments. None. Surf over to the Globe and Mail. Same news regurgitated. Scan down to comments. Notice pops up saying “comments are not being accepted”. Over at the Toronto Star, they’re accepting comments, but there are just 14 at the time of this writing. In the Toronto Sun. Nothing either. (Though the photograph below caught my attention.)


A policeman gives water to an injured child at a hospital in Mumbai on Nov. 26, 2008. Dozens were killed in a series of shootings around India’s financial capital, with two five-star hotels among the targets in the terror attacks. (Courtesy: Toronto Sun/REUTERS)

Amazing. Here in Canada, where the online chatter starts up so quickly over dog poop in a park… Nothing. Null. Nada. Zero. Zilch.

No one has a thing to say here about what's happening in Bombay. Absolutely amazing.

Is it possible that no one cares?

Seems hardly likely that we Canadians wouldn't care about something like this that’s causing so much pain and anguish.

Here’s what I suspect… the Post and the Globe would rather not deal with the vitriol that this is likely generating. So they just shut down the comments. The Star is probably putting up only what it considers the most “inoffensive”. And the Sun, to be honest, I don’t know how they do things there. But let’s just leave it at them not having anything up from readers either.

So then, we don’t care?

Surely we do. But, I suspect, not enough to risk our politically correct veneer.

Shame on the lot of us.

I, for one, as an ex-Bombayite, am seething today. I want to see someone pay for what these animals have done to the city. And have done many times in the past. It’s just that there’s more media attention this time around because of the foreign hostages held at the Taj and the Oberoi. One empty head at CNN said this will likely “go down in history as India’s 9/11”. Left me wondering which planet this fucking moron was visiting when 209 Bombayites died in the commuter train bombings in July 11, 2006. But, perhaps in their intense coverage and background research for today’s events, CNN just plain missed 7/11.

(And shut up already about Mumbai. It’s Bombay for me.)

Yeah, I’m angry.

I’m very fucking angry.

I don't care who they are, where they came from. Whatever.

Find them. Kill them. And then wipe out the snake pits they crawled out of.

Fuck it.

See how easy it is? See how easily the carefully cultivated cloak of political correctness slips off my shoulders?

One of the reasons I left Bombay 12 years ago was growing fatigue and frustration with the extreme emotions and political affiliations that had come to constantly bubble under the city's collective consciousness. Bursting out every now and then in riots, death and destruction. On one hand, the Hindus, on the other, Muslims.

Tired of getting caught in between, I bailed.

For the calm and quiet orderliness of Toronto. Twelve years in this city and society slowly eroded the passion that politics and religion could once bring raging up in me. The hot South Asian temper, slowly but surely tempered. I learned to wear the comforting cloak of Canadian equanimity. And wore it well.

But today, it’s slips off. Today, I want to see an eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth.

Fuck it.

I weep for Bombay.

And to the Karkare, Kamte and Salaskar families, and the families of the security personnel killed in Bombay over the last 36 hours. Jai Hind.