How we forget - The German Bakery

Last night I attended the Bryan Adams show ( or as the hoardings screamed Bryan ADAM show) and it was a memorable evening. Beautiful date, a pleasant evening and an earnest performer who sang his melodies with all he had.

Apart from the music, one thing that really stood out was a moment's silence observed for Pandit Bhimsen Joshi. Nearly twenty thousand people, some of them still trooping in, stood in silence for a great son of this country who dedicated his life to his art. It was touching for many in the crowd had probably never heard the late Bharat Ratna sing, but everyone knew about the impact he had on music in this country. It was a moment dedicated to art. Good on you Pune. Lets hope we never forget Pandit Ji. Like we tend to forget everything.

It has been a year since the German bakery incident. A year. How time flies.

A year on, there is talk of re-opening the bakery but predictably nothing on bringing the accused to book? And I do not mean the minions and cowards who plant bags laden with explosive under tables or to their bodies.

What about the planners?

Juvenile argument one may say, but I repeat. What about the planners? They take lives! Real flesh and blood, and destinies cut short. They destroy universes, yet somewhere in the complex argument of geopolitics, history, religion and ground realities we forget who caused the blood to spill and forced mothers into a state of eternal despair. We just forget. We make peace deals and we move on as a nation of grieving mothers.

But that is another story.

I forgot about the bakery, like everyone else. I fold the newspaper and move on like everyone else. And I am not proud of that fact. But I am trying to be more sensitive and less immune.

Here is my moment of silence for every victim of terrorism in this country, and beyond. This is my bit as a writer. I think about the families of victims, and I assure you you are not alone in the pain.

Last year, I wrote the Indian Bakery and some people who lost family and friends to terrorism wrote back with their views. Some emails and responses were personal so I did not share them. Some comments I did. But the common thread in all the responses was that we need to lose the immunity that we have for the nonsense that surrounds us in the name of leadership of this nation. We are ok, if it does not happen to us.

We are being led by blood thirsty, greedy politicians who would not think twice before cheating people out of their money, food, and their lives. Slowly, we have to kill this immunity and start demanding performance.

Hope we get there. Hope there are no more Indian bakeries that cook up this attitude of in-action.

Here is the link to the poem

http://gaurav-parab.blogspot.com/2010/02/indian-bakery.html

Thanks and Regards,

Gaurav Parab