My beloved city was held hostage at gunpoint for almost three straight days while the f*ckwits who are supposed to lead and guide us swapped accusations, blame and vituperative nonsense. Heinous is a word that not only accurately describes what the terrorists did to us but also what the political machinery of this country has done to us. Such lack of empathy and accountability bewilders me. It enrages me. Sets my heart on fire.

News reports are teeming with obvious gaffes in the professional structure of the security and intelligence agencies of this country: the possibility of this attack was made apparent as far back as October and none paid heed to it.

People have now poured out onto the streets of Mumbai. Because we didn’t die and since we are here, we need to ensure that those who died for us aren’t forgotten. The ire and invectives will fade, but the memory of this carnage never should. What it represents and who needs to face the political guillotine is what this nation needs to decide.

I have fiddled with this thought before and I am convinced of its dynamism now – Courage is a choice. For the 30 something army Major who was an all rounder sportsman at the National Defence Academy, Pune, it was. For the decorated officers of the Mumbai Police Force Force who lead from the front, not the sidelines, it was a choice. For the almost unguarded DB Marg cops who were in possession of archaic weapons at Girgaum, but still took on the armed-to-the-teeth terrorists because it was, quite literally, about doing or dying, it was a particularly important choice.

We must chose to do something now.

Constantly displayed footage of Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan’s mother weeping inconsolably while talking to her dead son, bent over the coffin that carried his body draped in the national tricolor, is a scene I won’t forgive in a hurry. Her helplessness, her agony can’t be felt by anyone who hasn’t lost a young son in the battlefield.

When I juxtapose this image with the state’s home minister R.R. Patil’s callous response about how such “small incidents” occur quite frequently in cities as large as Mumbai, I want to rip this turgid buffoon’s darkened heart out of his chest and tear it to a million pieces. Supplement this almost brutal tactlessness with the ironic visuals of the central Home minister, Shivraj Patil, walking away from the Congress Working Committee’s meeting rubbing his hands together as though indicating to the nation that he has officially washed his hands of this tragedy and many others that preceded this one.

He claims to have resigned because he didn’t want his party to suffer. Never mind the 195 dead and 300-odd injured people, it’s the party he cares about. Such a singularly nauseous display of sycophancy is rarely found.

As of now, the Home Minister has resigned from his post following some serious pressure from his detractors in the Congress/party/the ruling government, though it makes you wonder how different the situation in this country would have been if he had done this a few months ago, when the whole nation was up in flames every second week. This kind of political failure makes one weary and livid at the same time.

We have been deceived by our central intelligence agencies and our politburos in equal measures. You wonder what kind of black-hole ingested their sense of duty to the citizens of this nation when stretchers upon stretchers were wheeled out of the Taj and the Oberoi, carrying the bodies of those who were caught in the gun battles. The stench of flesh at these places made the rescuing commandos dizzy.

The plasma screens across the city, the country and the world beam videos and pictures of abandoned footwear and food, cars turned into flattened metal sieves due to the innumerable bullet holes: the well-coordinated dance of death and destruction rattled the very foundations of Mumbai and the whole country, but we are still without any solid post-trauma action plan. Our government still looks as clueless as it did when the masses brought them to power.

The Prime Minister’s national address inspired disdain and not confidence, his ineffectiveness superseded only by his apathy. Brilliant economists don’t necessarily translate into capable leaders. Let this be a lesson to democracies everywhere.

Manmohan Singh’s apathy is further mirrored by the chief minister of this state of Maharashtra, Vilasrao Deshmukh, and his cabinet cronies: he wasn’t even aware of the approximate number of the casualties at even one of the three locations at a press conference. When the heat in the kitchen got slightly unbearable, he did what he well known for – He ran. To a “party meeting”. Class act.

The biggest error on part of politicians was their strict inability to present a united front in the face of this national crisis. The poobahs of partisan political beliefs took no time in going for each other’s jugular. They could have waited to sling mud until the situation stabilized and we have averted the tragedy. But no! How about a giant scoop of irony with some shavings of self-preservation in our dysfunctional democratic soufflé? You’ll like it kids!

As of now the state is in a limbo and so is the country. If these attacks are indication of our preparedness for war – internal or external – then I’d say we are in some seriously troubled waters. The Marine Commandos and the NSG may have rescued us this time, with some significant damages in the bargain, but why did we land ourselves in a mess so capital to begin with? Yes, you can’t predict it but can’t you at least combat it with less damage.

There are questions galore:

How does a group of 10 hold a whole bloody city to ransom?

Where are the pseudo-intellectuals who aim their guns at the resident police force when it manages to trap terrorists, all in the name of human rights violation? Arundhati Roy – Go take a walk at the Taj Hotel in Mumbai, you will know what violating human rights means in real terms.

Why do our cops have such ancient weapons and communication devices? How can you go head-to-head when you have walkie talkies on one side while the other side is well equipped with satellite phones and cutting edge technology?

How did the trawlers and the mother ship used to transport the terrorists go undetected all the way to the Mumbai dock? Was the coast guard sleeping?

Why didn’t the central intelligence agencies act on warning – provided earlier during the year – about the possibility of a fresh batch of terror attacks that could be carried out in the country’s economic capital?

Why did the 3 top cops of the Mumbai Police walk into the combat zone with little or no protection and with antiquated weapons? Why wasn’t there a more refined and structured approach to this whole situation? Also, why were they all allowed to move ahead in the same vehicle? (This vehicle was later utilized by the terrorists to travel through South Bombay shooting indiscriminately at random civilians and the media.)

Why weren’t the NSG commandos given a clear blueprint of the inside of the very hotels they were supposed to comb and sanitize from the terrorists?

Why don’t we have a resident NSG commando center set up for Mumbai? At least some deaths could’ve been avoided if we could cut short the response time between the terrorist takeover of the hotel and the Marcos/ NSG stepping in.

When can we really stand up, as a nation, and make a clear point on the world stage that Pakistan – whether directly or indirectly – is involved in perpetrating terror in India?

These attacks may not find state sponsorship – thought, there is substantial proof that the men sent to destroy Mumbai were in fact trained by ISI and Pak Navy in laying sea mines as well as intense warfare in the waters of the high sea– but their epicenter is the Pak-Afghanistan belt and this needs immediate addressing.

USA needs to get this clear – global warfare on terrorism means Us and Them. Not just Americans. This affects all of us. We need to count too. Our lives matter.

A billion people have a billion questions that our incompetent politicians and bureaucracy will eventually have to face. Yet public memory in this country is fairly short. We forget with ease, we take refuge in the so-called “never say die” attitude that’s probably a figment of some bungling pen pusher’s imagination. It’s not the spirit of the city, it’s a need. We have to get up and move on. What other option is there? There is a livelihood that needs to earned. Food that needs to be put on the table for the family of 18 who have lost their sole breadwinners.

Our political nincompoops are smart enough to realize that someone so taken in by the mammoth task of just surviving in this city of dreams (and now, screams and gunshots) will probably have no time to introspect about its safety or its future. We mustn’t let them get away with this assumption. Because we didn’t die.

This is a spiritual nation, one that doesn’t believe in unnecessary violence of bloodshed, so it’s even more tragic to watch its streets colored an insidious shade of carmine. My city cried for three whole days. I received text messages from friends who were placed under house arrest while snipers lunged forward from their terraces and balconies, taking aim at the gutless and godless barbarians who wanted to maim and kill and destroy.

I had Coast Guard choppers circle my building and those in that vicinity because the creek is close by and right now the sea is not safe – the sea that inspires, nurtures our dreams and washes away our guilt, our sins. That very sea is suddenly our biggest threat.

Café Leopold has gaping holes in the wall from the shooting, the same size that encumber our political and national security system. The owner of this Mumbai landmark has already commenced repairing it and has decided that they will be back in business in no time while the policy makers and national leaders of this country continue to employ subterfuges. It would inculcate a sense of victory in us if only they would have displayed some passion, a cherished zeal for this country they are poised to ruin to dust.

We must never forget that we didn’t die. Because in this country we often do.

Title borrowed from June Jordan’s “Some of us did not die” – a collection of essays published after 9/11.

Purported allegations of infidelity and adultery against her were enough for the in-laws, in cohorts with the local populace, to mete out this depraved form of tribal justice. Perpetrators of this barbaric act are yet to be captured by the local police even though the accused, while labeled as absconded, has openly made threats about killing the lynched teen’s mother. The baby, meanwhile, was disposed off in a canal.

News reports indicate that her father-in-law, Zamir Solangi, who is responsible for this gruesome act, took the pregnant girl from her mother’s and subsequently swore of the Holy Quran that he wouldn’t harm her. Religion and patriarchy make a fairly toxic cocktail in the Indian sub-continent and the ignorant masses are only too pleased to gulp it down by the gallon.

My earliest images of Pakistan’s women were shaped by the slightly asymmetrical and exaggerated (as duly pointed out by a lit-crit professor) accounts of gender based bias and discrimination in Tehemina Durrani’s Blasphemy. Today though, I don’t quite think the book as exaggerated as Dr D’Souza thought.

To be honest, I was quite scared of ever stepping foot anywhere beyond the LOC (“Line of Control” between India and Pakisran) and it had nothing to do with the perennial under-currents of violence and hatred, assumed or otherwise, between the two neighbors.

India and Pakistan share a murky history and a superior culinary culture plus a million other things. Yet despite celebrity proclamations of how it’s the “same” country both sides of the border, I know for a fact that’s not entirely true. We are different entities and the umbilical cord was severed quite a few decades ago.

Even so, you can relate to the urban Pakistani ecosystem a lot better if you come from the Northern part of India and I have been repeatedly informed by friends and mutants alike that much of Karachi will remind me of some of Delhi. I haven’t travelled the length and breadth of our Northern neighbor to validate that statement so I’ll make room for reasonable doubts than take it at face value.

My interest lies in a comparison of parities in the lives of an average Indian woman vis-à-vis one in Pakistan. There are differences galore, but quite a few similarities too. I do confess to very little information about rural Pakistani women in particular.

I am grown up enough now to believe that not every Pakistani household has its own feudal lord – though a significant amount of them are at the mercy of some lameass patriarchal messiah of sorts -and I am also firmly aware of the bitter truth that a very stringent sort of sexism prevalent in a large part of that country (as in mine) means a daily, almost ritualistic, persecution and defilement of women – emotionally, mentally, physically – as well as a thorough disregard for women’s rights.

Despite my usual preparedness for the abnormally grim, stories like Solangi’s still manage to scare me insane and fuel unbridled rage within me. Wrath is what I can feel right now, rising from the absolute pit of my stomach. Unadulterated and unmitigated anger. And I want to use this anger in a way that pulverizes the very core of our enforced patriarchal inheritance. I want my anger to be as brutal and as devoid of mercy as these murdering charlatans are.

I need revenge. We need revenge.

I could have chosen to satirize in my usual blasé manner because I find in humor – especially dark humor – a rock-hard and unshakable crutch. But this is not the time to seek crutches, it’s the time to demolish.

I beseech those academically fortified women amongst us, who love to deliberate about ethnocentric feminism’s strides in the warm comfort of their Ikea-decorated living rooms, to stand up and address this. Now. Without politeness and political correctness corrupting their ire. Because when young girls are left for dogs to feed on, very little room is left for civility.

What kind of monsters would force a teen to prematurely birth her child (who was subsequently thrown into a canal since he/she was deemed illegitimate by a killer father-in-law) and then based on some asinine rodent’s “wisdom” would throw her to a pack of rabid canines?

While this epic torture drama ensued, hitmen were sent after Taslim’s absconding mother to snuff out her life too. However, if all of this doesn’t inspire serious fear and fury in you, then take heart in the knowledge that a government official – a top level assistant commissioner, no less – was at the helm of these vile proceedings. Yes, officially signed, sealed and delivered, et al.

How many more women in the sub-continent have to bleed and scream before their voices can reach the world outside?

For every Mukhtaran Mai, a million Taslims are silently buried and disappear without a trace. But not this time. Definitely,

This time the water has reached our necks and it is lashing at its nape. It’s gurgling in our ears. It’s dirty and infected and it threatens to wash us away. It’s a hurricane of pain and disillusionment. It all boils down to one thing: Women are a long way from being ranked or even considered as human beings amidst some of the largest populations on the planet.

Who will speak about it? Who needs to speak about it?

We. We need to speak. No, actually, we need to do more than just speak about it, we need to scream, yell, shout, screech, holler, and tear apart the foundations of the universe if the need arises. This is not injustice to one, it’s injustice to all.

We all get torn apart when militant fangs dig into a pleading Taslim’s skin and heart. We can’t reduce ourselves to willing and mute witnesses to this century’s crimes against ourselves. We can’t afford to watch it till it simply “dies down” or “dissipates”. We can’t afford to be so static and unaffected. We must do something. We must seek justice.

We should, ideally, seek an eye for an eye because it just doesn’t work any other way – all due to respect to the Gandhian dogma and Bollywood movies inspired by it. For all that chest beating/bra burning in the name of the Sisterhood, it eventually boils down to this. This is the reality for brown women in our world.

It’s a large and fairly violent world but someone has to change it. Evolution needs catalysts. Theorizing and rationalizing will only take us so far. The rest of the journey is on foot. Without crutches. My crutches included.

In a country that’s replete with as many sexual assault cases as the number of babies born per minute, heinous crimes are everywhere, but one particular heinous crime has recently stood out from the rest.

Giving its verdict in the 2006 Khairlanji case, the Sessions court has held eight people guilty of murder. It has, however, acquitted three.

The Indian legal system usually makes for a perfectly submissive flogging partner, given the amount of beating it enjoys from barbaric scoundrels who repeatedly flaunt their entitled dicks in its face.

This time though, it’s done fairly well for itself. Yet, some problems remain obvious.

Let’s provide some background on why the court ruling still involves a heavy dose of B.S.:

In a rural Maharashtra hamlet, Bhandara, there exists a village called Khairlanji, a place where a Dalit (lower caste by standard caste-based definitions prevalent in India) family was butchered and had their home ransacked because of some really mundane reasons. For the uninitiated, just like race divides much of the U.S., caste and religion are the twin swords of Damocles hanging over the Indian socio-political geography.

The members of this family were brutalized and the mutilated bodies later dumped in a nearby canal, according to the news reports. They were part of the Bhootmange clan, their family comprised of a husband, wife, and their four kids. The women of the house were brutally raped. A mob then paraded them naked while beating them with sticks, bicycle chains, and whatever they could lay their hands on.

Later, when all the violence didn’t suffice, they repeatedly banged their heads on a hard wall so to render them lifeless. The pattern was repeated with the male children too. The only survivor of this gut wrenching tragedy was the father, Bhaiyalal Bhotmange, who managed a miraculous escape.

In the aftermath of this cataclysmic event, the nation was shocked, then tut-tutted some and finally went back to its decaf, lattes, soap operas, malls, and reality TV shows. Till the day of the final verdict arrived, that is.

Eight proven guilty. Three let off scot free. Six of the accused will hang for what they did. Not an entirely rotten deal if you consider that caste-based politics strong-arm the Indian law machinery frequently and with unparalleled ease. Also, there is the fact that Mr. Bhotmange carried on with this crusade for justice despite cash and kind offers to settle this matter “amicably” outside the domain of the legal system. Not to mention some serious barter options laid out by political bigwigs.

The worst part of the entire episode, though, is that the rape charges against the men who indulged in this massacre did not uphold in a court of law due to “lack of evidence”. It almost plays out like a mediocre Bollywood movie.

Apparently, the horror inflicted on the Bhotmange women was merely considered “molestation”. That’s legal joo joo for a little hanky-panky here and there, as a lawyer friend points out. It’s not a synonym for serious sexual assault. Forget about the violation. It’s not a violation, not in the eyes of law, at least. Yes, just molestation. How is that for a particularly blood-curdling joke?

The mother-daughter pair was pinned down to the mud floor and chili powder was thrown into their eyes to disorient them while they were raped. Correct me if I am wrong but it’s not always about the quicksand justice meted out to such diabolical bastards (though a speedy judgment does help deliver some peace of mind, if that’s entirely an option), it’s also about real charges that should have been proven in a court of law.

Rape is the one of the most toxic crimes invented by humanity and somehow people (read: men) cannot fathom this.

Oftentimes, incidents such as these escape the larger global radar. And despite the verdict, we must remember that there exists a half of humanity that is still struggling with the most primal form of patriarchy there is.

Neither should the caste angle to this unfortunate situation be ignored. Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, a constitutional provision to safeguard the so called “lower caste” folks in India, was thrown out of court, after all.

So I can’t help but link this entire fiasco to the Dalit discontent that’s been bubbling in various parts of the Indian state. India claims to be constantly riled by what it so lovingly labels ”Naxalite nuisance”, a constant slew of lower caste insurgent activities, yet it takes events like these to scratch the surface and give us perspective on where does all this hatred emerge from in the first place.

As of now, for what it’s worth, at least someone will hang for crimes committed against humanity in general.