I’m sure you’ve heard about what’s happened in Mumbai over the past couple of days. An organized bunch of miscreants killed innocent civilians, and took many more hostage. It was a shocking revelation as to how strong, organized and well informed these people are.
Religion is a very terrifying thing. A bunch of people filled with radical ideas surrounding ideals that had been taught to them from childhood can take their opinion and kill innocents such that they are heard. On the other hand, the media flock to the site, cameras aplenty, and tell the story about how all hope was lost and one of humanity’s darkest hour.
These kind of attacks affect me in a different way than most people.partially because I’m not exposed much to the sensationalist Indian media, and rather to aggregated news articles, but mostly because I understand basic probability.
This means that everyone will be afraid to step into a high end resturaunt because several of them were attacked and they don’t know where the radicals might strike next. The attackers pride themselves on their randomness beyond everything else. Till last week, people assumed the most likely area for an incident or a set of them would be in a crowded, public area, rather than a upstream five star hotel.
But what I still believe that we need to worry about several other dangers plaguing us. Thousands of everyday normal people get hurt in road accidents. Disease claims hundreds of lives a day, some affecting people from all walks of life. Domestic violence, Industrial accidents, so many dangers all around. compared to the number of people affected and hurt in these unfortunate mishaps so vastly overshadow the number hurt in these random violent scenarios that grab so much of our thoughts.
I truly believe that we should rather focus on policies, diplomacy and creating peace to prevent these events from taking place furthermore. There are so many conflicts in the world, and only compromise can solve them, and when compromise won’t be reached, violence is the only resort.
For India, diplomatic ties with Pakistan and a government effort to improve communal harmony seems to be a good way to curb this, but I’m nowhere near as aware to comment on this issue.
But at the end of the day, if I’m outside, I know well enough that I’m at risk from several dangers, though not enough that I should not be able to live my life. I must hand it to the city of Mumbai from recovering from it’s repeated shocks and knowing that life must go on. But it’s events like this that put problems in perspective.
At the end of the day, most of us go to bed not realizing that we’re lucky. Lucky to beat the odds over so many days, lucky that everyone we know and love are safe as far as our knowledge goes.
But I can believe in chance, statistics, probability, fate, destiny, health, exercise, being able to write an entire article without mentioning “terrorist”, sincerity, dignity and even god, and live my life rather than survive it.
But I know that all the chaos in the universe can’t rob me of a good night’s sleep.
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