George Menezes

I am more familiar with bombs than I am with the PC on which I
struggle to write this piece.
I have walked the path of mangled bodies and burning flesh once, l
long ago, and I am reluctant to walk it again. But as I write this, I
realise I have no choice. I must walk that path once more to cleanse
myself of a cancerous guilt and lay a wreath for a dear friend.

It was 1952 and I was posted to “Number 5 Explosives Maintenance
Unit”, an Air Force Ammunition and bomb storage facility. From
time to time we drove truckloads of life-expired ammunition and
bombs into an open space between the hills outside the town and
destroyed the stuff.

Pilot Officer Kanwar Kohli and I took turns. The bombs were
detonated with the help of a long fuse which we lit from the safety of
several hundred yards. If the bombs did not explode, only the officer
in charge was expected to walk the distance to check if the fuse had
“died.” Which sometimes it did, like a damp firecracker.

One Friday morning it was my turn to take the squad. As I was about
to leave, my Commanding Officer received a call from the Army
Commander. “We are playing the finals of the district hockey
Tournament,” he said. “Ask George to report to the ground at 1500
hours”.
My boss knew my goal-scoring potential. He called Kohli and asked
him to take my place. I scored the winning goal, but Kohli never came
back from the trip.
The flesh and bones of an Officer and a gentleman lie scattered on
hills that are eternally green in memory of one who died in the service
of his mother land.

If there is a gap between the recent terrorist bombings and the writing of this
piece it is because I have been hemorrhaging deep within me since that
event.

I bleed for those who died without a chance to protest that the room service was not good enough for the likes of them and that there was not enough mayonnaise in the stuff that hit their guts.

I bleed for those who died valiantly who did not know where to go but went there all the same. And those who knew the way and, in trying to show the way, paid a price not recorded in the accountant’s “cost to company”

I bleed specially for those in uniform, Railway announcers Firemen, Policemen, Police Officers and Commandos whatever their rank, region, caste and creed, who are always called to go and, without ever eating at a five star place, went and saved strangers and died and killed so that “freedom” not “heritage” might be preserved.

But most of all I bleed over the bodies that were scattered all over our Chatrapathi Shivaji Railway Terminus and Cama Hospital, pass holders and ticket less travelers, diabetics and asthmatics. Marginalized in death as they have always been in life.

Gone quickly with no cell phones to make a call, to a place eternally free of communal riots, illegal arrests and rapes. Free, once and for all, of pangs of hunger, threatened house demolitions, debt collectors, bribe demanders and vote seekers.

I bleed finally in the knowledge that our country will always and forever be visited by the cockroaches of terrorism because cockroaches breed in dirty places. And my beloved India has never been as dirty as it is now.

It takes a lot guts and humility to put our house in order. People who seek votes to come to power and people who seek office tenure in comfort zones
without accountability are not going to volunteer to put the nation’s house in order.

It is only “We the people of India” who can push and push hard for an acceptable level of cleanliness.

So let us, in a small way, look at our filth clinically, from a Pest Control point of view.

There is the endemic excreta of corruption. There is almost no one who will not pay or accept money, whatever the amount, to break a law. A terrorist’s entry into India is facilitated not so much by skill but by graft.

With enough cash to bribe their way, these cockroaches have been around on our infested soil much before the 26/11 hullabaloo, living in rented accommodation with forged identity cards, studying in colleges and working for Corporations. These are soldier terrorists, the executors. At the highest level of planning the bribe rate is in millions, between known refugee criminals and our politicians whose patriotism is safely locked in Swiss bank accounts.

Another level of filth is caste, regional and communal politics. This divide is fodder for cockroaches. And when the divide leads to open, uncontrolled, unpunished genocide of thousands of our marginalized, our dalits, and our minorities; where sacred and even ancient places of worship are desecrated and destroyed in the name of history or religion; where the State looks on or abets; where victims rather than the aggressors are held indefinitely without charges and often falsely convicted, terrorist cockroaches find huge “recruiting” grounds. Mountains of the garbage of fear, feelings of alienation, unrelenting injustice and, above all, uncontrollable levels of anger.

The home grown cockroach has arrived.

We have a huge amount of cleansing to do that all the new laws, the new committees, the forced resignations and changes in the Cabinets and the SMS generated candlelight vigils and seminars cannot do.

We all know that on 26/11 the top Police brass were not available because they were busy in court fighting their own battles against each other for the post of Chief Pest Controller. Unless the long promised Police reforms are implemented giving the force independence from the politician, as in the case of the judiciary, the cockroach terrorist will come and go taking with them some of our finest boys to the grave.

So there we are, hopefully doing much more in cleansing our own night soil, quickly and seriously, not forgetting a key factor in cockroach management.

And that is. No matter how clean you keep your own place, if the neighbour’s environment is a den of shit, the trans-border migration of cockroaches cannot be halted. The neighbour’s garbage heap has to wiped clean as well.

“We will do it if you don’t, and no holds barred” is the message that needs to go to Islamabad loud and clear.