Across the line

First off, what happened yesterday was horrific. I am talking about the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore as they drove to the stadium. Some of them were injured, though not seriously, while a number of Pakistani policemen who were part of the team's security detail were killed. At this point, there is a lot of finger-pointing going on and many of my own countrymen, Indians, are doing the told-you-so thing, once again labelling the people of Pakistan, collectively and otherwise, as the villains of this - and every other - piece. I do not agree with that; after all, one bad apple does not mean that the whole orchard was rotten, but who is going to stop and think hard enough to see how true that is, at this time? Everyone just needs a scapegoat and our neighbours across the way just happen to be it...for now. No one has stopped to think that so many of the "baddies" were killed, innocent guards doing their job. And I have another question: Why the Sri Lankans? I thought the Indians and the Americans were the prime targets for the nasty Pakistanis, all of whom carry machine guns in their hands and hatred in their eyes, especially for us, the nice, loving, caring, sharing folk who live in a world on the other side of a thin line.

What a crock of you-know-what! Baddies are baddies, of any shape, colour, size, nationality, religion or any other distinction. If you are going to kill, if you are a killer, you will destroy lives and spread darkness. If you are trained to do so, you will, because it has become your job and, with prolonged indoctrination, your way of living. If you are on the wrong side, which a lot of people unfortunately are, you will be coloured with the same bucket of paint, just because you happen to be standing in the same general area when it splashed. Mud sticks. And in this case, the mud just happens to be in the form of a group of people who have adopted a twisted ideology and who are, by chance or circumstance, part of a nation that has plenty to be proud of, in spite of its small faction that believe in guns, fanaticism and blood-lust.

Of course, with all this, the media finally has something to sink its teeth into. I was once part of that small community that thrives on readership (or viewership) and I now watch it with a certain interest. Journalists have a rather distressing tendency to take a fact and weave myths around it, making it out to be a great deal more than it is actually worth, be it the villainly of a whole country because of the deeds of a few, or the fact that a popular actress had a bit of a wardrobe malfunction under the full glare of the flashbulbs. It all makes for rising TRPs and eyeballs, the more attention that a story attracts, the better, being the ethos. Along the way, no one has spoken of why the Sri Lankans, of all people, were attacked, how a prolonged video grab of the attacks could have been done - a time period that could have brought the security forces out to nab the bad guys, perhaps? - and how so many men could have come together, with so much weaponry, to attack one small target with no one having any clue about its happening.

So many issues to think about. And one more: Is Pakistan always and inevitably the villain of any piece of this kind? Or is there someone else responsible? Who? And why?