And terror knocks on our door…again!

After 26/11, 2008, when ten terrorists came sneaking in to Mumbai and held hundreds of people and a whole city hostage, we promised ourselves that it would never happen again. We tightened our heartstrings, our belts and our security systems and battened down the hatches that had allowed the baddies to come sneaking into our turf. Or, at least, we promised to do so.

That it didn't work completely, that it was not foolproof, is another story altogether. For the time being, we felt like something had been done to keep our collective future safe. Unfortunately, it all happened again, in another time, another place, another avatar. Only a few months ago, on July 13, three bombs detonated in crowded parts of Mumbai city, where there was nowhere to run to; 26 people died, about 130 were injured, some still in hospital.

Then, only a couple of days ago, on September 7, there was more death, this time in the Indian capital of New Delhi. A bomb set in a briefcase was placed just outside the High Court gate, where the crowd was thickest, where people stood waiting to collect passes to enter the hallowed precincts. In the ensuing mayhem, ten people died, at least 75 were injured; three more are now dead after serious injuries.

Who does this? Whom do we hold responsible for killing our loved ones? Who are these people who cause pain to so many, not just those who are hurt by their misdeeds? Do we call them the bad guys, the villains of the piece, the anti-heroes? Or are they just misguided folk trying to get a point across and using violence to do so just because nothing else works? What is the deal?

In the Mumbai carnage of 2008, nine out of ten terrorists were killed. The last is in jail, awaiting death. They came from a neighbouring country, which still protests any links with them. They came to cause chaos, to destabilise, to damage, to prejudice any kind of positive bond that could possibly be forming between the two countries. And to some extent they did succeed, since any bloodshed does make diplomacy stop and take a deep breath, but no permanent damage was done. The peace process will continue, overtures will be made again and yet again, and life will go on in the subcontinent, accusations, maladjustments and mania notwithstanding.

The July blasts in Mumbai, on the other hand, have no known perpetrators, at least none that the government is telling us about. Some unseen hand is directing people to come in, sneak in, tiptoe in to our cities, plant deadly devices and rain down death. Why? Who knows. Who? Who knows. How? Who knows. And what do they get from doing this? Who knows!

And this week in Delhi? Why? Who? How? Nothing is certain, but the Delhi police was sent an email just hours after the bomb went off, saying that there will be another such attack, this time likely in Ahmedabad, that little bit closer to Mumbai. Before that, two more emails were received – one said that the bomb had been planted by the HuJI or Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami, a terrorist group that demanded that the death sentence of Afzal Guru, in jail now for the 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament building, be commuted.

The battle has been raging for years now, with everyone from human rights activists to local freedom fighters to terror groups in the fray. This particular email has been traced to Jammu and a manhunt is on. But to complicate the matter, another email was received by a local television news channel that claimed that the Indian Mujahideen was responsible for the bomb, but without any raison d'etre or details. Apparently Google has been asked to help trace this one back to its sender.

What is distressing about almost any violence is that it is not a precise, cold, simple strike. The collateral damage is huge, beyond comprehension. Innocent lives are inevitably lost – this may sound like a cliché, but there is no other sane way to describe what happens. Someone just walking past to buy an ice cream, a child chasing a ball, a woman waiting for a bus, a young man talking to his girl on the phone, a grandfather holding a balloon for his granddaughter as she ties her shoelaces…they all are blown to bits by a bomb that does not target them. They die instantly, or wait for death in a hospital bed.

And they leave behind families, friends, people who mourn even as they get on with their lives. Some of these people may decide to react, sometimes with the same violence, the same anger, the same heat, the same fanaticism.

And then they enter the cycle that never has an end…except in death.

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Ramya Sarma is a Mumbai-based writer-editor.