I have quite a number of Gujrati students. They told me people under  Mody  Gujratis are becoming more work-oriented.  They said, “previously people in  the  government  sector used to spend the job-hours mainly on self- improvement. Low class lady employees attended office with rice and sabji and cleaned them meticulously instead of cleaning office. Their counterparts with  little upper ranks brought sewing work and real upper class brought work sheets for which they were paid from sources their than govt.” Strong Modi  supporters  they used to boast  but “Our Mody has changed all that. See other states have bomb blasts because police does not catch the terrorists but our police force has to to work” So, Ahmedabad blast was a real shocker. It reaffirmed our uniformity in diversity. Indian intelligence  uniformly bad!!

 Two days back when Bangalore  was hit by terror I was sad but not  surprised. Saving time and selling it for a better price is the norm here. Here, everyone is in hurry and none has the time to notice a strange object or a suspicious face. In huge array vehicles, which often changed hand with understanding rather than documents old cars are easily available to load with the explosives. While walking too, our ears are wired to phones so nothing enters our self-immerging comfort. Traffic police will detain you only ask for his quota.  So, people whose career is built on destroying life can do that perfectly here without the slightest disturbance. But from my students commentaries,   I had taken Ahmedabad to be a different place.

 When two days before city was reeling under terror, I was preparing some notes for my students. When the news came  it occurred to me “ may be there is no need to prepare this notes. May be they should be taught art of handling terror rather than the tricks of saving the human race  from  minute germs ”. May be it is time to introduce some special courses in the school level about  the techniques that will help them stay alive.

The failure of catching culprits and legal manipulations through which they escape has shown time and again that  police is not to be depended. Govt may declare a bit ex-gratia  payment but  those will  not be of benefit to  even our heir apparent.  With luck, that may go to our grand children after the authorities take their proper commission. So better we try to stay alive on our own.

But how? In a country of billion providing safety will need   billion dollars. We don’t have that kind of money. Our best bet of staying alive is to be our own guards. Luckily, for every one insane jihadi we have ten sane people. If each one of us  put a premium of  30 minutes a day   they can be checkmated. Afterall the reward is not small – it is the insurance of our physical and mental health.