Kindness o f Terrorists

Having come from what used to be an active war zone where regular bombings, various security regimes and loss of friends in war and violence had unfortunately become somewhat regular, the military and police presence as well as ‘security’ checks in Delhi were things I took in a stride. They were everywhere and had become part and parcel of the landscape. Today, with a group of others I had lunch at the Janpath in Delhi. The same thing as I entered the hotel: a polite good afternoon, a ritual body search which was magically quick; a hand-held metal scanner scans the body lazily from left to right like some kind of a mechanized blessing ritual, and it screams as it usually does when it reached my left pocket due to the presence of the large bunch of keys and a twenty year Swiss army knife which functions as a key tag. No hesitation on the part of the security person, and with the routine-ness of a seasoned ritual expert he moves to the next pocket, gropes my wallet and waves me in. Apparently, security was assured. All of this would have taken less than 40 seconds. As far as I was concerned, no sense of security was guaranteed; only a ritual of ‘feeling safe’ was enacted. Both pockets could have easily contained things far more potent than a bunch of keys and some cash.

The point is, this is not unusual. In fact, this is the norm I have been experiencing since November 1st 2011 wherever I go and encounter moments of ‘security’: metro stations, cinema theatres, malls, hotels and my own university -- every morning and evening. Having some idea of what security means and the consequences of its failure, what I have experienced in Delhi is not security. It is not even something annoying. It is merely a minor infringement on time and a routine ritual not that much different from a pooja or the like that one might perform or undergo in a temple: a routinized and stylized set of practices that are linked to a notion but not to a reality in concrete terms. In this case, the notion of course is that security is achieved; the reality is that it has not been; but there is an expectation, a hope that it has been. However, beyond rituals, if this is what is technically considered ‘security’, it is clearly a very cumbersome and ultimately meaningless process.

In this scenario, and given the current political upheavals and their military-security consequences that India experiences and the assortment of nutcases who might opt for ‘terrorism’ as a routine method of politics nowadays, I am endlessly amazed why this city is not much worse than it actually is. Naturally, I am quite thankful that it is:

But rather than these endlessly repetitive rituals, I am convinced that whatever safety we might experience here today has to do with the utmost kindness of terrorists.