The Karma Cafe – The Distance Between Closure and Revenge

I think we’ve lost it as a country – arresting people for posting facebook statuses while living in a democracy and then screaming joy because a terrorist was finally sentenced to death. Disclaimer: Please do not read the rest of this thought if you think I’m being insensitive. If you’re interested in calling the cops, try me, I’m a law student. So for god’s sake, don’t blame this on me because I’m not a) creating any sort of enmity or b) inciting any individual against any form of government or political system.

I’m going to start with Kasab and what happened earlier this morning – in all secrecy, the man was hanged and put to death at the gallows after being charged for the monstrosity and atrocious acts that he committed in the city of Mumbai four years ago. In my opinion, the government should have just waited another five days and hung him on the 26th of November itself, for sentiment’s sake. However, I refuse to think this brings any kind of closure. It’s true, I have not been affected by the terrorism and neither have I experienced what it might be like to lose someone you love; fair enough, it must be the worst thing to go through in the universe, but how can someone even say that taking revenge, i.e., doing away with the man who killed someone I know and thus caused grief and insurmountable amounts of pain and tragedy, can help me feel better?

I’ve grown up reading Harry Potter so I know what that boy felt like. All his life, he wanted to kill Voldemort, but WHY? People fail to understand that he wanted to kill ol’ Voldie not because he killed his parents but because he also created a havoc and chaos and killed a billion other people.

What I’m trying to get at is that I find this entire concept to be flawed; I understand that procedure has to be followed and one must keep in mind the rule of law and equal protection for all people, no matter who they may be. Nonetheless, saying that his death has caused people closure is wrong. He was a human being caught in the middle of a game; he was a boy who grew up in the worst of company; again, Im NOT saying that it was not his fault, of course it was, but then saying that his death has brought the country closure is a ridiculous thought. Unless we catch all these terrorists and strengthen our defense system, we’re not going to get any closure. Unless we take action to stop spreading hate and animosity, we’re not going to get any closure!

Let the government do what it has to; it is not in the hands of the civilians to interfere with the working of the government unless they’re infringing upon their rights and doing something terribly wrong. Taking someone’s life, even if it may be rendered constitutional, still requires a number of things to be taken into account. It’s obviously understood that his death sentence and hanging has brought peace to those who lost their near and dear ones but for the rest of the nation? It’s a pretty retarded notion to have, “oh that’s awesome, Kasab’s dead, we are safe and we have closure.”

We have only duress to look forward to; we have a shameless world to look on to; we have a disgusting environment for the younger generations to grow up in. Instead of hating a country called ‘Pakistan’ which collectively, at least as per evidence, has done nothing as a whole, we need to look at this with a broader perspective. For Christ’s sake, a guy who spreads terror might have a Pakistani nationality but he could have studied abroad, received funding from abroad and other facilities from people abroad which have influenced and fueled his growth and development.

We need to stop blaming each other and start being the change that we want to see. We need to stop thinking about things like Kasab’s gone now it’s Guru’s turn. Most people do not even bother to read about their lives and see why the execution of their death sentence has been delayed. Instead of venturing into the nitty-gritties and simply discussing futile things over dinner, we bring nothing but disrespect for the judiciary and the executive. This is what unties our shoe strings as a nation, makes us vulnerable to the rest of the world and lets perpetrators infiltrate so easily.

Stop telling people what they need to do unless it is really required. We have smart people here and there and then we have an uneducated mass of people that get swayed easily by whatever someone says. (By uneducated, Im not targeting those that haven’t been to school because we have a ton of people that have received a great amount of education but have stashed all those years in a skeleton closet.)

There might be a hundred terrorists from Pakistan, but what’s the point if we go on killing all of them and playing the blame game? Dangerous terrorists need to be captured and agreed the Pakis need to start taking responsibility for the hate that they’re spreading and the hate that they’re spreading, but as a country, they might have some beautiful people too. On another note, anyone remember Malala Yousufaza, the Afghani supergirl?

People need to be slapped on their faces for calling this a ‘moment of joy’ because ask yourself HOW does this symbolize triumph in any way? I get that people may have lost their loved ones and the one who killed them needs to be hung to death, and now he has. But now that all this is done, isn’t closure going to really come in practicing some love and peace so that little Kasabs are not born time and again?

Screw Kasab, what happens to all those ridiculous Indians? Who you ask?

I’ll give you an in-exhaustive list of perverts, rapists, murderers, eve-teasers and what not who spread terror every single day. What about any kind of person causing violence and agitation among people? Forgotten Dhananjay Chatterjee? of course we have because all we want to do is talk about how Pakistan has butchered the well.

How is this helping the terrorism that’s taking over the rest of the world, the bomb that exploded in Tel Aviv as we speak? How can we say we’re looking for closure when all we’re talking about is being selfish? Like politicians aren’t goons in our country ripping us off our money and sentiment? If there’s anyone to blame its all human beings, and if it has to be brought down to specifics, it’s people with names and those that cause crimes. Given Kasab’s from Pakistan and that the country has not been admitting or accepting the kind of people they have been housing, but on another level doesn’t the same go to the Chief Minister of Maharashtra not replying to Katju, J.’s letter about the extremely arbitrary arrest of the two young girls in Mumbai?

It’s ridiculous that we blame each other for the nonsensical happenings that go on in our lives, much less forget that since we’re not strong as a nation, obviously an alien is going to take advantage of that situation because let’s face it we have individualistic needs. But stop spreading hate and eventually everything will be alright. You might have lost someone at a killer’s hands, but killing him is not going to make things better, it’s going to make you exactly what he was, even if he deserved it. These things are difficult to track down and understand, but the notion of moving on is full of loop holes if you actually assert and tell me that you will wake up tomorrow morning and everything will be rosy as a sunny Sunday morning.

The execution’s fine, but using it as an excuse to say it’s closure is not. He got what he deserved, in my mum’s words, he visited the Karma cafe, but you don’t want to be the one trying his shoes on next, so watch your aura and keep it clean.

Send out good vibes and stop politicizing nonsense.

x EdgyShark x