One year and counting.

Like almost any day when something out of the ordinary happens, this day will be remembered for years to come. Maybe it will go down in history books. Earlier they’d think up grand names for such periods in history, like the ‘French Revolution’ or ‘The revolt of 1857’. Now since there are so many such events happening so frequently, it’s down to just dates like 9/11, or 26/11 for which I’m writing this post. When the attack happened last year, I wrote about it and my feelings/opinions on it. I won’t be doing that again. It’s tough, still, to go back to how absolutely frightening those 21/2 days were. It gives me the shivers. The bad kind. But another event that happened shortly after, gives me goose bumps for an entirely different reason.

They say it started with a blog. One post, by one guy, about the attacks. The post ended with ‘I will be standing outside the Taj Hotel on Wednesday, December 3 at 6 pm. Join me’. That simple.

And I did. As did (reportedly) over 20,000 others. Word spreads faster these days, they say. When I got there, I couldn’t see an inch of the road. All we saw was a river of people. The emotions I felt there, cannot be put into words, and I can barely try. I didn’t write about this then, and I wont write much about it now. Sometimes, memories are really sufficient, without having to be written down. But that is what I shall choose to remember each year on this day. It was supposed to be a peace rally, but it wasn’t a boring walk with lit candles. It was a huge, huge group of people who were angry, upset, hurt and humiliated what for what had happened to them. There were random bouts of slogan shouting, patriotic songs being sung, and placards flowing over peoples heads, passed from one to another. There were thousands of people, but it seemed, one soul, one voice. Hurt, tired of being quiet, wanting to be noticed. Asking for a change long due to it. The march crossed all the places where the attacks occurred, starting at CST station and ending at the Gateway, where people lit candles.

The march ended, people headed back home their separate ways. But that soul, that voice still waits for justice to be done to it. Will that ever happen? Call me an optimist, but if the world doesn’t end in 2012, like they claim it will, then it HAS to. It absolutely has to. There is just no other option, is there? The way I look at it, this event is the turning point, at least for India. There have been attacks since then, and I daresay they might be another or two. But in the history books, this like the revolution of 1857 will be the event that changed it all. It took us 90 years since then to be called an independent country. No great event has ever happened overnight and it won’t now. Hopefully, it doesn’t take that long now. Hopefully, the same generation can live to see the new independent India. Free from fears of terrorism, external and internal. Free from the forces that stop it from being the super power it deserves to be. Is that possible? If I live to see the day, then I’ll write about it. If I don’t, then maybe more than 90 years later, that soul and voice is finally paid heed.

Maybe it’s the voice and soul at fault. Maybe it needs to be more than that. One body. One person. It’s all that’s needed for a start. That simple.