Terror has raised its ugly head. Terrorism is not brave. It is the act of cowards who hide behind explosives and false bravado because they cannot win an argument, cannot build a future, and cannot bear to live in the light of common decency. I was barely five hundred feet away having dinner at the Press Club in Mumbai when the bullets sliced the night at CSM Terminus and Cama Hospital. I can still taste the fear that hung over the city like a sour fog as we holed up inside and listened to the distant, grim percussion of gunfire.
In those long hours of waiting and worrying, strangers became neighbours, colleagues became comforters, and the city became a chorus of prayer and resolve. The policeman who patrolled the lane at dawn looked as ordinary as any of us, yet he was the thin line between panic and order. The nurse who sat quietly with trembling hands was hero enough to shame a thousand speeches. These are the faces that matter in a crisis, not rhetoric dressed up as courage.
Standing united does not mean performing for cameras. Standing united means choosing restraint over revenge, clarity over rhetoric, and courage over bullying. There is a quieter, deadlier form of terror that wrecks the social fabric from inside. It is the terror of words that wound, the terror of policies that exclude, and the terror of leaders who stoke anger to win the next headline. Such homegrown bullies create the soil in which violent extremists plant their roots.
When a society is riven by hatred and contempt, the bomb finds fertile ground.
So let us be blunt. Now is not the hour for grandstanding. Now is when politicians should lower their voices and raise their hands to protect the vulnerable. Now is when communal barbs must be silenced and when laws must be applied with fairness and speed.
If we muzzle decent debate we have not won an argument.
If we condone injustice we have invited the very violence we condemn.
The remedy is painfully simple and unbearably hard. We must repair trust between neighbours. We must teach that disagreement is not an instruction manual for hate. We must rebuild institutions so they hold everyone accountable from the powerful to the powerless. We must honour the fallen by living better lives than those who took them.
Let the funerals be not just moments of grief but pledges of better governance and kinder public speech.
A bullet can take a life but a united people can take away the reasons bullets are fired.
Choose between the bomb and the bully.
Choose between a past of suspicion and a future of mutual respect.
If we stand together, loud with common sense and steady with compassion, terrorism will find no shelter. In that unity lies our truest defence and our highest hope…!
The Author conducts an online, eight session Writers and Speakers Course. If you’d like to join, do send a thumbs-up to WhatsApp number 9892572883 or send a message to bobsbanter@gmail.com
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