Think terror, and you think the worst. I try giving the stereotypical cruel face of terror on my mind’s canvas a dab of gentleness and am deluged with an outpouring of high voltage contradictions from within me. There is no place for compassion here, my inner voice reproaches me. Terror’s face is black with no shades of grey between.
My thoughts rest on convicted terrorist Ajmal Amir Kasab. A broken man today, he weeps and is scared stiff of his impending date with death, as he wastes in a prison cell. The man, who with his band of nine comrades, gleefully went on a killing spree in Mumbai that dark November in 2008 ending hundreds of innocent lives abruptly in a spray of bullets, is cringing at death’s call. He wants to marry, have a family and simply enjoy life. And he is moving heaven and earth, even going in appeal to a higher court, to get his death sentence reversed.
After every terror attack, I imagine a face in the crowd that’s unmoved by the scent of death around. A vengeful face in celebration of death’s trail.
Yet somewhere there is a part of me that is not ready to endorse this as the whole truth. That part of me which dares to believe, going against the grain of popular thought, that there is humanity in terror’s zone. Sounds insane?
My premise is that a terrorist is a human being first and, in the natural course, human beings come endowed with the virtue of humanity. The milk of human kindness dries up when he espouses terror’s cause. But the dregs of humanity which lie ensconced in him can never be wiped out -- not by guerrilla training, not any extent of subversive indoctrination or brainwashing, not even the lure of money. It can at best be suppressed by these forces, only to be aroused somewhere, some time.
Let’s face it; no one opts to make a living by killing. Not even the gun-toting terrorist. He is a victim of circumstances who unfortunately becomes soft target for terrorism’s cause. One who is as much oppressed by his actions as those he oppresses.
I daresay that beneath all the bravado and a trigger-happy exterior, the terrorist is a troubled soul, hurting under the ill-gotten weight of his transgressions. There comes a time when he hates himself for the blood on his hands; his moment of truth, I expect. Or there comes his moment of shame, when hiding his face he weeps in private at the suffering and grief he has caused.
I am not for a minute suggesting that the terrorist qualifies for the world’s sympathy or pardon. He should be meted out the worst punishment for the massacres he has piled up.
Not that it will ever recompense the parents who lost their children to the diabolical bomb blast at Pune’s German Bakery early this year. Or countless others at the receiving end of terror’s blows. They will never understand the depths to which depravity can plunge. Can punishment ever be fitting response to the anguished cries of Jewish baby Moshe - the poster face of the 2008 Mumbai terror strike? He and hundreds of babies orphaned like him across the country do not comprehend the blow that terror has dealt them.
The rot has set in deep, and is spreading faster than all the attempts to arrest it. Who knows, any one of us could be the unsuspecting victims on terror’s radar next. And that is the victory of terrorism - that it creates a fear psychosis.
We need to recognise that the enemy is an astutely organised force, drawing its strength from an unflappable commitment to the cause. But the terrorist is a coward at the core of his existence, who is running scared. It is not in his DNA to face the collective onslaught of public outrage against him. And the plucky voice of the survivor unnerves him.
He fails to understand the strength of the widow who prays for the riddance of terrorism choking on her tears. Or the inner calm a septuagenarian, who lost his son and daughter-in-law to Mumbai’s terror attacks, displays when he says he feels nothing but pity for the misguided killers.
He shudders at the determination of a mother to get on in life with no malice, notwithstanding the loss of her daughter in the Pune blast. Or when the British businessman, who escaped death by a whisker, says he is no mood to let the strikers take over his life.
He listens stupefied as the American sprinter prays for his transformation from her hospital bed. She was shot in both her legs in a terror attack and will never stand on her feet again. But she harbours no rancour.
Do we see the stirring of humanity in the face of such dignity in grief? I construct before my mind’s eye a penitent terrorist. Is he for real, I wonder? If he is out there somewhere, I would imagine there is no greater healing than that for the world.
