The Terrorist-a Devil's creation

I have read ‘An open letter to a Terrorist’ that someone seething with indignation has written in The Mumbai Times. Writing does help greatly in getting rid of the roiling emotions felt. But the terrorist is not one who can be rescued…he is recruited by the very Devil himself. He has no soul, he is beyond the reach of us mortals. He marches to a beat he and his like can only hear…a drumbeat of hatred and venom. He knows and recognizes the darkness within him and can only connect to pain and fear. When he sees us he wants us to experience what he can unleash and when we lie before him with glazed eyes and torn bloody bits, something in him rejoices and celebrates. Do not make the mistake of seeing in him a human. Do not attribute human qualities to him. He is a scourge in human form. He wears a disguise. He is nothing but evil personified.

Can you shoot down an old bowed lady who walks with the support of her son’s shoulder? Worse still, can you shoot down that son? Can you fire upon a woman giving birth? Even animals spare the new born's of other species! Can you kill a father out on a stroll with his children? Can you kill a youth who has stars in his eyes? Can you kill the hopes of an entire family and leave them as mere shells? If you can do that and sleep at night and live with yourself and look at your face in the mirror each day, then you have begun to understand a terrorist, not before!

Recognise him for what he is. No negotiations, no pleas, no crying and begging for mercy…he becomes more powerful when we grovel at his feet. Talk to him in his own language…wipe out his father and mother and grandparents and children. Teach him the language of the bomb and the bullet also…that is the only tongue he understands and listens to. Destroy him. I do not want to share the same planet as him. He is God’s enemy.

Never underestimate him.

Never tolerate him.

Never redeem him.

Never listen when he talks.

Never spare him.

Pursue him to the ends of the earth, dig him out from his hiding holes, shoot him like a rabid, diseased animal. All those who shelter him, feed him and his cause and justify him need to go with him…they are the underlings of the devil too. They are the weak ones, too afraid to come out yet as guilty as sin. Wanting a foot in both worlds…finish them too. Let us not bury or cremate his body on our soil…put him on the border in no-man’s lie to rot under the sky….they destroy homes…let them find no resting place even in death.

It is laughable when we say he is a victim of society and that we made him. I had a man working for us, Sunder. Sunder is 4 feet 6 inches tall, illiterate, born of illiterate parents , married at 20 to a woman with a disabled right arm, father of 4 children who came one after the other and as a result, the younger two cannot walk. Sunder worked like a demon from morning till night six days a week. If anyone should have been a terrorist, it should have been him. Living in a hovel, never stood a chance from the day he was born. Worse he knows he is doomed. Slaving and just about managing to keep his family’s head above water. The day he falls ill and cannot work, his family is finished. Now Sunder prays, he believes in a God who has so far given him the life described. And if he does not spread the hopelessness he faces every waking hour, how can a terrorist justify himself?

If we picked up a gun each time we felt victimized and shot down others, how on earth would that help? Which one of us has not gone through at least one horrendous crisis in life? I do not see my friends or family shoot others for relaxation and to get rid of problems. I should think that would really cook our goose. Do not seek to forgive him, do not search for his humanity…he is beyond us. He belongs to the shadows and serves the Horned One. Let us not gather a terrorist to our bosom in the misbegotten hope that he is the prodigal son. And let us see the SOB with no blinkers on. If we see him as a man of religion, we may as well do what lemmings do…..jump en mass into the waters of some large enough water body and truly escape this world!