Atlantean Thoughts

For the first one hour after I saw the news on TV, I did not experience any sort of reaction. Maybe I was stunned at seeing the images. Maybe I was used to terror attacks in India. This is just another act in the string of terrorist attacks that began with 1993 isnt it?

Was I getting immune to it all? Politicians keep reminding us that we are a peaceful people who should exercise restraint and not react. What’s the big deal? What terrorism, why the hell dont you shut up and go about your silly life eh?

Maybe it was because I did not want to believe it actually happened. That too in a city where I was born and spent seven important years of my life with my grandparents who still live there. Hyderabad is a place I call home apart from the nearby town of Nalgonda where I went to school. To realize that this same city was hit by a major terrorist attack was very difficult. It took time to sink in, a lot of time.

The Mecca Masjid blasts were terrifying enough. Imagine the terror after a bomb goes off at place where people come to pray! It generated enough disturbance. Hyderabad could’ve done without another one.

But no, say the perpetrators of the latest blasts. “We’ll keep coming at you, we’ll kill you, injure you, you, your friends and family members. We’ll make life a living hell for you. Every time you step out of the house for a movie or the planetarium, you’ll be reminded of what can happen.” That seems to be the motive behind the attacks.

The location and timing of the attacks point to a shift in the kind of targets chosen. For the past decade, most attacks have occured in either places or worship, trains and railways stations or market places. In places of worship, the obvious objective is to generate communal passions and engender a post Godhra kind of incident.

Trains, railway stations and market places are heavily crowded and the objective of attacks in these places is to kill and injure as many people as possible. In London and Madrid, the targets were either airports, trains or busy roads. On 9/11, a business center was targetted. In Hyderabad, however, bomb attacks have taken place not in places of worship or crowded trains or market places but in amusement centers.

Lumbini Park, Gokul Chat and Venkatadri theater are all places where people go to have a good time. These places experience the heaviest rush in the week on Saturday evening, which is also the time when the bombs went off.

The foot-over-bridge in Dilsukhnagar, where an unexploded bomb was found, was the only target whose nature is different from the other three.

Whoever planned the attacks knew the city extremely well. This points to the involvement of locals. Lumbini Park, Gokul Chat and Venkatadri Theater are places that are hardly known to people outside Andhra Pradesh.

Those who know Lumbini Park outside AP must be knowing it only from tourism information about Hyderabad. Gokul Chat is one of the most popular eating joints in Hyderabad. Outside AP, however, the only people who’d be knowing about this place would be those who heard about it from friends or family members.

Venkatadri theater is not known to many people in Hyderabad itself, leave alone people outside the state. This theater is just one among atleast a 100 movie theaters that are spread throughout the city. People usually watch movies at theatres close to their residence instead of going to the other end of the city for the same. It is unlikely that a person staying in Kukatpally would ever go to Dilsukhnagar to watch a movie.

Whoever chose the targets knew the city’s life very well. Most Hyderabadis remain busy from Monday to Friday. Saturday evening is when they come out and go for movies, parks and other entertainment centres. Sunday is when they go shopping.

The planners also knew about the fan following that both Lumbini Park and Gokul Chat have. They are aware that on Saturday evening, these two places would be filled to their capacity and a bomb explosion at this time would achieve maximum damage. (Fortunately, it was raining and Lumbini Park which can accomodate 2000 people saw only 500 people at the time of the blasts; rain and heavy traffic also prevented many, including a friend of mine, from entering the Gokul Chat area.)

A person who lives outside the city and AP would hardly be knowing all this. Unless locals offered help, it is highly unlikely that an outsider could have planned the attacks to such perfection.

But it is too early to say who. We may only speculate. Everybody has an impression that Hyderabad is new to terrorism but whoever thinks so ignores the presence that jihadi elements have enjoyed in the city and surrounding sleepy towns like Nalgonda. This blast, of course, is going to change this impression.

The police, reassured by the absence of any major terror attack in Hyderabad so far, have received a rude shock with the Mecca Masjid blasts and now this blast. Who knows? This might be a blessing in disguise.

A friend of mine wryly noted that the only solution for terrorism in Hyderabad is for Osama bin Laden to set up base here. If that happens, the CIA would be behind him and will cleanse Hyderabad of terror elements!

India has the one of the poorest records in fighting terrorism. Terrorist attacks occur in this country with an unfailing regularity and yet, nothing changes. The “antiterror mechanism” that the PM signed with Musharraf is obviously not showing any results. Shivraj Patil’s repeated “assurances” that all is well about internal security are a bunch of lies.

Both central and state govts in India (especially the Congress headed ones as this article notes) have been absolutely inept at countering terrorism. As my friend joked, maybe we should outsource the job to the CIA or Scotland Yard if we cant do it ourselves!

Update: My assessment that this time only amusement centers were targetted seems to be incorrect. TOI reports that 19 bombs were defused and

<i>Police discovered the unexploded bombs — most fitted with timers and placed in plastic bags — at bus stops, by cinema halls, road junctions and pedestrian bridges and near a public water tap across the capital of Andhra Pradesh state. (link)

So they targetted a wide range of locations not just amusement centers.