With another terror attack in Mumbai taking away hundreds of innocent lives followed by the cliched rhetorics by the politicians, there is a feeling of dejavu. Is it like just another incident making headlines all over? Do I consider myself fortunate and thank Almighty that I'm alive and just get on with life? It's really difficult to digest the helplessness that mere 10 men could hold the city on ransom for 60 hours and create so much of havoc? With countless questions and utter anguish, where do we go from here?

First and foremost, the very phrase "Spirit of Mumbai" used after every such attack needs to be stopped. It's not the spirit but rather the compulsion of life that forces every person to get on with his custodian duties.

There has been lot of talk about enhancing security measures which I belive is essential indeed but that's preventive measure and not the solution to the problem. Even let us assume hypothetically if all terror camps across the world were destroyed and all terrorists shot dead, how could we ever possibly kill that core idealogy that completely psyches out even literate and educated people.

After such grave incident, emotions do run high and more so because of the callousness and total lack of empathy shown by the auhorities. We blame our politicians, our neighboring country, the bureacracy but the truth is we ourselves are equally responsible and somewhere down the line got used to this treating it like just another news or some kinda deadly reality show.

I went to a mall Friday night and was shocked to see it almost empty. Next day my flight got cancelled as there were not enough passengers. While I was staying at hotel, visitors stayed away and preferred to meet outside either at their home or at some restaurant. I can clearly see the constant fear people are living with. Even at the airport, I could sense everyone looking at each other with suspicion. In today's times, security and vigil are obviously critical but it's not a great feeling to see the human trust at it's abysmal low.

There are enough things happening in today's world that would make anybody super cynical. But ironically and strangely, all said and done I got a very idealistic and perhaps naive hope that if a person could be systematiclly brainwashed and converted to a fanatic terrorist, the reverse should be possible as well. The only terrorist caught alive when saw mutilated dead body of his accomplice said "I want to live". For a moment, somewhere deep down he would have regretted it. This small incident is what gives me a glimmer of hope.

As a child I always used to believe that there is some amount of goodness in all of us and nobody can be really bad from heart. May be wishful thinking but if we could get into the psyche of such people and change even one of them, I would say we made some progress towards ending this problem. Otherwise no matter how many wars we have, the very root problem would keep getting aggravated.

I wish, I hope that someday sanity and common sense would prevail. Had it been a software/database issue, as an engineer I would have fixed the issue with detailed root cause analysis but unforunately it's not and as an Indian citizen I'm deeply hurt, disturbed but still hopeful that someday our future generations would see a better world.