Terrorists in my Backyard!

This past weekend was perhaps one of those weekends, that I dread facing throughout the year and when it finally comes, I cower and sit at home to escape it all. Thru these harrowing few days, I am constantly reminded of the numerous missions I have pulled off in Medal of Honor, Metal Gear Solid, Call of Duty - Modern Warfare and the Tom Clancy based Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six series. I must admit that that the dodging and strafing lessons have invariably kept me alive! Who says video/computer games don't teach you anything?! Thhpprrr to them!



Every time I take my bike out, its akin to riding in the wilderness of Normandy on the days leading to D-Day. Tiny little minutemen tend to run out of the wild gleefully, and will be scared motionless in the roaring thump of my bike, then they would give a toothy grin, light the fuse, throw the munition on the pathway and run away screaming like possessed souls! All the while, my gaping mouth and the horror of being caught in the cold by the minuteman achieves increasing proportions as it takes in the entire scene and the final detonation that announces the end of the deadly bomb. The finale is signified by bits of papers streaming down from the cloudy skies to signal the end of the attempted assassination - Three bits of paper, on which are printed "Standard Fire Works" "Lakshmi Bomb" and "Sivakasi" - catch my eye and I curse my fate that I have to be on the receiving end of this act of domestic terrorism! All this while I am on my way to office!


People these days have scant regard for the motorists and think that the roads are their personal battlegrounds to throw sticks of dynamite and TNT around with the fervent hope that one of them might catch a lot of them. Not that I am a party-pooper on the whole cracker-mania for Diwali. I, on a personal note, do not approve of crackers soley because they are derived from the inhumane work requirements of innocent children - That is the official reason. The truth being that I' m scared crapless by the deafening booms!


I am not worried that we, denizens of the night and slaves of the west, work our lives thru the wee hours of the night - nay, mornings, I would say! and when we come back for our multiple forty-winks, we are scarred in our minds and scared back from our pleasant dreams, back to reality to hear and see people bursting bombs and then, people trying to out-do the others in terms of breaking the audible decibel barrier. No, what I do mind is that when you walk on the streets, you have a bomb/pataka/vedi bursting mere inches above your head, having been thrown from the terrace of some house on the street, by kids who think it's fun. *Those are the times when I actually feel the sadistic side of me rise, and want to catch the perputrator and hang him on a clothes hook after giving him a wedgie - The Addams Family style!!* I'd be happy if it were just the Bijli crackers, but heavens, imagine walking down the street and from one of the gates, a lit, green ball of wool is thrown out on the streets, just a few feet away from you, and in your mind you know what it's been screaming to your body, like a woman whose sari is on fire - "ATOM BOMB!!!" Sadly, there is little that you can do, apart from screeching to a halt and high-tailing in the opposite direction. Tragedy would be, when you are stopped short in your tracks by the sight of another weapon - the nearest that you can get to a machine gun, legally. The 1000 Wala chain!


That, my friend, is a classic ambush and if you ask me what I would do - Why, the most logical thing of course! Get down on my haunches, close my eyes, clap my hands to my ears and scream, "Ammmmaaaaaaaa!!!!!"