Apne Shahr ko Nazar Lag gaya

It was called the laidback city, where nothing moves at a good speed. Be it the traffic or the footsteps of the people. But it took just 30 minutes on a fateful weekend to change all that. Two bombs left to kill, created mayhem at Lumbini Park and Gokul Chat, and with it changed the contours of the city for good. Welcome to the real world, Hyderabad.

In keeping with the Times, Hyderabad has arrived. It has now bracketed itself along with Mumbai, Delhi and yes to a certain extent Baghdad in its capacity to absorb the bombings and then bounce back. True to their reputation, the Hyderabad cops having failed to prevent the blast after getting actionable intelligence, and then screwed it up by allowing all and sundry to trod all over the place.

In any other country, a site of crime is cordoned off and no one, except investigating officers are allowed. Here, all politicians with their chamchas and television channels in tow were at the scene looking at the evidence, as if they knew who did it all. They also messed it up by walking over crucial pieces of evidence. I saw one police carry away something in a plastic bag. What was that ? Why was he removing evidence from the scene of crime before the Clues team or the bomb squad from NSG got to work ?

The bomb blast brought out the lack of knowledge of geography among the Television channels that were playing the blood and gore scenes, over and over again. Sitting in faraway Delhi one of the top English news channels claimed that the Gokul Chat blast happened first then Lumbini only to reverse the order an hour later. Another channel claimed the distance from Lumbini to Gokul was ten minutes. The only way he could have covered the distance was by a microlight, and not through the chaotic traffic. Times Now ran a six digit telephone number supposedly that of Mediciti hospital.

Then there were the local Telugu channels which revel in showing headless bodies and other sickening sights, without bothering to respect the viewers sensibilities.

The CM, home minister and others were quick to point their fingers – at terrorists from Bangladesh, mind you not a word about Pakistan or the local populace which helped make these bomb blasts happen. YS Rajasekhara Reddy knows that if he says one word against the actual perpetrators of the crime, then he will lose the votes of a particular community. Votes are more precious than lives.

As expected the next day, local newspapers including the English ones had the news splashed across the pages. No one bothered to look at one of the main drawback of the entire affair – the lack of a co-ordinated search and rescue effort. Compare that to Israel, which has perfected the art of reaching victims of suicide bomb blasts to hospitals in the golden hour. Here we have only sirens and harried looking ambulance staff who don’t know what to do next. The cops are no better and I could borrow, Ronnen Sen’s comment – they were like headless chicken running around, not to protect the common man on the street, but the VIPs who were tearing down to reach the Lumbini Park first.

In a few weeks time, everything will be forgotten. The only ones who will not will be the families who lost their loved ones. Till another bomb goes off in another city. Then the entire farce will be repeated all over again.