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    We Came, We Saw And We Failed

    When I was in school, our teacher once asked: Which quality of we Indians, do you guys think is unique and makes us stand apart from the rest of the world? Being as novice as anyone can get on the knowledge about the rest of the world, we left struggling for answers and end up answering nothing.

    It is just that nobody is asking me this question again when I feel the answer to it is with me. Weather there is a question or not the answer to the question asked some couple of decades back is: We are a country full of entities having the unique attribute of loosing the plot at the last moment. We start with a vigour comparable to none but it is the capability of us flunking badly at the end, which makes us stand apart from the rest of the world. Let it be our day-to-day sundry stuff, our politics, our media, any small time or large scale business or even in sports, we shown this unique quality of ours for generations.

    Let me revisit the 26/11 saga before it fades out from our memory as we all collectively suffer from a serious case of short term memory loss. Thanks to all those Hindi movies which most of the times has a character who unfortunately losses his/her memory due to some sadma or something and reoccupies his/her memory when accidentally goes through another or set of sadmas later. As we always behave like one of those characters, I thought to revisit the 26/11 sadma again to get hold of our already almost lost memory.

    No sooner few evidence came out of some Pakistani hand in the attack all our diplomatic machinery spring into action. All able ministers along with our PM were red faced with this discovery and within ours after we rounded up all 10 infiltrators, our PM decided to make a STD call to Pakistan to show his displeasure. Without any fuss he demanded the ISI chief to fly down without wasting anytime and be answerable to the acts carried out by the 10 thugs. Trust me no leader of any country can be more aggressive than this. Seeing a fuming Sardar the Pakistani establishment did accepted his demands and we suddenly felt a heavy bout of mini victory only to be disappointed within hours when the guys at the other end of the phone rubbished all the claims of India and refused to send even the havildar at the ISI's gate, much less the ISI chief. After getting the thumb we were back at our basics of flunking at the last minute. Without putting any more pressure we decided to mellow down considerably and go with a dossier sending spree leading to a storage space crisis out there somewhere in Islamabad. The stand of 'No talks till terrorism is exported' taken after that was an aggressive approach. Again we suffered from the illusion of mini victory only to be disappointed again later when we brought home some humiliation from Sharmal-E-Sekh and the latest kissing and hugging exercise by our PM in Thimphu. Not to mention the dossier exchange programme is still on and perhaps would continue for next ten odd years it seems.

    Our media also are paranoid by this virtue. They start covering anything with the vigour which even Julius Caesar would loved to have. The latest from their factory was the Ruchika case. The whole of the prime time seemed to have been dedicated to this story which these media gray hounds made the story of the nation. The poor chap Rathore was beaten black and blue by the verbal diarrhoea of these media houses and in fact their efforts encouraged a youth to stab Rathore in court premises. Now no talk on that issue and none seems to bother if the justice was delivered to that girl or not as the IPL gate got the center stage where there are few high profile thugs to be beaten black and blue.

    From IPL it reminds me: aren't we choking at the last minute of this editions T20 word cup? After beating a bunch of individuals from a war torn nation, who were best at operating a Kalashnikov few months back and straight out of refugee camps, we went ahead and thrashed another set of chokers (a notch above than Indians) in the form of South Africa. As usual we again suffered from a sudden bout of mini victory only to be disappointed later to see the Aussies making our batsmen do the Penguin dance with their short balls. Far from learning anything our batsmen decided to repeat their Penguin dance performance against West indies and end up losing both the super 8 matches. Now we are left with the mercy of some weired mathematics and a little help from Australians to see ourselves in semi final. With or without the mathematics, we honestly doesn't deserve a place there.

    Our investigating sleuths are no different either. They start with a vengeance which gives an impression, as if this is the last day for all the touts, thugs, criminals of this country. All nefarious elements would be wiped out ruthlessly in one go but end up giving us high end liver chronic and some unwanted constipation. Mayawati was hounded up and down, left and right both by CBI and enforcement directorate against some disproportionate asset case only to be given a clean chit when it was time for the lady to be taught a lesson or two on morality and ethics. No wonder some other definition of CBI than the official 'Central Bureau Of Investigation' is not giving any good impression. The beneficiaries like Mayawati and hundreds alike might not complain though.

    In any whichever way, flunking and failing miserably intentionally or unintentionally at the nick of time is our national identity. The other day when one of my friend asked his 5 year old son the same question, asked to my class, the toddler was seen as confused as we were that time. He thought for sometime all the while breathing uneasily and ran towards his room only to reappear with a news paper in his hands. When the newspaper was spread out we got the news headline: "PM Manmohan Sing assures PM Gilani on the trust factor he have with his counterpart." No need of explanation I feel.

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