Why do Shabhana Azmi and Javed Akhtar have to explain the tenets of their religion when there are bomb blasts by Islamic militants but Kareena Kapoor and Ajay Devgan do not have to give any explanations when the Bajrang Dal and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad indulge in violence?
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The emotions of upper middle class Indians have rarely been so visible. They normally show restraint and control - essential for exercise of power. In any tragedy, natural disaster or accident, it is invariably the lower classes, the poor, the politically disempowered, who are shown expressing their grief, their anger, their despair.
This time the victims of terrorism were not faces that could be forgotten easily. This time the victims included the elite themselves. They personally faced the terrifying feeling of being trapped. They themselves heard the screams, felt the silence imposed by dread, the gunshots and grenades bursting in the carpeted corridors of the Taj. And they experienced the utter helplessness of not being able to save their loved ones from death. Many saw the charred remains of family and friends. Those who ultimately walked out of the hotels in which they were trapped will never forget the smell of blood and decaying bodies.