Not for a minute do you assume that I am being insensitive.

Not for a minute will I pretend that I am unaffected by the gory happenings of a year back. I empathise that there can never be compensation to the 3,000 lives lost that fateful day, when Osama flexed his remote controls to a burst of firepower. There can never be a day when the memory of those who lost their lives don’t haunt the homes of their families. In the same way that America learnt never to take anything for granted: What you sell to others, could one day hold you to ransom. Irony of the story? The guilty men are still free people.

Like the guilty men in India who take advantage of the country’s teaming population, and go about their gory business like mice venturing out at dark. Like cowards. Unable to face themselves and the demons residing in their vacuous minds.

I’m very much in tune with the world headlines. But these are the headlines that churn my stomach inside out. In my own country. At home: `Minor girl raped in a train compartment’; `Student raped in University campus’; `Woman raped in a police station,’ `Wife murdered by husband over money;’ `Pregnant woman butchered by religious fanatics;’ `Muslim woman gang-raped by police constables,’ `Woman battered to death by unemployed husband’……

What’s my point? What do you think is the point?

I’ve never shed crocodile tears over what might have been. Or what lies beyond my control. I think NOW. And the `NOW’ is disgusting. Sick. I cannot comprehend how people who otherwise don’t flinch at what is happening to their own country, their own State, their own backyard and lives, pretend that they are moved, distressed and shattered over a bully who eventually got his due back (and he had it long coming). Albeit, at the cost of innocent people. History is replete with lessons how all political wars are fought using innocent people to even the scores. But please, this is my sole opinion, even if you disagree. If the truth distresses you, I’m sorry. It’s meant to distress anyway.

So while big countries commercialise their grief, the `NOW’ is what is staring ugly at my face -- Repulsive. Contorted. Vicious.

What gets glorified as crime to a thousand people abroad, is crime everyday walking on the streets of India. Every single day, every single night, knocking on our doors, feeding off our men, women and children. A crime that breaks down faith in humanity, breaks down trust in your own inability to protect yourself and the system governments lay down to protect its citizens. The same laws and institutions that trap you, break down your resilience and makes zombies out of the families at its receiving end. There is no respite. There is no running away. There is simply no looking over your shoulder, because it’s walking side by side with you, and sharing your bed space. If you can’t be safe in your own home, in your own country, little less to expect from the world outside.

I am more affected by what happened to a young, mentally-challenged minor girl who was raped in a train in Mumbai. In a train full of people. With reasoning abilities. With hands, feet and ticking minds that work fine when it comes to their daily lives. To think that they all stood and watched, without moving a muscle, or a thought.

Same with a young university student at Pune who was picked up by a moral police, when caught necking with her boyfriend. She was raped by the same cop when she couldn’t produce her ID. I’m not even getting close to crimes that goes unreported. That take place in our homes everyday. Or crimes that people inflict on weak minds, using the victim’s body to abuse, degrade and debauch.

In India, hundreds of women go through degrading poverty every day. Struggling to feed themselves, struggling to earn their living, struggling to clothe their children, to keep their heads above the bobbing tide despite grief, starvation and disease. There are people dying everyday in India – silently, uncounted, unaccounted, without identities, without achieving full potential of their growth (in mind and body), giving birth in their horrors and dying like worms breeding out of a thrash can. These are people without faces, without dreams, without money-perpetuated respect or status, unsung heroes, despite shouldering the burdens of greasing the wheels of a country with their back-breaking labour.

But hey, who cares for faceless numbers these days?

Human life in India bears no price tag. Unless, of course, he flashes a US visa, has a Merc parked in his driveway, and designer threads on his back -- the much respected requisite these days to say that you’ve `arrived.’

But, of course I feel pain. And sorrow, every time I read stories of how humans perpetuate transgressions on other humans. But when things in my own backyard are rotting away -- because we fail each day to value lives and those of others -- how can I pass judgment on what two terrorists do to each other?