Whose Blood?

Whose Blood?
Originally uploaded by sharad_2007

Whose Blood?

My country is under attack! An invisible enemy attacks my country as it does rest of the world.

No they don't attack my religion. They attack my country.

They come from across the sea in ships and speed boats - armed with latest assault rifles, loads of ammunition, hand grenades and sophisticated bombs. These 'brave men' then kill people eating in restaurants; they spray bullets on fathers, mothers and children hurrying home in trains after a long day's labour!

Some mad leaders are placing guns in the hands of crazed young men with a blood lust. If they were revolutionaries, or emissaries of a faith, or fighters of a cause, then what message are they spreading?

I know there are saner people like you and me who outnumber these mad men at least 100 to 1. However, all we are armed with instead of rifles is - our belief in an all merciful God . The only ammunition we have is our prayers.

This weapon of ours seems to take forever to work. The Lord tests our faith thus. When it does work, which it sure does, it's a far more potent weapon than theirs for it protects not only us, the victims, but it also protects them, the tormentors. It reduces their ranks not by killing but by loving.

Prayer is love and love is like a balm that soothes all wounds irrespective of whose body bleeds - the hunter's or that of the hunted.

As we pray for all the peace loving people, let us also pray for those misguided and misled who carry out this bloody carnage at the behest of their leaders, in the name of God but at the bidding of the Satan.

It's these kids who need our prayer more than us.

Some deep and blinding anguish mars the senses of these young men that they perceive some convoluted glory in killing innocent people working in offices, eating in restaurants and hurrying home in trains.

Some spellbinding indoctrination makes them give up their own lives at the peak of youth - when they should instead be enjoying the gift of youth - in fedayeen (suicide) attacks on innocent and unarmed people.

It is they who need our prayers. May the all merciful God grant them good sense and love of life - that of the others and more importantly their own. For it's not the faith in Him that they lack - on the contrary they possess more of it than you and me - it is His guidance and His path that they lack.

I must thank my flickr friends who thought of me and my country from all over the world. Some of them wrote to me worried mails, and prayed for my countrymen.

Thanks Denise! Thanks Susan! Thanks Donna!

Thank you all my friends! I know all of you who see the horror being enacted in Mumbai will be concerned and will be praying.

Mercifully none of my family and hopefully none of the people we know were directly affected by this madness.