Yesterday at around 1.30 IST, seven blasts ripped through the city of Bangalore. The blasts were of low intensity, and the bombs were not so effective; i.e. hundreds of people were not killed at various places. Our senses have become so numb we tend to derive conclusions based on how many people have died, and how many more were injured. Today, one day after the blast, life is absolutely back to normal in Bangalore. The markets are buzzing with people, the malls are thronging with the young and hip crowd which is so much an intrinsic part of this “happening” metro, the schools, colleges, offices(those which remain open on a Saturday) are all working as usual. People are not even discussing what has happened a couple of hours ago. One way if you look at it, you can admire the resilience and spirit of the city. But somehow, one thought keeps disturbing my mind…are we becoming too insensitive to calamity? Or is it that our disaster recovery mechanism have become like instant coffee? Is it that as long as we are safe and our immediate family members are secure we just heave a contented sigh of relief and forget the whole incident as a bad dream?

Yesterday when the incident took place I was at my son’s school, waiting to pick him up after his school gets over. Many parents like me were standing there, blissfully unaware of the disastrous scenario that had already happened in some other parts of the city. As soon as the news reached me, I immediately panicked for my husband. The moment I heard he is fine; my next intention was to know whether all my known friends and acquaintances were safe. Not for a moment I bothered to know about the elderly couple who were standing at the bus stop to go home, whose body was ripped apart by the blast. The wounded people shown on the television channels were just faces for me.

Today, like many others, I have conveniently forgotten about them also. It’s just a matter of discussion at the beauty parlor which I frequented in the morning for my son’s hair cut. Cultured, educated and so called sympathetic ladies were making caustic remarks about how the “crude bomb” was able to disturb the refugee settlement in Bangalore. Someone even said “Bangalore was going the way of Dharavi of Mumbai”; good that these refugees will now think twice before making Bangalore their home”!I was appalled, disturbed and mentally shuddered thinking of this macabre twist to the whole incident. Have we become so mechanical that a person’s death no longer affects us as long as he or she does not belong to the upper echelons of the society? Are we more bothered about a city’s cleanliness and its physical appearance than the inhabitants of the same? Is this general apathy and clinical detachment become an inherent part of us urban Indians? Who is accountable for social security of the citizens? What do you feel?