SEPULCHRAL

As terror rips apart Mumbai, I cannot help but recall a scene from the movie ‘Match Point’ where a murdered woman returns to haunt the murderer, asking him why she had to be killed when the target was someone else. The accused nonchalantly says something to the effect that when the cause is important, innocent bystanders are killed as history has shown us so many times. Innocent bystanders—Mumbaikars—no longer need to show their resilience. It is time not to move on but to fight back. Don’t be resilient. Break down to become whole again. Even as I say this, my words ring hollow. Only when our own suffer, do we realize what it means to be innocent bystanders. I feel anger and helplessness, and yet hopeful as I recall Shelley:

PROMETHEUS UNBOUND(Act IV)
Demogorgon:
This the day, which down the void abysm
At the Earth-born’s spell yawns for heaven’s despotism,
And conquest is dragged captive through the deep;
Love, from its awful throne of patient power
In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour
Of dread endurance, from the slippery steep,
And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs
And folds over the world its healing wings
Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance,
These are the seals of that most firm assurance
Which bars the pit over Destruction’s strength;
And if with infirm hand, Eternity,
Mother of many acts and hours, should free
The serpent that would clasp her with his length,
These are the spells by which to reassume
An empire o’er the disentangled doom.
To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates
Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;
This, like thy glory, Titan! Is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory!