When we were in school every day in the morning assembly one student had to give the ‘Thought of the Day’. I loved this part. I felt elated when there was some thought I knew and committed to memory the ones I didn’t.

There was one thought that I failed to understand completely, then and even now. It was:

To err is human, to forgive, divine

 With all respect to the person who said this, it’s not illustrative. Divine here means the act of being divine or the Almighty? In any case, I would like few answers:

A person can make any number of mistakes, may be serve a full term in jail or be hanged till death, but be forgiven by the Almighty?

What are these so-called mistakes that can be categorized as human? If a person robs someone for gambling and the other for some philanthropic reason, who will be forgiven since they’re both human?

Does this ‘forgiving’ come with a validity period? Say after some 100 mistakes God withdraws his discount offer?

What about those people who strongly believe in God, but know that at the end of the day no matter what they do, the Lord’s going to spare them?

We were taught that there’s one God, the forms may be different. No religion teaches you to hate or kill. Still we find people being killed every day in some or the other part of the world, in the name of religion, power or just plain rebellion against something. Was this the world that God had created?

Can these people, who think killing people’s going to prove a point be forgiven in any court of law?

Today is 26th November, 2009. The first anniversary of the scary human massacre that took place in Mumbai. The incident that had shaken the very foundation of safety and security in our country, when three top officers lost their lives only because of sheer negligence.

The government must’ve come up with a count of the number of people who lost their lives, but what about their families? When one person of a family dies, the whole family gets affected, more so if he was the only earning member. The compensation offered may go into the tune of a few lakhs, but nothing can cover up the loss of one person.

We can make demonstrations, condemn the whole act, light candles, may be even stand and observe silence for 2 min, but nothing’s going to undo the damage caused to the hearts of all Indians. We’re indeed sorry for what happened, but aren’t we secretly thankful that we weren’t one of them?

I loved ‘A Wednesday’ and have seen it many times. I loved Naseeruddin Shah’s dialogue, ‘We’re resilient by force, not by choice. Hume ghar chalana hota hai saab!’ Its about time we wake up and own up to our responsibilities, or tomorrow might be our turn.