The Side of Life
On terror, grief, and the moral clarity a nation must defend
Still coming to terms with the blast in Delhi near Red Fort.
There is something obscene about men who choose death for others and call it faith. These Al-Qaeda, Lashkar f*ckers are told that jannat and hoor await them, that murder is devotion, that the world is divided into believers and kafirs. They believe they are serving a cause, but what they are really serving is a lie produced in the quiet rooms of men who will never pick up a gun themselves.
Something in the mind has to collapse completely for education, profession, friendship, and memory to evaporate into a fantasy of holy violence. Why else would Doctors, Engineers, Lawyers, people who spent years learning how the world works, still fall for it? Radicalization does not begin in scripture. It begins in emptiness, alienation, and hunger for identity that someone else learns how to exploit.
I feel sorrow for them and an even deeper sorrow for their families. Imagine raising a child to build, and one day discovering he wants to destroy. The grief does not end with the blast. It expands through homes and futures that will never unfold.
But grief is only one part of the aftermath. What hurts deeper is the response.
In moments like this, a certain section rushes first to blame the government, as if the state planted the bomb itself. Sure, criticism has a place in democracy, but criticism without moral clarity fractures civic unity. The moment analysis replaces grief, violence gains a stage. And when commentary tries to “explain” before condemning, a space opens where terror can be rationalized. That space is dangerous.
Terror must be named as terror.
Death must be named as death.
The ideology behind this must be confronted as disease, not misunderstood passion.
Accountability, reform, investigation - all of that comes next. But first there must be recognition that a bomb placed among ordinary citizens on an ordinary day is not politics but an act of annihilation.
Some liberals perform detachment to appear wise. They speak in tone instead of truth. They intellectualize murder while a city mourns. That is where I draw the line.
A society survives when it stands together in moments of injury. A country remains strong when it remembers who stands with life and who stands with death.
Delhi will heal. It always has. Red Fort has seen empire, famine, plague, uprising, independence, celebration, silence. The city will breathe again. Shops will open, children will go to school, mornings will return.
The question is what story we choose now.
Submission or clarity.
Fear or vigilance.
Amnesia or memory.
I choose memory. I choose clarity.
I choose the side that believes life is sacred.
