The media community got a rude shock when the Indian Prime Minister Mr. Atal Bihari Hajpayee refrained from commenting anything whatsoever in the press conference which was held after the twin blasts that rocked the city of Hyderabad on 25th August, 07.
AB Hajpayee evinced the same characteristic demeanor and body-language that he was known for. He carefully listened to the reporter’s question (the first and the only one), slipped into a state that’s perceived as ‘coma’, flung his hands, blinked his eyebrows- all this, as usual, occurred in a span of two hours- after which it looked like Hajpayee would utter a few words, provide the much-awaited reaction, and delineate his strategy of combating terror. But that wasn’t to be. The press-conference was, at that point, called off by RSS citing 'colossal waste of time' as the reason.
Faced with the possibility of not delivering any 'breaking news' on the hottest issue of that day, media-people came up with an idea to avert the same by speculating various “what-if” scenarios, with respect to how would have some of the other Indian political leaders reacted to these blasts.
First, they speculated how YSR Rut-ti and his party would have reacted to Hyderabad blasts. After a discussion, they thought this is how he would have reacted:
"What do you expect us to do? Do you want us to keep vigil on all the chaat-eating people?"
"The state government will definitely not have the wherewithal to go into this sort of intelligence operations.”
Then, they speculated how Shivraj Pothole would have reacted:
"When floods and incidents like these happen, people try to help each other to mitigate suffering."
"We did what we felt was right. Such incidents, in fact, took place even after POTA was brought in."
"The country is very big and even if we have the information that something is likely to happen, sometimes we don't know when and where this is likely to happen."
Then, they speculated what would Muckmoron Singh have done. After discussion, they came to the conclusion that he would have decided to create a special permanent fund for the victims of terrorist attacks.
After this hypothesizing was over, some of the news-channels decided to conduct a poll to decide which amongst these should be considered ‘the most appropriate reaction’. Votes/SMS’/Phone-calls came in from all parts of India, and the vote-split (average of all the channels) read as:
20%: Hajpayee’s reaction was the most appropriate
80%: The bail given to Sanjay Dutt and Salman Khan was a right thing
So it was concluded that Vajpayee’s reaction- that of maintaining complete Silence- was indeed better than the reactions which others would have hypothetically given.
This is how India tackled the sinister problem of Terrorism, after twin blasts that ravaged Hyderabad, and on the next day of the blasts, everyone was at work, performing daily chores and gossiping “How come only 80% of people think that Sanjay Dutt and Salman Khan deserve to be free?”, “What was Sanjay Dutt doing in Vaishno Devi?” and the headlines “Hyderabad is a resilient city", “Resilent Hyderabad bounces right back”, were splashed all over the newspapers and TVs.
Thus, all was well till the Terrorists came to kill again.
