Lately I think I’m foolish myself. This country is deteriorating.

The first time I witnessed a bomb blast at a concert, I was tuning up back stage. It was in Gaddafi Stadium at the largest musical event in Pakistan all year, the World Performing Arts Festival. We were cramped up in a side room with a huge, ugly steel garage door. The blast made us jump, rattling the bolt holding the steel door shut. We had no idea what was on the other side. Artists who had flown in from Norway, the Balkans and France exchanged panicked worst-case scenarios. They were all half expecting it. Festival organisers rushed into the room to inform us that the blast was only a gas pipe. I knew it was a lie, but the fatalism had already taken hold. It took a second blast while we were on stage to snap us out of it. We had to move. Once outside the auditorium we saw people shoveling in their last tikkas and loitering by shops, as if they had no idea what had taken place. On the walk path to the parking lot, our evacuation slowed into an exit, and we talked about how we also anticipated the blast. Our bansari player Aqmal didn’t say anything, but I could see his eyes well up at the corners. I knew what he felt. It was going to be hopeless to book concerts now that musicians and artists are targets for terrorist attacks.

I have grown very resentful that there were no protests in response to those bombs. How many must be even more resentful? Juice-stands in Lahore were blown up six weeks ago, and in recent memory a sports stadium in Peshawar was bombed. No one protested those blasts either. Pakistanis who have endured direct attacks on their way of life are treated to a public that behaves like its living in India. If the public goes silent when Lahore, Karachi or Peshawar are attacked, what condemnation can you expect from them about Mumbai?

... contd.