It is staggering that in a decade where thousands have died in attacks — home-grown, foreign, state-sponsored — India’s wake-up moment was this. A number of reasons suggested themselves. These attacks were particularly audacious, and their prolonged live coverage sharpened their impact. But the main reason for the reaction now is probably much cruder. It is that the upper classes have been hit. These victims were not train and bus travelers, idlers and vendors. These were people inside important places rather than outside them. This time it was too close to home. The talking heads no longer needed to speak in abstractions.

As a friend remarked, more tears were shed at the destruction of Wasabi restaurant than at the death of VP Singh. Whatever your view on Mandal, the fact that the man who so directly transformed the lives of millions of lower-caste Indians could be completely brushed aside exposes our concerns. I hope I write this not from liberal-elite guilt, but the debilitation that one sometimes feels because of this blinkered perspective. To understand the mind of a killer is beyond most of us. But to try and understand the world around us is not. To hope for a society where this is possible is not. I remember the 1993 Bombay blasts — one blast anyway. It was, I think, our final period that day in school, not a kilometer from the Air India building. It was a broad rather than a loud sound, and echoing, as if in an empty stadium. The blackboard shook. The duster fell from the teacher’s hand. We rushed to the balcony, watched the smoke rise. Then we were sent home. And there we stayed cocooned in our South Bombay lives. Whatever might happen would happen elsewhere, among other, different people. Only a few months ago Bombay had apparently burned. Not for us. The riots too had been elsewhere, among different people.

... contd.