By now, a terrorist bomb blast is a familiar event, evoking stock responses. The journalistic narrative moves in a familiar arc whether it is New York, Mumbai or, now, Jaipur — the first shock, the grim calculus of death, the waves of mourning and an accompanying resolve, and then the chorus of homages to the city’s unbreakable “spirit”. But there is something about Jaipur that forces one to look at it as if it was the first time we witnessed a town built around commerce and craft laid low by a murderous ideology.
The terrorist act is an intentional, systematic attack on precisely this ordinariness. It seeks to radically blow up our complacencies, and enforce its paranoid logic on its victims, hurtling them into seeking extreme measures and rhetoric as a collective. This sense of rupture must not enter our psyches — living in fear can cause citizens to question their own norms, clutch at stereotypes and, in the process, turn against the very tranquillity and goodwill that characterised their way of life. Even as we turn the heat on intelligence failures and what could have averted this catastrophe, we must remember that terrorism awakens a city to its vulnerabilities, but it must not be allowed to pervert its very essence. A culture of nervousness and suspicion is especially damaging to a city that thrives on tourism, on its largesse and hospitality to strangers. For now, Jaipur has impressively refused to relinquish its freedoms, rejected the mental curfew that follows such tragedy.
As Simon Jenkins has perceptively noted, terrorism in our world is 10 per cent bang and 90 per cent an echo effect — a mixture of media hysteria and clumsy executive action, prompted by clumsy notions of redress against a wider group, as though they were collectively implicated. Here too, Rajasthan has shown a rare courage and maturity, as the citizens refuse to be divided along communal lines, and cope with the attacks together, as best as they can. Jaipur is a model of indigenous urbanity, a place where the physical layout itself encourages conviviality and civilised sociability. And as the response to the blasts has shown, the grand old city’s unified façade goes deeper than pink stone.
