As the crowds surge forward to cheer, he is mown down with a barrage of bullets. Or the grenades are flung onto the platform. There’s mad confusion. Stampede. Then there’s the quick getaway. There are plenty of decoys too. Where is the assassin? He’s never to be found. Where is he? Does he exist? Has he found refuge in a safe house? I permit myself a wry grimace that could pass for a smile. It’s always ‘the other’. Some poor fellow pulled out of a cell, one of those supposed terrorists with an ID planted on him, and finished off, bullets pumped randomly into his body. Just another victim to add to the growing numbers. Can no longer protest his innocence. The dead man lying in some squalid cul-de-sac beside on overflowing municipal garbage bin. Every bit of his clothing, his looks, his past, his career, minutely reported by the investigators. And photographs to give credibility. The enemy is so easy to identify in the confusion that exists in the current political scenario. We’re living in a country rent apart by forces of violence, ethnicity, subversive elements, violations of every right under the sun. There’s this huge power struggle going on behind the scenes so that it’s never clear who the real enemy is. It is a society where the assuming of masks is easy. Not monstrous vesmuhuna, but bland, smoothly hypocritical masks. That man who is most vile, most corrupt, looks like a sage or an innocent householder. It’s so easy to hoodwink the masses before whom a few crumbs are scattered. The huge drug cartels, the arms dealers, those who bag the biggest tenders, manipulate the small men. The powerful remain inviolable for a long, long time. Their corruption can even be interpreted as virtue. They’ll be quoted to eternity for the good they have done mankind.