India and terror: A hard face with a flabby interior

The Great Indian Rope Trick is legendary, though more myth than fact. It has even been traced as far back in time as Ibn Batuta and Marco Polo. The Great Indian Response Trick is more contemporary, replicating features of the legendary rope trick in more ways than one. It can also be as spectacular as the earlier one was reputed to be.

In the Great Indian Rope Trick a magician would hurl a rope into air, which would then become taut- upon which a small boy would then ascend and disappear from everybody's sight. Voices would then be heard as if issuing from the skies and subsequently the boy would reappear and a relived audience would get back home to their late night dinner.

A more elaborate version of the same trick would have the magician climb the rope behind the boy and after a period of shouting and yelling the audience would then see pieces of flesh drop from the skies. Only the magician would then descend the rope. Subsequently, the boy too would reappear and the patrons would get back home to their dinner – very likely queasy.

Interestingly, a Wikipedia reference supplies the titbit that the Great Indian Rope Trick was actually a hoax pulled by the American paper Chicago Tribune in an attempt to increase its circulation. The paper subsequently published a retraction but nobody paid any attention allowing the myth to endure.

With the Great Indian Response Trick (GIRT), a modern phenomenon going back in time only a decade or so, a terrorist attack occurs in India and the Great Indian State prepares, or launches, a 'response.' As with the rope trick, once launched, the 'response' too goes taut and a period of shouting and yelling ensues, with voices emanating from the skies. After a period of time everything falls into place and the audience goes back to watching 'saas bahu' and other soaps on TV- and only occasionally, TV News.

As for the November Mumbai terror attack the GIRT audience is now engrossed with the shouting and yelling phase, in which voices are heard from the sky, even as the stage below remains empty. As of now the Indian sub-continental stage is bereft of any verifiable action and media reports tend to act as voices from the sky.