Another day,another shooting.

It was just another day in Middle America. A man in Wisconsin shot seven people and injured a few others at  Gurudwara. Why am I not enraged by all this?Not because I don't feel any pain or sadness at this stupid act of violence.

I am not surprised at the fact that it does not happen more often.America is a violent country – the homicide rate is four to 12 times higher than that in more civilized parts of the world – and Aurora, Colo. where James Holmes gunned down 12 people , is more violent than the average American town. A down-market suburb of Denver, it sees an average of about 20 of its 325,000 residents murdered each year.

Statistics that would have appeared in the the local daily,but elsewhere would have slipped under the radar.A lot of people – about 15,000 at present – get murdered in the United States every year. Most of these people get killed in places that, roughly speaking, look something like Aurora or the Gurudwara: places where the people are poorer and less white than in America in general, and who are therefore by definition dangerous or not one of us.

Of course these rules don’t hold if some lunatic kills a lot of  people at once, especially in a normally innocuous public space, such as a multi-screen movie theater or a temple,but the fact of the matter is nothing will change,unless the gun laws in the states are amended.

There are no limits on the number of firearms that can be purchased at one time, nor on the possession or transfer of assault weapons, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.


Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker signed a law in July 2011 allowing citizens to carry concealed weapon, making the state the 49th to allow the practice. Only neighboring Illinois does permit this.

The Second Amendment that allows Americans to carry arms was adopted in 1791 at a time of Revolution. It's as if everyone thinks the King of England is going to be knocking on their door any day. I think we are a bit past that, but there's not enough people, with not enough power, to have our voices heard.

There really is no reason for anybody to be walking down the street with an AK 47(that was what was used in Colarado).But then again,the National Rifle Assocaition in the states is a big money spinner,and generates a lot of money for election campaigns.

This year,with the presidential campaign in full swing,Those who want to use the killing spree's to shake some sense into America's gun laws might as well be talking to a wall.

Rhythm

At some time all cities have this feel: in Delhi  it's at five or six on a winter evening. Pune has it too, late, when the cafes are closing up. In the hills, it can happen anytime: early in the morning as the light climbs over the canyon streets and the avenues stretch so far into the distance that it seems the whole world is city; or now, as the chimes of midnight hang in the rain and all the city's longings acquire the clarity and certainty of sudden understanding.

The day coming to an end and people unable to evade any longer the nagging sense of futility that has been growing stronger through the day, knowing that they will feel better when they wake up and it is daylight again but knowing also that each day leads to this sense of quiet isolation.

Whether the plates have been stacked neatly away or the sink is cluttered with unwashed dishes makes no difference because all these details--the clothes hanging in the closet, the sheets on the bed--tell the same story--a story in which they walk to the window and look out at the rain-lit streets, wondering how many other people are looking out like this.

 People who look forward to Monday because the weekdays have a purpose which vanishes at the weekend when there is only the laundry and the papers. And knowing also that these thoughts do not represent any kind of revelation because by now they have themselves become part of the same routine of bearable despair, a summing up that is all the time dissolving into everyday.

A time in the day when it is possible to regret everything and nothing in the same breath, when the only wish of all bachelors is that there was someone who loved them, who was thinking of them even if she was on the other side of the world.

When a woman, feeling the city falling damp around her, hearing music from a radio somewhere, looks up and imagines the lives being led behind the yellow-lighted windows: a man at his sink, a family crowded together around a television, lovers drawing curtains, someone at his desk, hearing the same tune on the radio, writing these words.