Sometimes, the manner in which you die defines your life as a human being. The Mumbai bombings a few days back showed how. There was a Singaporean victim, but the real tragedy isn't just the fact that she died in the bombing. The real tragedy is the fact that her death has come to symbolise everything she never wanted it to be.
I'm sure nobody wants to be stuck with the tag of "Singapore's first terror victim". What's the problem with that? Well, nothing. I guess it's only the fact that everything you were before, a promising lawyer, a people person, becomes overshadowed by the manner by which you died. You become the property of the nation, free for the government to use whenever they need an example in a social studies textbook, about how Singapore has been affected by crazy extremists with a penchant for dried fruit and tossing pineapples.
But in a morbid sense, she is lucky. She's not one of the many Indians who died in the disaster, so numerous in number they become a statistic. While she gets full length reports devoted to her in the paper, the hundred or so Indians who died together have to be satisfied with paragraphs in the same report mentioning how hundreds of locals were also killed in the attack. It's so unfair its funny.
These numerous indians died in a most appaling way. They died faceless, nameless, and in most cases, already forgotten to the world, what they stood for, what they did, who they were. They are special only to their families, who were the very same people robbed of them. It's almost as though Indians are destined to become a statistic when killed, because when something happens, chances are they are one of the hundreds or thousands who were affected. Its the old newsroom joke. When 5 people die in India, its not news. Call back when its 500. And even then, I can only spare you a small column beside the ad for cereal and bar soap.
In my honest opinion, this bombing only gets so much attention because Mumbai isn't a place normally associated with terrorism. In the Middle East where so many die everyday from suicide bombings and the like, well, who really cares. In fact, I'll even sell you weapons so you can go on killing yourselves. It's a win-win situation. I have weapons, you have oil money, there are many infidels to kill, and you won't eat my pork.
The day no one in the Middle East dies from some violent cause or another is the day China's food is clean, and the day I strike lottery. Wait, let me correct that. I will probably strike lottery first. Then the Middle East conflict will end when the place runs out of oil. When they no longer have oil money, they will grow some brains.
As for food, it's just better to pay more to make sure what you eat isn't from China. I've a hunch they're tainting food as a means of population control, just that they will never admit it.