With horror, I watched mobs pillaging and rampaging down the streets of Mumbai! Stoning cars with innocent passengers in them, overturning buses, looting shops, and destroying the stability and security the city offered to its citizens.

I shuddered at the destruction, then found this remark on my whatsapp group, “Decimate these bloody worms!” This from a fellow who spent most of his working day, deriding, ridiculing and insulting those from other faiths and communities. He was a refugee from Kashmir, and the shame of running away from his home state had obviously scarred his mind enough to being reduced to a raging, ranting jabber mouth!

Not too different from another gentleman, all of eighty years and more, a luminary of the church, who’s lovely blue eyes sparkled with humour till perchance the conversation veered onto a community he had no love for, and then suddenly, same soft eyes blazed with anger, words of venom spewed forth from aged mouth and destructive, words filled the ears of those who sat around.

Like, I said, with horror, I watched mobs pillaging and rampaging down the streets of Mumbai! Stoning cars with innocent passengers in them, overturning buses, looting shops and destroying the stability the city offered.

But as I saw the stones in the hands of boys and young men, stones that smashed and shattered metal, glass and windshield, I realized the words that came out of the mouths of these two gentlemen I’d mentioned weren’t too different.

The stones hurled were like the words spat from their hate filled minds and came equally heavy with anger, disdain and dislike.

But destroyed.

The stones in the hands of the mob destroyed cars buses, trains and my sense of security.

The vile words from same persons destroyed the beautiful tapestry and delicate fabric that keeps my country together.

Even as police now round up those miscreants who took law into their own hands in the city of Mumbai, even as righteous citizens ask the government why nothing was done to stop such violence, I wonder who will stop those who destroy with weapons worse than the stones thrown that day?

Who will stop this vile mouthed refugee, who knowing he is safe behind a whatsapp group vomits his violence everyday! Who, the eightyyear old who’s sudden spurts of stone throwing words inflict harm beyond measure on communities he dislikes?

But even as I look at them, even as I turn away from TV screen and other pictures of violent mob, I turn to look in the mirror, at myself, and ask, “Am I one of them?”

Do the thoughts in my head and words from my mouth cause destruction? Are those words sharper than the stones that broke those windshields?Am I like those two and the mob causing destruction?

You and I together, are we destroying our country, then blaming the mob?

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