Those whom the gods want to destroy..

...they first make mad.

In the old days, before Alfred Noble invented high explosives, if you wanted to blow something up, you had to lug about 10 kegs of gunpowder to the site and then set a very long fuse and then hope the whole thing worked. These days, its as easy as buying a small block of semtex from your neighborhood arms dealer and setting a timer.

With the new ease of acquiring and using high explosives, the age where you could pick on someone smaller than you and get away with it is fast receding. After all, what can you do if every tom dick and Rahim can get back at you by planting bombs where and when you least expect them.

I wonder what the Indian freedom movement would have been like if we had resorted to random acts of violence? Would we have ever got freedom at all? Or would we have spent 50 years in bloodshed and counter-bloodshed? Would we be a sane country or one where, having got the taste of violence, resorted to revolutions and civil war at every opportunity to avenge old scores?

When you kill someone, a little bit of you dies. You go a little crazy. And then you cant stop killing people. Your whole life is spent in kill or be killed. Its one of the laws of the universe. Taking a step down that path means never turning back.

I feel sorry for our world. We have taken that step so many times...