Yesterday was the 14th of December, 2012. Yesterday will go down in history as a dark day in the history of the world, of mankind and in particular, the United States of America, as 27 lives were lost in Newtown, CT as a gunman went on a killing spree in Sandy Hook Elementary School. Much like everyone in the country, this got me thinking. And  I want to voice my opinion from the perspective of someone who has not lived in this country for the majority of his life.

Back home in India, the dagger of death is omnipresent, hanging in the air, waiting to come piercing down onto the unsuspecting innocents. But it’s a very different animal compared to what happened in Connecticut  Back home, you put yourself in danger by taking calculated risks. Consider this: it’s Diwali, and you decide you absolutely cannot avoid a trip to Lajpat Nagar market. If you tell anyone about this, be it friend or family, their response is always tinged with a touch of caution. No, of fear.

Statistically speaking, if you follow through on the plan, you are more likely to be blown up into bits or peppered with bullets by a terrorist attack than if you decide to postpone the trip for another time. Why? I cannot speak for the mind of a terrorist, but I can speak for some of their goals. To cause wanton destruction in a reckless bid to publicise and further their own organisation’s agenda.

Is this threat non-existent at other times of the year? No, of course not. It’s something you learn to live with in a metropolitan city in a country which has been the target of multiple terrorist attacks over the past decade. It’s not really something you think about actively, but as I mentioned, it automatically gets factored into many decisions down the line.

But, there is method to the madness. The targets are almost predictable. The statistical likelihood of an attack can be modelled too. In other words, there is a semblance, if only a mask, of security that exists when the odds are in your favour. But why is that? Why did it never occur to me that my school, or the hospital I go to, could be an unsafe place for me?

Because I implicitly assumed at the back of my head that there was no way in hell that just any person, with or without an agenda and/or mental balance, could just walk into those spaces and mass-murder innocents. Why did I implicitly assume so? Because it had never happened before. Honestly, I don’t even think I assumed anything – I don’t even think I ever thought about it.

But speaking in the light of the Newtown massacre, I can say why I never had to read about such a thing in the news back home. Gun control is reasonably strict in India. Gun ownership is not guaranteed by law. You need a license and a valid reason to own a firearm. You cannot own automatic weapons. There are no open gun stores you can just walk into and buy a weapon from. There is a system that works to prevent both impulsive and planned violence by individuals.

Switch back to Newtown. The setting: an elementary school. The assailant: one angry, possibly delusional, young man armed with a handgun, a semi-automatic and a rifle. The victims: 20 young children and 7 adults.

Did they see it coming? I doubt it. Could the school itself have done anything to prevent it? Short of turning itself into a bunker, not much, I presume.

What I’m getting at is that Newtown, and possibly any other public space in the US is free game for the many Adam Lanzas that might roam amongst us. I do not want to comment on a man’s character or mental health that I am in no way acquainted with, but I can comment about a certain 2nd amendment that grants all citizens the right to bear arms and loose gun licensing and ownership laws.

Laws are like social contracts that impose restrictions and penalties on groups of people. They force us to make mutual compromises that lead to mutual benefit. For instance, I know that I can walk down the street and be reasonably sure that I am not going to be gunned down because as a society we understand that doing so is wrong and the consequences for doing so are severe. But in the light of Newtown, Clackamas Town Center Mall, Aurora and many many others, I ask myself: is this security real or just an illusion?

What’s to stop a madman, drunkard or stoner from gallivanting onto my campus, whipping out multiple weapons and munitions and going berserk as I walk across the the Cut to my next class? Next to nothing really thanks to the fact that you don’t need a license to possess a shotgun or rifle. I may be overly generalising, but apparently all it takes is money and intention or impulse to recklessly take lives. And it worries me, not just for my own personal safety, but for the safety of those around me, that lawmakers in this country refuse to act on this urgent issue.

We can only go so far to control people’s intentions and minds. Yes, there are good support systems and psychological health facilities all around, but can you really predict when someone snaps? Or when someone has one too many drinks? No. But can you control the instruments of violence at their disposal? Can you control the extent of the damage they can do, either premeditated or impulsive? Yes. Yes, you can.

Stricter gun laws can’t guarantee that another Newtown won’t happen. But they can go a long way to make sure the next Newtown is far less likely to happen. Consider the episode that unfolded in China almost in parallel with the Sandy Hook incident. It’s almost eerily similar, except that all the man had access to was a knife, and yes, although he did wound a number of students, some of them critically, but no one died.

As I was going to bed last night, I had a small epiphany. I realised that I am not as safe here in Pittsburgh as I was back in New Delhi. The Virginia Tech massacre is another morbid reminder that a place of learning is not a safe haven. The fact that national security can do a lot to prevent a terrorist attack is comforting. But the fact that gun control laws do next to nothing in this country to address an attack from within worries me. I’d give a lot to know that the space I work, play and study in are safe.

I know this isn’t the case right now.

I looked at my wristwatch – it’s 6:00pm on a Friday. A week’s worth of work is done with, not that it meant much in the seemingly endless cycle of assignments, midterms and meetings. But yes, it was Friday – a comma in the monotony, a blip on the free-time radar. But things were afoot and I had no time to waste. I looked up, but the view outside my window temporarily robbed me of intention and got me with reminiscing instead.

There was an old friend of mine who I hadn’t seen properly in weeks but was meaning to catch up with this Friday night. Why this Friday night? Because the comma in the monotony was to be followed by a trying phrase. And the comma was my best shot at making some time for her. The weekend is usually robbed of its flexibility by buggy freerolls in the wee hours of the morning, something that she never fully appreciated about me. But, much like every week, she was patient. Like all good friends are. But I was adamant to make time for her this weekend, which is why she was also willing the extra mile this time around. I had intended to go grocery shopping week for the following week that Friday evening itself, so that my otherwise unproductive weekend no longer held that unceremonious title. Since my priorities dictate that free time followed productivity, this was the only choice I had to make time for her this weekend.

I looked away from the window and pulled up the recipes I intended to realise for the next week on my laptop. Ten minutes of list-making later, I was headed out of the building with two grocery bags in hand. The wait at the bus stop gave me more time to think – but I didn’t want to think about her. The thought of spending quality time with her was simply too exciting. I tried to keep her out of my mind, plugged some music into my ears and started thinking about the things I needed to get done for the next week. This was the most effective way to remind me of the little precious time I got to spend with her. But that would always be in retrospect – at that moment, it provided me with much needed clarity of thought. But the thought of her never fully left my mind – on the bus, in the aisles, at the checkout line and on the way back, my primary focus may have been on the task at hand, but flitting thoughts of the good times we spent together kept rising from the recesses of my mind.

But there was much more to be done before I could meet her. By now I’m back in my room and changing into some clothes I don’t mind getting dirty in – pre-rolls prep for buggy was never the cleanest affair. It was 8pm and I knew she was expecting me in my room around 10pm. Nevertheless, I headed out to the basement in the East Campus Parking Garage to help get the buggies in rollable condition for freerolls which were the following morning, in a few hours’ time. My grocery shopping intermission meant that I was late and that most of what needed to be done had already been done. While I helped out with the little work that remained, good/bad news arrived – the 80% chance of rain the following morning meant that rolls were going to be cancelled. My ears perked up at the mention of “rolls” and “cancelled” in the same breath – it was an unexpected bonus to all of my planning – it meant that I would not have to interrupt our time together with a 4:30am wakeup call and multiple alarms going off like klaxons. She would be pleased. Very pleased. So I quietly grinned to myself and intended to finish whatever I was doing as soon as possible.

By now it was 10pm and I was back in my room. For some reason, I intended to straighten up the room before she arrived. I don’t really know why because it was something she simply did not care about. She was coming for me and me alone. By the time I was done picking up after the week’s mess, I knew she was almost at the door. It was tiring work and I wanted nothing more than to spend some time with her at this point. But for my own perverse reasons, I chose not to. She had been a tease all week. For the past few weeks, in fact. In all honestly, we had intended to catch up every single day of the week for the past few days – but work always got in the way. It’s not as if we didn’t see each other – she would come over every single night of the week, but our time together was brief at best, and always a means to fill the gap before the next day dawned, never an end in itself. Again, she was not appreciative of where my priorities lay, but she was willing to wait in silence, biding her time. She caught my attention in classes as well, when my focus wavered. She had the power to bewitch me on demand in those few moments, and if she did, I never knew what happened in class for the next few minutes. Yes, the thought of her was really that enrapturing.

So right when she was at the door, I walked out the room with my laundry bag in hand. She gave me a withering look as I smirked and walked right past her. Both of us knew what this meant – that I wouldn’t be free for another one and a half hours. I was testing her patience – in possibly one of the most trying ways possible. But the two of us also knew that the 90 minutes meant nothing to her – we’d been apart for so long that this delay was simply inconsequential. When I came back upstairs to fold last week’s laundry, she was sitting on my bed. I ignore her, and sorted and piled my clothes as she looked on. Honestly, it was very tempting to just take her right there and then, but I resisted. And she understood – the wait only made the final moment more special. It was also my way to give her the silent treatment – last night’s unintended extended escapade had nearly made me late for a job interview.

Once I was done with folding laundry, I looked up at her straight in the eye for the first time that night. I knew I was betraying my eagerness, but then again, I could see nothing but earnestness being shot back at me. But no – I knew that I must resist. I needed to distract myself even longer, and so I did the unthinkable. At midnight, I filled a bag with groceries, picked up the shoebox of spices and my laptop and left for the kitchen. I could sense the mutual disappointment as I left the room and I think she half-intended to follow me out. But she knew better. She knew that I would head right back up, with renewed intention and she was appreciate of that, if not my means to achieve it.

Even down in the kitchen, cooking wasn’t doing the best job of keeping her from my mind. But it did keep time flowing – and the longer I knew she was waiting upstairs, the more intense grew my passion for her. But I needed to focus, and so I did on not setting the kitchen on fire. It was fortunate that I was working on two dishes, because if I had to just sit and stare a boiling pot of rajma, the thought of her would have caused me to lose my mind there and then. And then, it was her turn to tease me back. Because it is 1:30am and she is down in the kitchen with me. I don’t remember when she arrived, but all of a sudden, I could simple sense her presence in the kitchen with me. She knows this frustrates me even more because there is no way I can leave the kitchen at this point, but her patient smile betrays her good intentions. Oh, if only she knew that at this moment, her intentions had little to do with her actual effect – the was a downright danger in the kitchen when I was cooking, a latent fire hazard for the entire building. For me.

But then, it was 3:00am, and the cooking is done, I get a plate and some rice to try out the food before putting it away in the fridge. It tasted delicious but through the steaming dishes I could read her questioning look – are you done yet? It was a poignant question – the food tasting had been a non-essential delay and she was hurting. In quiet submission, I packed everything up, did the dishes, and turned off the lights to head upstairs. But in doing so, I did not betray the final trump card I had left. Once in my room with her, I looked away and started putting up some of the posters I had been meaning to put up since I moved into my room. This was quite nearly the limit for her – she had endured much, but this was the breaking point. The mutual understanding of the real intention that lacked subtlety  and the insignificance of the action itself drove home the point that I was quickly running out of ideas to prolong the inevitable. The tension was so thick in the air you could cut it with a knife. She waited for me to finish what I was doing.

And by now, it was nearly 4:00am. She was in bed, waiting.  And there was nothing more to be done. That could be done to keep me away from her. Nothing that I wanted to do to prolong it, for that matter. The time was right, and I turned off the lights in crawled under the covers with her. And in our warm embrace, I found freedom – freedom from the troubles of the week, freedom from apprehensions about the week ahead, freedom from responsibility, freedom from having to care. It was the one moment when I could simply be. Not do, but just be. It was a moment I had been waiting for a long while, and now that I was in it, the experience was overwhelming. We may have cried, we may have laughed, or perhaps done nothing at all, but that is something I cannot remember. And soon, I drifted off under her influence – I was drunk on her and was willingly blacking out.

Time flew by, the earth continued along its diurnal path, the sun rose, but I was oblivious of it all. The alarms went off at 9:40am. My eyes fluttered open as I registered the dawn of another day. Before I jumped out of bed to shut off the alarm, I sensed her presence. She was still there with me – it was always a comforting thought. But as I got out of bed, an involuntary groan escaped my lips – my body ached all over. Was it from the week’s toil finally taking it’s toll, or was it from last night? I didn’t know, but all I did know is that I was in no condition to go running with my residents at 10am like I had originally intended. So I shut off the alarms, and limped back to bed, and got in again. This time, our embrace was more reassuring than releasing. The mutual appreciation of my efforts to make time added an overtone of gratefulness. And once again, I drifted off…

And now it’s 3:00pm as I’m writing this up. She is gone, but the she will be back. We both know how much I need her.

She is a sultry temptress indeed. My old friend. My old friend – sleep.