Many years ago, while writing for the Asian Age, a paper that MJ Akbar owned, he wrote me a line I've never forgotten. "Never criticise anyone immediately after a tragedy." A rare bit of editorial wisdom. And so, though every fibre in me wants to take a red pen dipped in rage and scribble furiously over the lapses of our police forces—especially as yet another stampede shakes us, this time in Bangalore—I hold back.

No, this piece isn't about pointing fingers. Not today. Today, I mourn.
I mourn not just the bodies that lay still after the crowd surge but the minds that never got the chance to awaken. Young lives, full of hope, full of hashtags, cut short before they could discover Truth. Not the kind sold to them in 280 characters or wrapped in WhatsApp forwards with our national flag and a call to action. No. I mean the kind of truth that takes years to wrestle with, wrestle for, through reading, listening, living, failing, reflecting—and finally knowing.

What hurts is not just the loss, but the timing of it.

Today, as I watch political leaders thunder on stage and corporate honchos peddle their philanthropic jargon, I see youth applauding. Clapping not because they agree but because they don't yet know any better.

And I wonder—will they, like many of us eventually did, look back and laugh at what they once believed?

It's a terrible thing to die before you realise you've been fooled.

We, some of the older ones, have had time to see through it all. We've seen manifestos promising moons and monuments and watched them deliver potholes and press gags. We've heard slogans that claimed to protect us, only to find them turning into shields for the corrupt.

We believed once, then doubted, then finally discerned.

That arc of awakening takes time—and unfortunately, these dead youngsters didn't get that time.

I remember once asking a student at a youth conference why he clapped so hard for a speaker, spewing what I thought was utter nonsense. "Sir," he grinned, "I liked his confidence." Confidence, my dear young friend, is a great oratory tool—but so is a mask. And too many masked men today speak from pulpits and platforms, confident, eloquent, and devoid of conscience.

Today, I write not just to grieve those who didn't get the time to unlearn lies but also to warn many in this nation who, even with age, cannot see beyond the mask of lies.

Those who died, died without knowing better, because experience and time may not have revealed the truth to them. But to you who have aged and still believe, take your blindfolds off, or one day you'll wish you'd been part of yesterday's tragedy because your sons and daughters suffer because of the same blindfolds stubbornly kept on, even with age, time and maturity!