A terrorist is like you and me, only (infinitely) more coward

The recent attacks in Pathankot Air Base have been jarring to me. There are clips after clips of the bombings, the combing operations, the funerals and the family members that the martyred soldiers of the Indian Army left behind in my social media newsfeeds. Reports suggest that the attacks couldn't have been executed without the support of Pakistan military, yet they followed so close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Pakistan in which his comeraderie with his counterpart in Pakistan was much celebrated! So what is happening here? Is it that the Pakistani Army and the ISI want to show that the real power lies with them, and Modi's bonhomie with Sharif isn't going to change much?

Terrorism, at its heart though, is cowardice. It arises out of an inability to accept world views that are different from our own and ground realities that we don't like, and feeling incapacitated. It is as far as anything could be from being a show of strength. These attacks in which so many Jawans were martyred did not in the least manage to spread fear, for terrorism hardly manages to do that these days. What it rather evoked, as such incidents do these days, is disgust at their inhumanity and pity at their lamentable thinking.