I am being reminded of a very famous scene from a Bollywood blockbuster of yesteryears. The legendary Amitabh Bachchan and Shashi Kapoorplayed brothers in the 1975Deewar. The former played a gangster, and the latter a cop. There is a scene where Mr Kapoor confronts his brother, MrBachchan, and asks him to surrender to the strong arm of the law. The dramatic dialogues laced with high emotions and rage of the dark character, the “angry young man” of those days, were the real highlight of the movie. Without repeating the actual lines, what MrBachchan reminded his younger brother is that he needs to arrest those people first who ruined their otherwise tranquil lives in the first place. He should go after that man first who put his young, gullible brother on this path of no return. You may wonder why all this nostalgia for a change. I think you perhaps know why. The drums have started to roll and the camerasare in action as usual. The print and electronic media is in overdrive as usual to sell a not-so-new phrase “across the board accountability,” as if this has not been heard or seen before. In this space, I have expressed my sheer dismay towards this pathetic attitude that the general public holds. The nightly tube’s ringleaders do their utmost best to play with the psyche of common people. People who juggle their lives with daily challenges take the word of media persons as gospel, and form the opinion of the system being ‘corrupt’ and ‘of no use’. Just bring someone with a cane to set things straight. Religious sentiments are played to the highest pitch by citing the examples of the companions of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH)to add more pressure to the tipping frustrations. Without mentioning any names, there are people who we call, regard and introduce as intellectuals, and who openly incite violence against the ‘inept’politicians. The criticism of the indifference displayed by our ‘heartless’ leaders, in plain language, their ‘callous dumbness’ is condemnable.But incitement of violence to express your so-called ‘patriotism’ for the land, that too on a public forum, makes you look quiet intellectually deficient, let alone an ‘intellectual’. The more fiercethe outburst by such intellectually deficient people, the steeper the ratings of that so-called talk show. A directly proportional and a very ugly relationship between the two to garner more eyeballs and infuse more rage and hatred in overly pressured skulls. The new ‘manjan’ (herbal tooth powder)) on sale is the“across the board accountability.” Those of you who care to read these scribbles and endure the naked truth emanating from these lines, will perhaps recall that a few years ago I had pointed towards this ‘feel-good’ phenomenon. The dialogues of the old blockbuster of Bollywood in the introduction have a striking relationship to my thought process. If you recall, I had mentioned that a selective accountability would be farcical, and until or unless you don’t start it from the very beginning, all you are doing is some feel good action, which brings no lasting change. If you don’tbegin reconciling with the wrongs of the beginning, you remain in their shadow forever. I can vouch for this as I have experienced this on a personal level as well. The people with doom and gloom sell the ‘chooran’ (digestive aid) of the ‘intervention’ all night long. The callers, the writers, the ringmasters, all echo a ‘time-tested, time-failed’ sentiment of intervention. Where people say it without mincing any words that this constitution, this democracy, is of no use, and the ‘real hero’ should be allowed to‘play his role’. The other operative word is ‘take over’, as if the country is a truck, and the tired driver can be replaced by a new one in a jiffy. We must be one unique country where people have no patience whatsoever and confusion reigns supreme. Where even after 68 years of existence people have lingering doubts about who they are and what they really want. Getting back to the famous dialogue of the Bollywood hit, how and where do you start? The writer is a Pakistani-American mortgage banker. He blogs at http://dasghar.blogspot.com and can be reached at dasghar@aol.com. He tweets at http://twitter.com/dasghar