India, Dec. 8 -- Is Punjab hurtling towards the unsteady perch between governmental arrogance and public apathy? The question is obviously alarmist and a definitive answer to it may itself be arrogant and to some extent subversive. Therefore, a direct answer is best avoided - at least today. But it should still worry us that a question such as this should at all be up in the air. But up in the air it is, going by what one sees and reads in the media.

And an even bigger worry is that the question itself doesn't worry us: it is as if people are permanently in a brace position, ready to accept anything as 'the new normal." 'Normal' normalcy feels like a grandmother's lullaby.

And how sad that even normalcy has come to feel like an achievem...