What protects us from being stabbed in our own homes?

India extracts a very high price from those who hurt its rich and middle class but this shield could weaken

- MANU JOSEPH

Always, it is about us. If film star Saif Ali Khan can be stabbed by an intruder in his home, that too in a Bandra flat, what does it say about our safety and those whom we love? Hours after the attack, there was a familiar sight outside the hospital where he was recovering. His family and friends emerged from cars. There was a glow about them and their clothes looked unusual as they walked through a parted crowd of onlookers who looked like the rest of India, poorer and more provincial, and with no glow. This India is also what protects India's elite from criminal dangers that lurk not far from where they live. Like Saif Ali Khan, many of us live in secure buildings, with cameras that probably work and guards in fancy-dress paramilitary costumes. They do protect us, but our primary protection, the thing that really guards us, is something else, something fundamentally Indian.