In Jerusalem, probably the most terror-ridden and paranoiac of world cities, school kids can afford to forget their tiffins but seldom their gas-masks. In times of alert, which are never rare, boys kick them for sport on their way to class. But go to class they must.

Thursday nights, the bars astride Jaffa Road in downtown Jerusalem are packed to pouring; one of the most popular among them is a quasi-Indian-ethnic establishment called Acha Bar, or good bar.

On weekends under siege, such as those during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Acha Bar was fuller than usual, every extra inch taken up by gas-masks the merrymakers routinely carted. Gas-masks aren’t much use against flying rockets or flaming suicide bombers; what they are, really, are instruments of defying paranoia, or, seen another way, normality handikits: have gas-mask, will carry on with life.

In a world trapped on terror’s tenterhook, we are probably fortunate our paranoia is only periodic, not requiring of daily and tactile defences like gas-masks. But as it leapfrogs from city to city, unleashing tragedy where it has been and rippling apprehension where it hasn’t yet, terror may be demanding new rules of engagement. Of the State, of course. But also of us, the citizenry.

What could such rules be, though? All things considered, they fit into an unformed little sentence: Take care, and carry on.

The morning after Mumbai’s lofty landmarks were blown in 1993, the city walked to work where the suburban wasn’t available. Across the many “nakas” (security barriers) and bomb craters; everyone ventured out as usual, down to the last Sandra from Bandra. And by night, the white-horse buggy rides were clip-clopping round Marine Drive. I’d imagined arriving and cruising from Santa Cruz to Nariman Point through de-peopled, curfew-ridden streets; I was grid-locked in morning rush-hour.

The day after Delhi’s busiest shopping districts had been ripped by multiple explosions in the winter of 2005, the blood and debris had been washed and business-as-usual restored; it was Diwali season, dhanteras day, in fact, and merriment had to proceed.

Cuddalore and Uri had been visited by other tormentors that year — by tsunami and by earthquake — but those datelines too illustrated much the same to us: they were quickly up on their feet, knocking life back into whatever shape they could afford giving it — a tin shanty, a windblown city of tents. Or, like in the case of Bangalore, the resumed bustle of a city that had just been bombed.

Where does this come from? And what is it? Endurance? Spirit? Insensitivity? Cynicism? Fatalism? Stoicism? An overabundance of human supplies that cheapens demand and cheapens life itself?

There are just too many people to protect. That’s true, and that’s a problem with tackling terror the world over, not just in India. Of all the scourges that afflict us, this is one sans vaccine. There is no known inoculation against terror other than vigilance, and even that has all manner of limitations.

But in India’s case, it is equally true that too few get too much protection against terror. Often, there are 50 men, and as many sophisticated weapons and vehicles, deployed to protect one VIP. We’ve given ourselves status categories by statute --- Z-category, Z-plus category. We’ve given ourselves special safety zones --- specially policed, barricaded, insulated from all danger.

Often, the terrorist will get the better of all of those arrangements. There are too many tragic examples to recount. But the truth is that there is no democracy about the way we order our security in India. And the terrorist is wise to those chinks.

Very often, he/she will draw the most victims, the widest mileage by striking at our unguarded underbelly, the districts where the lesser of our society live and work. Poor lives come cheap and easy.

Does the construct of average lives in these parts have something to do with the way in which crisis is almost treated as quotidian? Where each day is Judgement Day and it is reasonably certain the Messiah isn’t coming? There isn’t an option but to wage on with whatever is available.

The fisherman of the southern coast hadn’t the luxury of tears or of his fears of the sea and tsunami for too long; he had to wade into his object of terror to extract the means of the day. The tiller of Kamalkote in northern Kashmir couldn’t afford extended mourning for half a dozen in the family gone under the heap of his house; he had to get up and salvage what was left of it. How many days could the juice-vendor of Delhi’s Sarojini Nagar or Bangalore’s Brigade Road last out without putting out his juice, bomb under his cart or no bomb?

The fact is few of our crises are media-event crises. They are unfolding all the time, all over the place. And they kill many more than bombs and terror do. Crisis in our parts is quotidian. Every day is hard. Every day is a test. Hunger kills. Disease kills. Malnutrition kills. Exploitation kills. Fear kills.

A lot of these kill your spirit before they eventually kill your body. When death does come, it does not really matter; the man was dead a long time ago. You can be a little boy selling tea on local trains. You can be in a moment of courage. You can refuse the thug-cop his hafta. You can be dead the next moment, dumped from the speeding locomotive, splayed on the track, dead. And yet, life must go on. Who’s to know what’s coming next?

More likely another Judgement Day, another crisis masquerading as what’s only quotidian. The Messiah isn’t coming and there are no gas-masks to wear.