By Ken Jalleh Jr

Headline writers need not be curbed by political niceties, tact or diplomacy.

Her death cannot be just 'regrettable'; the murderers cannot be merely terrorists; the attackers only misguided fanatics.

The headline writer's first duty is accuracy - to quickly capture the core sentiment, to reflect the facts.

Because we hold that to be true, it would be so wrong to dilute our choice of a headline.

Singaporeans were outraged yesterday by the senseless murder of one of their own in faraway Mumbai.

Can we call the murderers cowards or something harsher?

What can capture the outrage of Ms Lo Hwei Yen's husband, her family, friends and fellow Singaporeans?

'Cowards' is too mild a word, argue news professionals. The murderers deserve to be called worse, in language you'd hear in the grimy alleys of Geylang.

Theirs was the instinctive rage of readers who spoke to us.

Take care with runaway emotions, caution others.

But no one wants to be part of a society that is indifferent to the news, one that reads little and cares less.

So there are times when newspapers must react in bold print, with urgency and bluntness, to every savage act we report.

Each terrorist attack is a reminder that we live in a dangerous world where no one can be fully shielded from evil, or, for that matter, financial greed.

Yet it has always been numbers (death and injuries) that are the first to be tossed up.

So we wind up mourning quantity rather than people; we may sympathise, but we are largely detached.

That was so of the Mumbai attacks, too - until yesterday.

HIT HOME

...NOW suddenly, there is a face to the massacre - a face made familiar and personal by nationality.

Suddenly, Mumbai is not that far away.

Now, it has hit home.

One among us is dead.

So we ask: Why this 28-year-old?

There can never be sense to what poet Robert Penn calls 'blank, anonymous murder', the motive-less, gratuitous atrocity.

'Why did this criminal murder?' Nietzsche's Red Judge asked.

'His soul wanted blood,' Nietzsche replied, 'he thirsted after the bliss of the knife.'

In our wrenching dismay, we react with rage before we settle to grieve.

Why anger? Because it is an assault on our middle-class cosiness and on our vague notions of immunity from the killing spree of mass murderers.

American columnist Charles Krauthammer once wrote: 'Those who have long held a mirror to the world and seen only themselves are apt to be shocked and panicked when the mirror is removed, as inevitably it must be.'

Yesterday in nearby Mumbai, the mirror was shattered.

This story was first published in The New Paper on Nov 30, 2008.