Remember the terrorists who bought tickets for the World Cup final? News items in most newspapers announced that the LeT, or a similar terrorist organisation, had bought 17 tickets for the match.

People who seem keen that I stay in one piece entreated me not to go to the final till I asked them the obvious questions: How did our security agencies know that terrorists had bought tickets? And how did they know the exact number of tickets bought?

Did the terrorists tell the cops, “Hey we got tickets for the final! Jealous?” Was the information given by an informer/whistle blower for whatever reason? Did the terrorists book online, requesting tickets in the special Terrorist Enclosure?

The other obvious question to ask is this: if the security forces had managed to get advance information about these extremist plans, why did they announce it to the media and thus alert the terrorists before they got in? Instead, all they had to do was to wait near the designated seat numbers and then arrest the men as they sauntered in and settled down in their chairs.

These thoughts came to me as I read about the secret exercise carried out in Mumbai on Wednesday by a special team to test the general alertness post 26/11. What did they find? Surprise, surprise, we are not alert. A dinghy landed at Badhwar Park, the same location as the real 26/11 terrorists’ boat. Another landed near Juhu beach. Neither was apprehended. Apparently there was a Coast Guard boat around but it had switched off its lights, so it couldn’t spot the dinghy in the pre-dawn darkness!

And then the shocker: three men walked into the JW Marriott hotel in Juhu with large bags. “We are hotel guests,” they told the security guard at the Exit gate as they walked in. The real joke: the bags had EXPLOSIVES printed on them in large red letters!

I always thought the security measures taken in the city are excessive and stupid. Or to put it another way, excessively stupid. Ladies in evening dress carrying tiny clutch bags which can’t hold a cell phone, have to put the bag through an X-ray machine. Each car dropping off passengers at a hotel has to be inspected inside and out. Yachts going from the Gateway of India have to have all kinds of clearances before they move into the waters.

Admitted that security is required to make sure that terrorists don’t find easy targets, but what we see now is Show Security. Any terrorist wanting to infiltrate into these Show Security establishments will not walk through the front door of metal detectors and X-ray machines, but will look for the unguarded door, the weak link in the defence system.

The most painful joke is the ubiquitous naka bandi which has become a bane of our already impossible traffic. The cops put barriers on busy roads to slow down cars. If there are young men in a cab, the taxi will be halted and searched. All two-wheelers are routinely stopped and licences inspected. Does that stop terrorism?

Let us assume that extremists are traveling on bikes with bombs in their pockets. What will they do? The moment they see a naka bandi (easy to spot because of the traffic jam it creates), they will do a u-turn and vanish. In short, the security system set up everywhere only has nuisance value for law abiding citizens while being only a temporary hindrance for those with evil intent.

To end, I will give an example from the World Cup final. You weren’t allowed to bring anything with you into the stadium. Fair enough because checking thousands of bags would have been impossible. Even food and water from outside were prohibited.

But once inside Wankhede stadium, say you bought something to eat or drink from the stadium stalls and walked to the staircases, what did security say? “You can’t take that to your seat.” Did they expect you to assault someone with a sandwich? Perhaps they did. Perhaps, they had done a recce and tasted the sandwiches.