For much of the Asian world, it’s the new year. But from across the continents comes new fear as mad men attack an institution that’s more than a century old – the Boston Marathon.

MID-April is usually a happy time for me. It’s new year time. And it’s not only for us Tamils. The Malayalees celebrate Vishu around the same time, the Sikhs have Vaisakhi and the Telegus celebrate Ugadhi. It’s not just Indians either.

It’s new year too for the Thais who celebrate Songhkran, along with Loatians and the Myanmars with their Thingyan.

It’s the time of the year when you can see the Thais outside the Wat Chayamangkalaram in Penang and the Wat Chetawan in Petaling Jaya shooting each other with water.

This year, I am told, they doused each other with 10,000 litres of water in Penang. Must have been a whale of a time.

But this time around, I felt little joy. Just despondency.

For one thing, there was this news out of Boston.

The Boston Marathon, held on Patriots’ Day – the third Monday of April every year – is one of the biggest sports events in the world having been run since 1897.

It sees more than 20,000 runners and 500,000 spectators each year. That someone should seek to attack this event is frightening.

The number of dead was three but it could have been more – much, much more.

There have been attacks at sports events before but one could at least make some sense of them.

Take the one at the 1972 Munich Olympics. The Munich attack was about Palestinians turning on the Israelis.

The attackers killed two athletes and took nine hostage.

The situation ended with all attackers and hostages dead. It was tragic.

In 2009, gunmen attacked the Sri Lankan cricket team bus with guns, rockets and grenades while it was on its way to the ground for a match against Pakistan in Lahore.

Six policemen and two civilians were killed and six players of the Sri Lankan team were seriously injured.

It was an al-Qaeda-linked group that wanted to disrupt things in Pakistan.

The players knew about the threat and India had actually pulled out of a match only to be replaced by the Sri Lankans.

The one in most recent memory would be the Africa Cup of Nations in Angola in 2010. That was when a deadly gun attack was mounted on Togo’s team bus with then Manchester City (and now Tottenham Hotspur) star Emmanuel Adebayor on board.

Adebayor was frightened out of international football for almost three years.

“We were just footballers going to play a match to represent our country, yet we were attacked by people who wanted to kill us all.

“It is a moment I will never forget and one I never want to experience again,” he said.

“They were armed to the teeth ... We were machine-gunned like dogs and had to remain hidden under our seats for around 20 minutes to avoid the bullets,” said another player.

Togo pulled out of the tournament but the attack, too, was not totally unexpected.

The bus had just entered the Angolan enclave of Cabinda, where separatists had waged a decades-long war.

But this attack in Boston was random. It was wanton. It was senselessly crazy. Or just pure evil.

The people behind the attack just wanted to kill. They did not have a target – or an aim. They did not care who died.

An eight-year-old boy, a woman from China and an American woman were killed. A nine-year-old and a 10-year-old are listed as critical. These people were of no threat to anyone. The attack was at a public party place.

Suddenly, there’s a frightening prospect. Every stadium, every sports arena is now a possible death trap. The Champions League, the NFL, the Rose Bowl, every golf course that Tiger Woods plays in – every one of them could be a killing field if these random killers are allowed to run free.

No one can feel safe in Wembley, Old Trafford, Wimbledon, Roland Garros. It’s a chilling thought.

But the sports, the athletes and the spectators have to carry on. We cannot be cowed by these mad men. They must be made irrelevant. It must be made known that such attacks will not bring them any results.

There was also another reason for my feelings of melancholy. PBS is dead. He died on Tamil New Year’s Day.

PBS who? you may ask. His name was P.B. Sreenivos. He was an Indian singer, a legend in that country. His voice made stars out of actors like Tamil Nadu’s Gemini Ganesan and Karnataka’s Rajkumar.

And, guess what? He had a hand in the Malaysian political tsunami of 2008.

It was said that PBS also stood for playback singer, which was what he was.

His death almost made no ripple in Malaysia although the radio channels played his songs all night and some Tamil papers reported it. More than 1,000 songs in 12 languages and he died almost an unknown.

A man of ballads, he produced some powerful performances, too.

The last song he ever sang for the movies spoke of never accepting failure as an option and of chasing your dream and dignity even when rights and property are lost.

The Hindraf movement adopted that song as its own. And they sang it as they marched on the streets.

The song sent a powerful message to the Indian masses in Malaysia.

We all know what happened. The man who sang it is now gone – and largely forgotten. Sad.

> So much for despondency. There could be a lift for the writer today. It is the wife’s birthday and there will be some celebration. Thank God I haven’t forgotten that. Feedback at raj@thestar.com.my.

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