Mumbai Terror and Beyond

Riots, bomb blasts, train bombings...It seemed Mumbai had seen it all..Future terrorist attacks, which were always on the card, would follow the pattern.....This is what I thought...Until Nov 26 happened...Terrorists evidently have a far greater imagination....Which is not good news...

Like people all over the world , I was glued to the internet, in my case NDTV live with a somewhat hyper-active Barkha Dutt and CNN for the first 20 hours, of the live tv drama that unfolded......Personally, I think it is futile to express condolences or empathize with people who were victims of the attack or who survived the attack..So I wont even try..But like Indians all over, I share that sense of fear, anger and frustration at the events that have unfolded....

Thankfully, its all over today.....But this attack was different......Over the years I have developed a sense of apathy to the terror attacks all over India....What remained was just a sense of gratitude that my family and friends were unaffected.....This event has shattered that apathy.....which is probably a good thing...

But now that the event has passed..Where do we go from here??..How safe is any one in Mumbai or in Bangalore or in Chennai or any other city/town in India? New York had its 9/11 and even though the United States would be the top target in every Islamic fundamentalists radar, there has been no further attacks on NY or any other major US city...Not even after a war in Iraq that increasingly lost support every passing hour and day... So , what are the chances that this is Mumbai's 9/11;not in the audacity or scale of the destruction caused but for the fact that this would galvanize the creation of a security infrastructure that would prevent attacks for the next 7 years...I don't know if I am a pessimist, but I think the chances are slim...

So come Monday morning, life in Mumbai will resume again....Global terror ? Urban warfare? I have no clue....But for all of those people who will walk out from their homes on Monday morning, and I would have been one of them if I was in India, these terms wont matter.....The streets will be as crowded as any other day....The trains will run to their full capacity...And the Mumbai traffic will revel in its glory...The only concession that might be made will probably be in the form of a small prayer before stepping out ..As history has shown us, this is what has happened in every city in the world post the most horrendous of terror strikes...Mumbai is no different....The people here are no different..The major difference, and the most critical one, would be in how the government and the political system react to this attack and the preventive steps taken...We can only hope for the best on that front..;)

Heartingly enough, this time round there is some tiredness in trumpeting the "spirit of Mumbai" and the "resilience of the Mumbaikar"....Which I think is encouraging, because that eliminates any diversion from the not so comfortable questions that an incident of such a magnitude and daring should raise...The men and women who will walk down the streets of Mumbai will show the same spirit that people do across India after their towns and cities have been hit by terrorists...Its a spirit driven by helplessness..A spirit driven by acceptance that things happen......And most importantly a spirit driven by business, commerce and livelihood....We are no different in sharing that spirit with people all over the world...Where we may be different, is that we probably have that sinking feeling that not much is going to change anyways....As I heard RR Patil say live on tv, such small incidents keep happening in big cities...

So looking beyond the carnage, there is only Monday morning to look forward to. And hope against hope that we have some answers from the authorities for all those doubts that the media has sown - 9 hours for NSG operation to galvanize, equipment that is non-elite as much as the NSG is elite, terror warnings ignored,coast guard and Navy cooperation ,the creation of a federal agency , Dawood and so on and so forth......

I saw this survivor on tv who escaped from the Taj the previous night and was on his job the next day, capturing a marriage on a camcorder. Thats what his job was. I can totally empathize with him. Beyond the terror, there is a life to get on with. And unless we are one of the unfortunate ones who are victims of such horrifying situations in the near present and in the future, this is how it will be. With grief in our hearts for the victims and with a prayer for our own safety, we will simply get on with the next mundane task. That is all there is to beyond terror. And I doubt if it will be any different for Mumbai, even though the preceding situation might have transcended all imagination.

Cheers!!

;)

The feudal days are over

so its finally come to pass....The Maharajah had to take his final bow....and for all his fans, it could not have unfolded better.....I am not a die hard fan of indian cricket...just about an average fan...i cannot tell the difference between one Tendulkar cover drive from another...or remember to a painful detail, all those overs bowled in a Test match as some people I know can..but I guess, like most Indians, I have been following cricket to whatever extent is possible....and the memories I retain on top of my mind in all these years of watching cricket is Kapil Dev falling to Eddie Hemmings caught on the boundary by Gatting and Saurav Ganguly waving his shirt at the Lords balcony.....one image dashed hopes, the other provided visions of something new...and as I have read all the farewell scripts written for Dada, I think the common thread is around the Lords incident ...which I think is truly interesting...

for all his statistics, when we think about Ganguly, we think about the shirt waving, the Steve Waugh toss, the Greg Chappell saga, the falling out of favor and the comeback......the off side elegeance and the huge sixes are more of an afterthought...I think few cricketers would had so many off field incidents that kept so many people interested.....but I think the reason I am a Ganguly fan is because he split opinions about himself in such extreme ways....you are either a Ganguly fan or you are not..you can take the middle road with Tendulkar , Dravid, Kumble, Laxman or Sehwag....but not with Ganguly.....

Here was a man...you liked him or hated him...but you could never ignore him.... and thats why this is the end of something special....cricket is at the end of the day entertainment...and with Ganguly, there was no shortage of it...

There will be Gods and Champions...but it will take some time to find another maharajah...someone who can blend elegance and disdain in one smooth package...somone who can lead India like its a hereditary privilege ...unfortunately, theres no yuvraj in the waiting....The feudal days are over

cheers!!