Terrorised City

Every time I looked at the TV, I could see more violence. Reports kept pouring in about more bodies being brought out and the counter terrorist operation continuing. I read the papers everyday and watched the news as much as possible to try and understand exactly what the people labelled as terrorists wanted from us?

As the operation eventually came to an end and all the hotels and Nariman House were declared safe, I realised that we had won something but lost something else. No it's not the bodies of the Forces or Police or innocent civilians that I am talking about nor the lone captured terrorist or the others killed. The attacks were, as everyone agrees, minutely planned with extended recon operations conducted at all the locations. Some papers said that a couple of them had taken up jobs to get unlimited access to the hotels while others said that some had come in guests and stashed up on ammunition and supplies. Some said that there was immense local help and some said that our intelligence agencies have completely failed while still some more said that the police casualties could have been much less had they got proper equipment.

As the dust settles on the operation, questions have already started echoing in the halls of power. In spite of repeated attacks and the plethora of bomb blasts in this year alone, how can an operation of this scale have been successfully carried out with the RAW and IB not getting even a whiff? As heroes are celebrated and martyrs mourned, we carry on with life as usual. We might have stopped in front of the TV for a few seconds expressing anger for the wrong-doers and sorrow for those who sacrificed their lives but then moved on with our own lives. Those who are supposed to look after these things will do so, we assume. We have elected them for this purpose, haven't we? Although this is true it doesn't happen often enough. Once more, we blame them some more and move on with the exigencies of our own existence. What we do miss out here is the fact that the very thing we blame them for is practised by us almost every moment of our life.

This is one of my favourite phrases and I do not tire of saying it time and again, 'everyone is looking for work till they get a job.' An adaptation of the same is, 'everyone is looking for education till they get an admission.' I, of course, substituted the key words once I got to college. The first one made a lot of sense when I was working and the second one, I see it every day. I admit I am guilty of the same crime at times myself. Be as it may, does that justify the sin of accepting this as a justification for our own misdeeds? Can we be lax in our own tasks and yet blame others when they are in theirs? Unbelievably, we do this with absolute ease…! We do this with the least bit of hesitation, every day, every hour, and every minute! Sometimes I feel that hypocrisy is so much a part of human life that it doesn't even register anymore. We hardly, if ever, practise what we preach. As our survival instincts have guided us throughout evolution, hypocrisy too, has been embedded in our psyche to the point where we never notice our own but always notice others. We conveniently do the easiest thing; take the easiest route when we are in a fix but never fail to preach the difficult path to others. We expect others to walk the high moral ground whereas we try to slyly slip through the shortcut hoping no one notices.

Do I sound like one of those preachers myself? Maybe…maybe not. In some ways I have, more often than not, chosen the more difficult path in search of something that even I could not put my finger on. Countless days and months spent floating in a sea of existential questions and thoughts had driven me almost to a point of, as my friends referred to it, madness. Life, existence, purpose, meaning…and a lot more. Eventually work drowned it to an extent and time taught me a few lessons. There is a beautiful song by Pearl Jam called Drifting which sort of sums up this state of mind...

The suitcoats say there is money to be made...
They get so damn excited, but I guess it's their way.
My road, it may be lonely just because it's not paved...
It's good for drifting, drifting away.

I think this piece has become too much of a rambling by now. So like I said earlier, in the course of the attacks in Mumbai, we won something but lost something else. The biggest difference in these attacks is that the majority of people killed or trapped or taken as hostage were not the common man. The majority were rich, famous and wielded a lot of monetary as well as political clout. These attacks have shaken a, till now, mostly insulated segment of our population. The conscious search for British and American nationals pulled in the rest of the world as they watched in horror and wondered what was going to happen. The terrorists had planned on a couple of days of siege and their recon operations ensured that they could easily move around the building while our rescue teams had very little idea about the layouts till much later.

Although the siege is now over, we have lost a lot. Lives have been lost, property ravaged and the biggest calamity of all, faith has been shaken once again. Our faith in the political and intelligence mechanisms are shaken time and again but this once, will surely reach the very top. We are a country of fools. I say fools because in the not too distant future, we will surely forget about all this and once again become zombies who will believe the venom spewed by the politicians.

What we have won in these attacks is solidarity. As I watched the news today I saw that people from all walks of life were converging in South Mumbai. When asked by the reporters, most could not give a reason for being there. The anguish of those who had fallen, of those who had lost a loved one was being shared by these people. Once again the residents of the Maximum City wanted to show the world that they will not lose their ability to stand up again. Time and again, they have fallen and every time, they have stood back up and carried on. Today people standing there said that those who had saved Mumbai were not all from Maharashtra. The now famous Marathi Manoos, did not and could not have brought this incident to a close all by himself.

What we won today is the solidarity of Mumbaikars in denouncing the separatist political agenda. When the British left India, they left behind a legacy that has been very effectively adapted and utilised by our politicians, the strategy of divide-and-rule. I say we are fools because in spite of all the progress and growth, we so easily fall prey to this one technique that we become blind to reason and common sense. This is the fact that scares me because I know that soon the memories of this horror will fade away and we will once again go back to being the common man with hardly any common sense. We will once again go back to being the ladder using which the politicians of our country will travel lower and lower into the filth of separatism, and we will continue with our existence till then next bomb explodes.