On November 26, 2008 I hurriedly tuned in to the news channels on receiving frantic calls from family and friends about Mumbai being attacked by terrorists. As I surfed through the channels, grasping the news reports and the horrific images that beamed from the television set. I sat in utter disbelief and the fear that one had tried to overcome after the train blasts not too long ago, once again resurfaced. Mumbai was besieged by terrorists who were running amok killing people. The audacity and brazenness of the attack chilled me. This time things had gotten too far.
Mumbai’s resilience and spirit has been eulogized by the media, this view was endorsed by celebrities & politicians at large. It was a good PR exercise, if you must. I am a Mumbaikar and yes I do agree we have been there for each other in times of trouble. Call this our solidarity with individuals seeking peaceful coexistence.
Other than the forever spoken virtue of the ‘spirit of a Mumbaikar’, we are also known to be very accommodating. From underworld dons to emigrants from Bangladesh we all live in each others faces and have come to accept that our destinies are tied together by the 'opportunities' this city provides us with. Though mind you, for an average Mumbaikar this large heartedness is not without conditions. It's an unwritten rule that acceptance means live and let live. This ideology is the lifeline of Mumbai.
One has seen Mumbai bleeding profusely several times over, but it endured these attacks and fairly quickly tried to get back on it's wobbly feet only to collapse face down and harder than before. The wounds have run deeper; the pain is excruciating and this time around hume dua nahin dava ki zaroorat hain. We cannot delay the process of setting up stringent procedures. We cannot keep wishing away our problems or hope that divine intervention will rescue us in times of trouble. It is time we open our eyes to the problems that lie naked in front of us.
We desperately need to work together with the government to tackle this problem headon. Why this hasn’t happened till yet, there is no explanation.
The government and politicians must stop giving lip service and develop a concrete plan to insulate us from such attacks in the future. PM Manmohan Singh has said there will be national committee that will work on this. We do hope this time we see results.
As a society we choose to glorify the security personnel and army when it's convenient for us for example independence day, attack on Kargil & now recently when they were trying to combat the militancy. Does the military have to prove they would die for us by actually doing so and then posthumously we would celebrate them and do hero-worship. The media rides on the emotions of the aam janta creates a hype, celebrates their bravery for a few days for higher TRP's and then moves on to the next breaking news. After the humdrum sets in we forget about these heroes, until another attack comes knocking on our door. We never encourage our loved ones to be part of the army, because it's a dangerous job. The alarming decline in the number of applications to the Indian army is proof of this. There were talks recently of lowering the entrance criteria and by doing so we will be calling doom upon us. Especially given, terrorists are becoming smarter & are also gaining access to better ammunition and in large numbers.
Alert citizenship is the need of the hour. We need to constantly lookout for any suspicious behavior and unidentified objects left lying in public places for too long. These are things which we can and should be doing to protect ourselves to maintain sanity and civility in an already very chaotic world. We can choose to ignore this calling at our own peril.
