2008 Nov27, Wednesday 6.30AM
As usual my wife brought my daily quota of bed-time black coffee and woke me up from a deep slumber. Handling over the bed-coffee, she had some hot news to share with me. “Mumbai exploded again. Over 80 people died. One more terrorist attack”.
I was somewhat baffled and surprised. Not because of the “breaking news”, how did she get to know the news early in the morning! I began to sip the hot black coffee without expressing any emotions. This time she might have been surprised to notice my detached expression. It was quite unexpected and most unbecoming of me.
“Swapna (our daughter) called me just now. She got the shocking news from Neethu. Neethu got it from her would-be in America. The news flashed far and wide”.- Wife was explaining. Even then I kept mum. Handed over the empty cup to her and I was about to doze off again.
“Strange. Really strange”- She might have muttered to herself while moving to the kitchen…
I sat up in the bed, that also as usual, with an empty head, oblivious of all the happenings around me.
I didn’t feel like going through the day’s newspapers, the inherent curiosity in the mind of a journalist was surprisingly lacking that day.
I got out and climbed up the stairs, cool breeze blowing in the misty morning from the east. As is the usual practice, I began to take a stroll along the terrace watching the neighbourhood amid thick greenery, some women sweeping the premises with their brooms, some others washing utensils and filling the vessels with water drawn from deep wells, children preparing to proceed to their schools with much fuss and also listening to the devotional songs flowing from the nearby temple. Really a refreshing and rejuvenating feeling in the morning. Gradually, gradually my momentum got intense and even in the chilling morning with the cool wind blowing I slowly started to sweat, beads trickled down my face then the T-shirt gradually getting wet and sticking to my body. My morning stroll continued for about forty five minutes, and I decided to move down the stairs. Within seconds after finishing my walking, I reached my room switched on the fan and light. Removed my T-shirt, stepped out of my shoes, took the blue towel hanging carelessly on the chair and started wiping out the beads of sweat from my body and hair with much vigour…
Now is the time for paper reading. Three newspapers, one vernacular daily and the other two English dailies. I glanced through all the front pages of the newspapers but the news from Mumbai was found only in the vernacular daily, might be a late night night edition. The casualty numbers only twenty contrary to what I had heard from my wife. The incident might have occurred late in the night and I presumed, the figures might go up as the day progressed.
Going through the news item, I found, there was not much reported about the happenings in Mumbai, I slumped in the chair for about ten or fifteen minutes as if in a meditation, reminiscing the glorious days in the city about three decades back, no terrorist menace, no communal hatred and violence even the sons- of the soil policy and the disturbances connected with that was only in a dormant stage, the life in the city quite calm, serene, peaceful like a pleasure trip across a plain land of colourful flowers and greenery providing shades to the travellers. Sort of harmonious existence.
As the years passed by, the peace and harmony gave way to communal clashes, violence, under-world wars and murders, sons of the soil policy and related violent clashes, blood-bath along the streets and with the onslaught of terrorist attacks, the wheel was about to turn a full circle.
I recall here , in the eighties, what a peaceful atmosphere prevailed in that cosmopolitan city, even late in the night, young women moving along the streets with much self-confidence, a city which once respected the women a lot, people sleeping in the open fearing nothing else, Mumbai was incarnating itself into the financial nerve-centre getting famous the World over. People from across the country, north, south, north-east and north-west flowed to the city daily with dreams of finding jobs and starting businesses, all believing in peaceful co-existence. Their income grew day by day, businesses flourished, young artists from faraway lands carved a niche for themselves, thus becoming glamorous, God-like and cynosure of all eyes. It is worth mentioning the name of evergreen superstar from U.P.- Amitabh Bachan. Many other renowned faces too…
The glorious days are things of past. Just to cherish and fondle them in our moments of loneliness.
The initial numbness bid farewell. The pain was gradually becoming unbearable.
In the past, whenever the news of terrorist onslaughts broke-down, I felt shocked and a seething pain followed and the pain lingered for days. Such was my attachment to Mumbai. The good old days kept flashing across my mind. I used to switch on the Television, watched the horrible scenes with rapt attention and also with extreme sadness, remaining sleepless throughout the night listening to frequent reports emanating from various quarters watching the tense insecure weeping faces of the common men, the custodians of law and order moving around the city in vehicles fitted with wireless sets and the ambulances speeding along with flashing red beacons, blaring horns carrying both the dead and injured to hospitals and also the fire-brigade in desperate hurry. Mind-boggling carnage taking place in almost all parts of the city without an iota of pity and compassion.
Even after each such ghastly incident, within one or two days, Mumbaikars seemed to erase such gnawing pains from their minds and returned to the normal life. They laughed, they played, cracked jokes, enjoyed music and films and went on with their life with much enthusiasm and vigour.
Two or three months would go by without much fuss and with the cautious optimism that the nightmare would not visit them again forcing them to wake up in the thick of night.
As if from a bolt from the blue, one day all of a sudden, the citizens would be caught unawares by thunder-struck. Bombs planted at sensitive points sometimes even in local trains running at peak hours, would blew up with deafening sounds, killing and wounding innocent commuters, the good Samaritans always a blessing to Mumbai, would rush to the sights from nowhere, shouting and weeping, help in rescuing the wounded by carrying them to the ambulances, and would watch helplessly the mangled bodies scattered here and there and again the media including print and visual rush to the scenes in hurry and commence reporting and also display the ghastly sights to the people anxiously watching the whole things from faraway places across the nation and abroad.
The turmoil once more, the erased memories still emerge back and the whole citizens shudder in shock and pain.
Political leaders, rulers as well as opposition leaders rush to the sights with crocodile tears, console the victims declaring some financial help to the kith and kin of the dead offering condolences to the bereaved families, condemn the whole incidents in no uncertain terms and would assure everybody that the government wouldn’t sit idly and would not be cowed down by such pusillanimity and would bring all the culprits to justice and would flew away from the scene fulfilling their customary tasks.
Again within a few days the citizens wipe out all the bitter memories from their minds and contemplate to begin a new chapter.
Here I quote two lines from Kamaladas’s poem:
“Wipe out the paints, unmould the clay,
Let nothing remain of that yesterday”.
One by one, one by one as the incidents go on escalating, the citizens have become stoic. They expect anything, anytime.
I entered the drawing room, switched on the TV and chose NDTV.
Always vibrant and enthusiastic Barkha Dutt, the typical Mumbai man- Sreenivasan Jain alias Vasu, Priyanka Kakodkar, Shai Venkataraman, Miloni Bhatt, Radhika Bordia each one stationed at each place, reporting one by one intermittently.
It took a few minutes to come to grip with the situation.
This time the ‘modus operandi’ was quite different. The terrorists owing allegiance to Lashkar-E-Taiba, started their journey from Karachi in Pakistan with huge catche of ammunitions by a Vietnamese ship- MV Alfa, and on their onward journey boarded a speed-boat, beheaded the Captain and killed the crew, covering about 7516 miles along the coastline disembarked at a small jetty near Gateway of India. On entering our land, about thirty or forty of them spread in twos and threes to various landmarks of the city like Chatrapathi Shivaji Terminus (CST) alias VT, sprayed bullets indiscriminately and about 55 innocents killed in the process, other group entered the famous Indian landmark, Hotel Taj Intercontinental, killing all the men they met at the entrance while moving in different directions taking those in the hotel hostages, some entered Leopold Restaurant at Colaba, a favourite tourist spot frequented by tourists from abroad engaged in a killing spree, entered Cama hospital killing three, some occupied Nariman House and it was a massive carnage of Israelis and others occupied Trident-Oberoi hotel and killed the watchmen and held others in the hotel hostages. There also they killed as much hostages as possible.
I was somewhat baffled and surprised. Not because of the “breaking news”, how did she get to know the news early in the morning! I began to sip the hot black coffee without expressing any emotions. This time she might have been surprised to notice my detached expression. It was quite unexpected and most unbecoming of me.
“Swapna (our daughter) called me just now. She got the shocking news from Neethu. Neethu got it from her would-be in America. The news flashed far and wide”.- Wife was explaining. Even then I kept mum. Handed over the empty cup to her and I was about to doze off again.
“Strange. Really strange”- She might have muttered to herself while moving to the kitchen…
I sat up in the bed, that also as usual, with an empty head, oblivious of all the happenings around me.
I didn’t feel like going through the day’s newspapers, the inherent curiosity in the mind of a journalist was surprisingly lacking that day.
I got out and climbed up the stairs, cool breeze blowing in the misty morning from the east. As is the usual practice, I began to take a stroll along the terrace watching the neighbourhood amid thick greenery, some women sweeping the premises with their brooms, some others washing utensils and filling the vessels with water drawn from deep wells, children preparing to proceed to their schools with much fuss and also listening to the devotional songs flowing from the nearby temple. Really a refreshing and rejuvenating feeling in the morning. Gradually, gradually my momentum got intense and even in the chilling morning with the cool wind blowing I slowly started to sweat, beads trickled down my face then the T-shirt gradually getting wet and sticking to my body. My morning stroll continued for about forty five minutes, and I decided to move down the stairs. Within seconds after finishing my walking, I reached my room switched on the fan and light. Removed my T-shirt, stepped out of my shoes, took the blue towel hanging carelessly on the chair and started wiping out the beads of sweat from my body and hair with much vigour…
Now is the time for paper reading. Three newspapers, one vernacular daily and the other two English dailies. I glanced through all the front pages of the newspapers but the news from Mumbai was found only in the vernacular daily, might be a late night night edition. The casualty numbers only twenty contrary to what I had heard from my wife. The incident might have occurred late in the night and I presumed, the figures might go up as the day progressed.
Going through the news item, I found, there was not much reported about the happenings in Mumbai, I slumped in the chair for about ten or fifteen minutes as if in a meditation, reminiscing the glorious days in the city about three decades back, no terrorist menace, no communal hatred and violence even the sons- of the soil policy and the disturbances connected with that was only in a dormant stage, the life in the city quite calm, serene, peaceful like a pleasure trip across a plain land of colourful flowers and greenery providing shades to the travellers. Sort of harmonious existence.
As the years passed by, the peace and harmony gave way to communal clashes, violence, under-world wars and murders, sons of the soil policy and related violent clashes, blood-bath along the streets and with the onslaught of terrorist attacks, the wheel was about to turn a full circle.
I recall here , in the eighties, what a peaceful atmosphere prevailed in that cosmopolitan city, even late in the night, young women moving along the streets with much self-confidence, a city which once respected the women a lot, people sleeping in the open fearing nothing else, Mumbai was incarnating itself into the financial nerve-centre getting famous the World over. People from across the country, north, south, north-east and north-west flowed to the city daily with dreams of finding jobs and starting businesses, all believing in peaceful co-existence. Their income grew day by day, businesses flourished, young artists from faraway lands carved a niche for themselves, thus becoming glamorous, God-like and cynosure of all eyes. It is worth mentioning the name of evergreen superstar from U.P.- Amitabh Bachan. Many other renowned faces too…
The glorious days are things of past. Just to cherish and fondle them in our moments of loneliness.
The initial numbness bid farewell. The pain was gradually becoming unbearable.
In the past, whenever the news of terrorist onslaughts broke-down, I felt shocked and a seething pain followed and the pain lingered for days. Such was my attachment to Mumbai. The good old days kept flashing across my mind. I used to switch on the Television, watched the horrible scenes with rapt attention and also with extreme sadness, remaining sleepless throughout the night listening to frequent reports emanating from various quarters watching the tense insecure weeping faces of the common men, the custodians of law and order moving around the city in vehicles fitted with wireless sets and the ambulances speeding along with flashing red beacons, blaring horns carrying both the dead and injured to hospitals and also the fire-brigade in desperate hurry. Mind-boggling carnage taking place in almost all parts of the city without an iota of pity and compassion.
Even after each such ghastly incident, within one or two days, Mumbaikars seemed to erase such gnawing pains from their minds and returned to the normal life. They laughed, they played, cracked jokes, enjoyed music and films and went on with their life with much enthusiasm and vigour.
Two or three months would go by without much fuss and with the cautious optimism that the nightmare would not visit them again forcing them to wake up in the thick of night.
As if from a bolt from the blue, one day all of a sudden, the citizens would be caught unawares by thunder-struck. Bombs planted at sensitive points sometimes even in local trains running at peak hours, would blew up with deafening sounds, killing and wounding innocent commuters, the good Samaritans always a blessing to Mumbai, would rush to the sights from nowhere, shouting and weeping, help in rescuing the wounded by carrying them to the ambulances, and would watch helplessly the mangled bodies scattered here and there and again the media including print and visual rush to the scenes in hurry and commence reporting and also display the ghastly sights to the people anxiously watching the whole things from faraway places across the nation and abroad.
The turmoil once more, the erased memories still emerge back and the whole citizens shudder in shock and pain.
Political leaders, rulers as well as opposition leaders rush to the sights with crocodile tears, console the victims declaring some financial help to the kith and kin of the dead offering condolences to the bereaved families, condemn the whole incidents in no uncertain terms and would assure everybody that the government wouldn’t sit idly and would not be cowed down by such pusillanimity and would bring all the culprits to justice and would flew away from the scene fulfilling their customary tasks.
Again within a few days the citizens wipe out all the bitter memories from their minds and contemplate to begin a new chapter.
Here I quote two lines from Kamaladas’s poem:
“Wipe out the paints, unmould the clay,
Let nothing remain of that yesterday”.
One by one, one by one as the incidents go on escalating, the citizens have become stoic. They expect anything, anytime.
I entered the drawing room, switched on the TV and chose NDTV.
Always vibrant and enthusiastic Barkha Dutt, the typical Mumbai man- Sreenivasan Jain alias Vasu, Priyanka Kakodkar, Shai Venkataraman, Miloni Bhatt, Radhika Bordia each one stationed at each place, reporting one by one intermittently.
It took a few minutes to come to grip with the situation.
This time the ‘modus operandi’ was quite different. The terrorists owing allegiance to Lashkar-E-Taiba, started their journey from Karachi in Pakistan with huge catche of ammunitions by a Vietnamese ship- MV Alfa, and on their onward journey boarded a speed-boat, beheaded the Captain and killed the crew, covering about 7516 miles along the coastline disembarked at a small jetty near Gateway of India. On entering our land, about thirty or forty of them spread in twos and threes to various landmarks of the city like Chatrapathi Shivaji Terminus (CST) alias VT, sprayed bullets indiscriminately and about 55 innocents killed in the process, other group entered the famous Indian landmark, Hotel Taj Intercontinental, killing all the men they met at the entrance while moving in different directions taking those in the hotel hostages, some entered Leopold Restaurant at Colaba, a favourite tourist spot frequented by tourists from abroad engaged in a killing spree, entered Cama hospital killing three, some occupied Nariman House and it was a massive carnage of Israelis and others occupied Trident-Oberoi hotel and killed the watchmen and held others in the hotel hostages. There also they killed as much hostages as possible.
Maharashtra Anti-Terrorist Squad’s (ATS) head, Hemant Karkare , Vijay Salaskar, Ashok Kamte, Sandeep Unnikrishnan who led from the front, braved the bullets and succumbed to their injuries, the fearless Jawans who fought for their motherland will be remembered in the years to come and the whole Indian citizens will hold them to their our chest with immense pride.
Soon after the NSG (National Security Guards) flew to the city and with Para-military troops, lost no time in plunging to their duties. Deafening explosions could be heard and it was a horrendous sight to watch the top-floor of the hotel burning with smoke billowing out and same was the case with Trident-Oberoi hotel burning along with deafening explosions of gun shots . It was a prolonged battle between the NSG (National Security Guards) and the cold-blooded ultras lasting about sixty hours- two days, three nights and one morning- and the curtain came down atleast for the moment, with the death toll almost rose to 200.
The citizens were quite angry, shattered, disillusioned and were at a loss to find a way out of the impasse and their patience has reached the nadir, and they find it very difficult to erase the bitter memories and pains this time. All are up against the rulers and are fed up with their empty promises to wipe out the last remnants of terror from our land. If things are going on like this, in future also the response of the Indian citizens is beyond our imagination. Such is their anger and disillusionment.
After 9/11, America have not encountered such mind-chilling instance atleast once. And after 7/7, UK have not yet experienced a militant attack till now. Even after more than fifteen militant attacks across our nation in a span of two years, the rulers have not been able to continue to tackle the menace of terrorism even now, the mind-boggling incidents continue to happen with no end in sight. Why? Intelligence failure to a certain extent or the Governments- past and present? As Shyam Benegal, the renowned film-director put it yesterday- All because of the Government- in plural…
He seemed to be shattered and disillusioned man. In particular his heart went out to the murdered innocents among the faceless crowd at Chatrapathi Shivaji Terminus (CST).
Anyhow let us wait for a new dawn…Eventhough I am a Keralite, I am also proud to be a Mumbaikar…
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