Mumbai Blasts – a 40 km view perspective

Before any opinion be published, context be established.

1. I live in extreme north Bombay. Birds are still twittering here.

2. The terrorist attacks did not directly affect my physical existential environment.

What Life Has Been Like

1. Dismayed, anguished, worried, concerned, and glued to the television.

2. Hopeful that things will pass over into history ASAP.

3. Apathetic to a certain extent after a while because scabs don’t feel pain as much as skin. Our skins have been long burnt by past attacks on our psyche.

4. Wondering if I had been a citizen of a different country would things HAVE been different?

5. What happens in the future?

People I Know Personally Affected by the Attacks

1. P: Was in Colaba in Henry Tham’s and walked past Leopolds (Leo’s to us) at 9 15 and then kept under secure arrest at Henry Tham for protection from the terrorist mayhem. She plans to put in her papers on Monday and take a fresh view of life and do things she didn’t do that she wanted to do.

2. My cousin H’s friend: Shot in the chest and dead at Leo’s from a group of 9 of which 4 sustained only injuries. The 9th died.

3. S: Left Leo’s at 9 and reached home to find out what had happened 30 mins after she did.

4. A’s friend who stays in NCPA: Reported the sounds of constant bullet fire through the day. All were huddled up in one room daring not to peep out.

5. Bro’s office: All his colleagues, who work right behind Express Towers (Air India Building) were sealed in and only allowed to leave 10 at a time. They spent at least 36 hours holed up at work. I am sure they have stories to tell about bullets.

As for me, I was riding back home on a train from Raipur on the morning of the 27th when I got the following message from J:

“Mumbai is burning and like a warzone. Gun battle on at Taj. Proceed with extreme caution.”

Not really exciting at 4 am in the morning inside a train. GPRS told me about CST being closed to traffic and about firing at the station. We took the 4 40 locals home. We reached home safe without incident. The only high point of the morning was the cop jeep parked outside the Mulund station, all 4 of them asleep. I burst out laughing. Terrorists really cannot hope for more. So no one ever heard of shifts and chai in the IPS.

People Speak

Most people I know are feeling more or less the same amounts of anguish, pain, fear, appall, etc. Of late though there has been an upsurge of negative sentiment against politicians. Popular topics include:

1. The President’s speech

Apparently it was so lacklustre, everyone is convinced he was half asleep and super unperturbed. At a time of extreme crisis, he didn’t even display the agony of a person bitten by a mosquito. Also, where is the aggression, we say? The country needs assurance from its leadership. But everyone lacks vision. What are we doing as a junta? Nothing. What can be a solution? A SWAT team? A crisis management program, increased security, and enough of the sentiment about how Mumbai can take any beating and come back. To quote the media slogan flouted on every frame of live news feed, Enough is Enough.

2. One of my friends who has studied crisis communication management says that research proves the following:

Under stress the human mind has space for 27 words in the head and a very short attention span. A message sent out in such a situation would ideally consist of a. Compassion. b. Reassurance. c. Optimism

Our country sucks at the kind of inconsistent message every media channel sends out.

3. There is yet another person who thinks a lot of the things shown on the television are a scam. He went to the outside of the Oberoi and hung out with the press reporters and got back the inside story. He has ideas that if published on this blog  can lead to my lynching so I will hope he puts them up himself.

Finally, What I Really Want to Know

1. Statistics including

- A head count of guests at both hotels and residents at Nariman House.

- How these heads have been accounted for.

- The REAL death toll.

2. Assurance that the city police has upped security in other areas in the city to ensure that a phase 2 of attacks isn’t waiting in ambush for Monday morning. What’s the guarantee that the terrorists went all in to all the venues. If I were to plan a multi-venue event, I wouldn’t do it without an external coordination team.

Sadly, we went for a film last night, and drove around our suburb, which incidently, happens to be the last in Mumbai going north. Yet, I saw 3 sleepy constables who didn’t give 2 shits about anybody passing by. We drove past deliberately slow with our windows rolled up, no one stopped us. No barricades. In fact, I didn’t see any sense of abnormal out there. The only thing that was tangible by its volume was the pall that has descended on the public in general. The groups of boys gathered outside paan tapris were all non boisterous and talking in low voices. (Yes, I did roll down my windows then.)

Lastly

I don’t give a fuck what the politicians say. I stopped judging people by speeches long ago. Action counts. So far, my 28 year old brain has come to terms with the fact that we are riding a regressive train of extremely slow speed as far as action in this country is concerned. So I’ll just pray for the souls of the departed.

existential crisis

i have begun to believe i have extreme issues in my personality that cause maids to lie to me and not show up when they are expected to. i have already fought with our long-standing maid who holds my grandma at ransom for everything. in fact my grandmom makes tea for her and lifts baggage that stands in her way while sweeping lest the poor thing, approximately 30 years younger than my grandmom fall ill.

is it me? is it my habit of asking the floor to be swept completely and not halfway before using the mop? what have my neighbours got that i aint got. taali ek haath se nahi bajti. kuch tho dosh mera bhi hoga. maina kya galat kar diya. soon i will write a soap opera about this. kyunki bai bhi kabhi raani thi or something.

i hate these effin whores.

however, i am discovering the joys of physical labour and beginning to be less afraid of it.

PS: i also think bangalore maids are infinitely better than the ones in bombay. they don’t run your lives. just your domestic schedule. god of the maids, bless they faltering child. i cannot mop and sweep any longer.

on books

a good book – IMHO only- is a small package of printed paper with ideas that need you to grow many sizes bigger to grasp them. completely.

i am yet to grow some sizes to comprehend what good art is.

osho zen

People are afraid, very much afraid of those who know themselves. They have a certain power, a certain aura and a certain magnetism, a charisma that can take out alive, young people from the traditional imprisonment….

The enlightened man cannot be enslaved – that is the difficulty – and he cannot be imprisoned…. Every genius who has known something of the inner is bound to be a little difficult to be absorbed; he is going to be an upsetting force. The masses don’t want to be disturbed, even though they may be in misery; they are in misery, but they are accustomed to the misery. And anybody who is not miserable looks like a stranger.

The enlightened man is the greatest stranger in the world; he does not seem to belong to anybody. No organization confines him, no community, no society, no nation.

Osho The Zen Manifesto: Freedom from Oneself Chapter 9

And then further for the Rebel card:

The Rebel challenges us to be courageous enough to take responsibility for who we are and to live our truth.

watsinaname to watsinaname: Do you have it in you?

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In the pondering over shallowness and depth, I ask why is either to be judged as bad? What’s wrong with being shallow, and if shallow according to Lord Shiva (and I agree) is always relative, then what pray tell me is deep enough? Are there others who think that the ocean may not be deep enough on a given day and a pond may contain the colossal abyss? On a given day of course.

words from the unwise

solitaire is the salvation of the solitary. spider solitaire – ditto.

magnifying glass

when you have a really empty mind, useless information overwhelmingly cascades in. for example, the temperature of a diet coke tin goes up drastically – like think 35 deg – when kept on the dashboard of a car in the timespace required to start the car and wear the seatbelt in bombay.

then the striking similarity between the words party and potty. have you heard that song doing the rounds of the radio called “saade naal kar le party, kudi tu lagti hai naughty” i think the singer made a decent attempt at rhyme and pulled it off.

also, newsprint does not make any allowances for people who haven’t read newsprint for a day, leave alone for 2.5 years. journalists tend to treat articles outside the editorial section like episodes of a television soap opera. also newsprint today reads like a television soap opera. when was the last time you were ambushed with info about a sindhi girl married to a gujju boy who used to dine out EVERY sunday and doesn’t because of the recession and has to watch costs by eating dhokla or paanki every night. or consider the case of the journalist who alleged angelina jolie was being a drama queen when she only claimed that people didn’t take her humanitarian work seriously because she acted in films. i don’t see the drama. i don’t see the royalty in the claim either. but i do see the effect that daily soap operas is having on the minds of reporters. everything is a scam.

this evening while relaxing on my bean bag i heard the dialogs from 3 different soaps in the span of 1 hour. all this while playing copious amounts of solitaire. in EACH of the serials, someone was victimizing someone else. and the victim was this hapless dumbass victim who for her intelligence and earnestness would have walked into a well of alpha male alligators expecting an aarti. and then there were the protagonist types who defended or saved the day. every day. wearing a strapless or backless blouse and a saree and grandiose amounts of makeup. its near summer here btw.

i think a reality check on television and newspapers is very essential every 2.5 years just so i know i don’t need this info really. like really. i dont give a shit how many eggs aamir khan ate to look ghajinized or how many people in the hanging garden area are taking to yoga post the recession. i’d really much rather read matthew reilly.