Thursday, July 14, 2011

When the terror memories hound you....


As a 12 year old kid one day I was playing near my building, waiting to go with my mother for a relative’s wedding shopping at Dadar market, when she suddenly cancelled the plan. Reason: a neighbour who came from that side informed about a possible bomb blast at the Plaza Theatre. Yes, I did hear some noise, but had thought it to be sound of a firecracker from a wedding at the nearby church. Little did I know that ‘firecracker sound’ in 1993 will become a regular pattern in my life as I grow up in this buzzing city called Mumbai.

Yesterday again the terror struck at my backyard as I watched images of the very area I live in been cordoned off as a bomb exploded on the roof of a bus stop. The live streaming was showing the damaged bus stop in front of the school that my brother studied in, the foot path I have walked on umpteen numbers of times, the familiar Hanuman Temple, the Jesus Cross and the hardware shop that was damaged. It was the same time my mother returns from work and walks the very same foot path to buy vegetables. As I spoke to my father we both were relieved that the school children were safe. Mother was sad to know that old woman from whom she occasionally bought fruits lost her life.

Following the blast updates from my university library in London, I felt as if there is a set time table to blow Mumbai every two years. In 2005 I was returning home from work when I saw unusual traffic jam when a fellow passenger informed about bomb blasts in Mumbai local trains. A year earlier I had covered the bomb blast in a bus at Ghatkopar as one of my early experiences as a newspaper reporter. The Zaveri Bazaar and Gateway blasts followed with a horrific terror attack in November 2008. The terror attack, like 2005 floods, will never be forgotten by anyone. In fact most of the Mumbai citizens by now have some dark memory of riots; bomb blast, terror attacks, floods, and god know what is going to follow.

The famed ‘Spirit of Mumbai’ manifested its online avatar minutes after the blasts. Facebook and Twitter were flooded with initiatives to help people – a car lift towards suburbs, offer to host those stranded, phone numbers and addresses of nearby doctors or hospitals been shared or re-tweeted. This rubbished the cynicism of some who question this habbit of sharing helpline numbers on the internet. This same spirit has made us Mumbaikars strong and resilient. But I am not sure how much stronger can we be or should be as ‘the city gets back to normal a day after’.

2 comments:

jigarpurohit said...

It is sad that the Mumbai spirit is being exploited... The spirit exists just because the people have no other option than to go to work the very next day and that too using the public transport system.

archana said...

Well said Tejal, yes terrorism is becoming a way of life in Bombay. Every time the city tries to get back in shape, a blast brings us back to face the grim realities that the city is facing. The government and opposition are so busy trying to save their asses, with all the corruption scams, and trying to save their chair nobody is concerned about the safety and security of people.
The spirit of Bombay - yes it unites us at times like this, cuts across divisive forces, but the bottom line is that people don't have a choice. Sometimes I wonder if this very spirit makes us insensitive - as families of victims struggle, we go back to work as if nothing happened? I don't buy the argument that this our way of telling terrorists that we aren't scared and they can't stop our lives. If it was we would do something to drive them away from our city and our country at large.
We have to learn from western cities who have been attacked by terrorists but they have learnt their lessons and have made sure that these incidents aren't repeated.