Bombay is at war. It was inevitable. It was going to happen. Imagine living in a city, where everyday when you enter the bus, you unconsciously check all the seats with a fraction of a second glance, and sit assuringly in your chosen seat. With posters barking out at you, to do that, to look at people with suspicion when they seem uncomfortable or adjusting themselves with innocent looking baggage. It all just percolates to a fear brimming within, every day, every bus ride, a visit to the mall. Bombay is reeling under terror, we saw it in the Mumbai train blasts that occurred on 7th July. It is simply inexcusable. And especially when you learn that the terrorists come from the backyard of your very own lawn, the Gateway of India! How are we safe? How do we live? A city that wakes up the next day and heads to work, today was limping. This attack stopped her spirit?
We who take pride in our spirit of rising like a phoenix, now find ourselves tied down by the very spirit that once would fearlessly climb out of terror-laden airs and storm into the crowd, saying life goes on. Leopolds, The Taj, CST station, are not just places they are landmarks of our safety, with pride I have walked onto these roads, and eaten and had a fantastic time, and now, to imagine deaths, people lying about, with no fault of theirs, but being at the wrong place at the wrong time. To watch the newspaper scream pictures of the young terrorists who brazenly opened fire as if it were a video game. All this doesn't make sense.
My office declared a holiday today. A holiday? Mumbai never got a holiday like that, a holiday that would ensure our safety! Only yesterday, did I i have an encounter with an eve teaser, got 4 security guards to lay him off. Never felt so threatened. And I come home, and the NewsFlash reports that Mumbai has been gripped by terror!
Terror at 10 in the Night??
Who ever heard of that? They said that 9 terrorists have been arrested. Well, who do they belong to? Where did they come from? Is it really an international conspiracy where Israelis have been the target for the first time? The Army, The NSG Commandos, and 2 other personnel are still conducting operations as people wait in bated breath inside and outside the hotels, which claimed to be the most respectable and safest destination in Mumbai.
It was interesting to see the rich and the upper-crust clamor into BEST buses as it drove them to safety, away from the Taj, of how we contradict the entire belief of survival. It humbles us, it makes us believe. It reminded one of the movie Wednesday, would a civilian take charge? After the trauma we went through last night, frantically calling our relatives, after frantically checking if my colleagues were safe in their homes.And yesterday was Wednesday, wasn't it? Have movies and the chronology of events in the past, made this attack decide.We'll never know, will we?
What do we question? Our morality? Our behaviour? Our religious inclination? Or just humanity?It wasn't an easy night. For I heard police sirens going off in the road behind me, the quickest way for the vans to move through onto the main road from the airport. And closed my eyes, wondering when it would stop. It's morning. And almost noon. The terror is still prevalent.
If this isn't war, what is?
*Please pray for those innocent civilians and the officers who died defending the city*
