A broken spirit OR reality hitting home?

The other day one of my classmates, who is based out of Singapore, wrote in to ask if all the Mumbaikars amongst us were ok. We all wrote to reassure him and more importantly ourselves that the latest attack on Mumbai had not really affected us. At least, I wrote in with this reassurance. Lot of people wrote after me saying that the spirit of the city had taken a beating, that we are no longer resilient (A word I had used!). At that point of time i did not agree, but subsequently every writer/anchor/journalist/scribe dedicated reams of paper to this very issue and they all reached the conclusion that this time the city was scarred AND scared. That this time, Mumbai was not going to pick up the pieces and return back to normalcy the next day. That this time the city was angry, hurt, shattered and scared...no longer resilient.

It gave me a lot of food for thought. I read articles by a lot of renowned scribes and known celebrities hammering the same point into my psyche. The power of their anger, the fervent appeal, the emotion and heart-wrenching despair in their words were so strong that at first I was inclined to blindly agree with them that yes, my city was no longer the same, that something had broken somewhere, that its innocence was forever lost. But I decided to think things over, to form my own conclusions based on my analysis of the situation. The conclusion was that while I understood things from their perspective, I now had a context to apply it to. And this gave me the power to disagree with them, and the ability to reason out my disagreement.

Mumbai has seen a lot over the last 15 odd years. The riots tore the city apart in December 1992, Mumbai burned in March 1993. The floods drowned it in July 2005 and the train blasts brought it to a temporary standstill in 2006. Hundreds of lives were lost, thousands injured, almost everyone had a story to tell about a loved one, a relative, a friend, an acquaintance whose life was shattered. These incidents of violence in a short span of 15 years are more than most any city would witness in a century. Mumbai could have easily let itself sink into a deep abyss of never-ending violence and revengeful sagas. Yet, every time someone - be it a politician or a gangster or a terrorist or even Mother Nature - tried to sink the city, the people shrugged it off and moved on. This never-die attitude of the city became famous for its "spirit". Songs were written on it, movies glorified it, novelists wrote books and earned millions for capturing it, and the journalists & celebs went gaga in their respect for this spirit. So what changed after 26/11 that this spirit has suddenly died? If you ask me, something has, but at the same time nothing has.

Besides the riots, no other incident I mentioned lasted more than 24 hours. In fact in the case of the serial blasts of '93 and '06, they were over in a manner of minutes. Also, the media was not there to capture every single moment of that living terror. 26/11 changed that. The siege of Mumbai lasted 3 whole days. The duration of the attack benumbed us and hurt us more, we felt as if we were no longer safe anywhere. News channels were reporting the incident live from the Taj/Oberoi/Nariman House without taking any breaks. The initial reaction of everyone was that this was just gangwar. The shock registered only after we knew that the city's most iconic station had been attacked, the disbelief was complete when we lost 3 of our top cops who had the ability to lead the counter-attack from the front, and the gravity of the situation hit us only when our beloved monuments were taken hostage. Through all of this the media was there, reporting every single minute of the day and night. We saw the Western Dome of the Taj on fire, we watched as Commandos were air-dropped on Nariman House, we sighed in relief when the hostages were evacuated from Oberoi. We were present every single moment, living it with everyone else in the city. This was no longer hearsay, this was happening in front of our eyes. And that is where the difference lay. This is how things changed, because every Mumbaikar got a taste of the tragedy.

At the same time, nothing had really changed. There were still people dying, families being torn apart, stories of valour being recounted and losses being mourned. It was quite the same as it was during '93, '05 or '06. Had I been a journalist I would still have applauded Mumbai's resilient spirit, because despite the siege not being over Mumbai was back at work on Friday. In fact, the suburbs were quite normal that day, with trains, buses, cars, rickshaws and taxis plying quite as usual, the only difference being that the South-Bombay bound traffic was minimal. The only reason all the celebrated journalists are going around claiming that the spirit has broken is that for the first time the reality has hit home for them, and it has hit hard. If you look deeper you will realize for yourselves that every attack before this has targeted the common man, the middle-class worker, the suburban commuter. '92 riots happened in the alleys of the slums, '05 floods were at their worst in the Western suburb of Santacruz, '06 hit the middle-class man who travels home by train every evening in peak hour traffic. Even though '93 blasts ripped the heart of Mumbai's business district apart, which is mainly concentrated in South Bombay, the people who died were the commoners who either worked there or had come to grab a quick bite at lunchtime. And though a five-star hotel like The Juhu Centaur was a target, it was again in the suburbs...too far for the townie to really understand the brevity. 26/11 changed that as the terrorists attacked the elite. For the first time in their lives the people who give their opinions to the media and the top writers and journalists, realized that they were no longer safe in their hallowed five star comforts. They faced reality with all its grimness. They came face-to-face with violence and fear. That is why they say that Mumbai has lost its spirit, that it is no longer resilient, that it is angry. The truth is the common man has known and felt this all along, he has only pulled himself up because these important people told him to. He has just lived in the hope of there being a safer Mumbai someday. A hope that I live for and hence, remain resilient for.