It pisses me off! It pisses me off so bad that I want to hit someone, someone from Mumbai preferably. What illusion are these people living under? Over 150 people were dead and several injured in the latest Mumbai blasts but what is the common refrain! - "Don't worry, Mumbai will be back on its feet tomorrow.", "Mumbai people are resilient! Mumbai rocks!". Oh my god! I can't believe my ears when I hear people say this. It's as if mumbaites and perhaps the whole of India is waiting eagerly for some tragedy to befall on this once great city just so that they can get up, give a standing ovation, pat Mumbai on its back and say "Well done Mumbai! Once more have you survived a terrible tragedy and stumbled back to your feet. Congratulations! keep it up!". Fuck you all ! 150 people are dead! can't you see that? tomorrow it might be you!
It's not the Mumbai spirit, it's apathy is what it is!. Force the government's hand to take more security measures, perhaps educate the people on how to watch out for the perpetrators of these heinous acts, be alert citizens... this is what people should be thinking. But nooo!! Mumbai people think "Oh this is so terrible! but not to worry, this won't happend to me and my family, so let this reside in my memory as a figment of somebody's imagination and let's go on living our life.. and Oh! by the way so that the rest of the world doesn't think we are such cowards that we cannot try for a safer environments for our loved ones, let's give this apathy a glorious term - ah! I know.. the Mumbai Spirit !!". It is nauseating.
When I was googling for some information on Mumbai Blasts, I came across this site which is dedicated to Mumbai Blasts. It's called the Mumbai Blasts Homepage.. wow! Do I hear Mumbai people thinking.. so cool.. we have a site dedicated to our oh so great city! Atleast there's somebody who agrees with me (and lo behold! it's a mumbaite!). He articulated what's boiling inside me well (better than me). I haven't taken his permission yet to quote him but couldn't resist. If he refuses I may take it off.
"No one i know has been physically affected by the blast. But my father was in *** hospital that day - some conference stuff. and he described the grusome scenes: He satyed there till midnight with te resident doctors....X-ray dept. He had never seen anything like
this....In the CT-MRI scans, he saw that someone's kidneys, liver all split....robs punctured the
lungs....he came home at around 2:30 AM....he wasnt able to eat for the whole day.
The next morning i switched on the TV and the fuckers were barking something about the spirit of Mumbai--- i say its already dead. Because we have resigned to the fact that life must go on and there is nothing we can do about it.
Spirit of Mumbai, i believe, is nothing but a concoction of sterile innocence and absurdity, and
false building of hopes....There are reasons why people go to work the next day - they need that salary cheque, or that wad of cash....Its not spirit stupid, its fear of 'no work, no pay.'
What will happen? Considering the 'spirit' of Mumbai, people will go to work the next day, and the days after, and finally within a fw weeks, the dead will become only statistics, and the government will set up committiees and will wait for the reports....In the meanwhile, we will hear the stupidest reasons for the blasts - gujrat riots, general dicontent, poverty among muslims.... and the cycle will repeat...it has repeated 6 times since 1993
Dumb spirit of Mumbai - what could be more convenient for Government? Normalcy resumes Look at what happened in US - 9/11 - in its aftermath, was there normalcy? or was there the talk of spirit of NY? no. instead there was the united blasting of intelligence failures and the impotency of govt...whether they should have attacked afghanistan is a different story...Here, the govt took a long time in trying to blame the terrorists... that soft our
govt is...cant even build a national rhetoric SIMI is banned in India. What the fuck was its chief doing givin press interviews 2 days after the blasts in Mumbai? Spirit of India? no. i think it is this that makes India a soft target...
Lemme know what you guys think
yeah yeah, i know you may call me cynical, but really, i too believed till now in the 'spirit' of mumbai -- but what has that spirit given? not even false hopes that this wont repeat. coming to think of it, the above cycle that i mentioned has repeated 6 times -- so did the 'spirit' give the message to teh terrorists that mumbai will not stop come what may? no. else they
would have chosen some other targets. Infact, it presents India as a soft target...it reduces the pressure on govt to step up the security measures..."
People just never stop amazing me.
And you know what? if and when a mumbaite read this, his/her first reaction won't be "He might have a point" but would rather be "F***in b****rd how dare he abuse Mumbai and its people. Doesn't he know how great we and the city yaar. Where does he live? Iska to patta abheech katna padega"..
God help us all..
Edit: Oh! I almost forgot.. to quote someone I know.. "Why don't they understand that the city will be back to normal tomorrow morning?" .. So what man? so what? It's not about Mumbai and it's "spirit".. It's about the scores of people dead.. nobody outside Mumbai cares about its spirit. We are just happy that we live in relatively safer environs. Thank you, but please keep this "spirit" to yourself.
It's not the Mumbai spirit, it's apathy is what it is!. Force the government's hand to take more security measures, perhaps educate the people on how to watch out for the perpetrators of these heinous acts, be alert citizens... this is what people should be thinking. But nooo!! Mumbai people think "Oh this is so terrible! but not to worry, this won't happend to me and my family, so let this reside in my memory as a figment of somebody's imagination and let's go on living our life.. and Oh! by the way so that the rest of the world doesn't think we are such cowards that we cannot try for a safer environments for our loved ones, let's give this apathy a glorious term - ah! I know.. the Mumbai Spirit !!". It is nauseating.
When I was googling for some information on Mumbai Blasts, I came across this site which is dedicated to Mumbai Blasts. It's called the Mumbai Blasts Homepage.. wow! Do I hear Mumbai people thinking.. so cool.. we have a site dedicated to our oh so great city! Atleast there's somebody who agrees with me (and lo behold! it's a mumbaite!). He articulated what's boiling inside me well (better than me). I haven't taken his permission yet to quote him but couldn't resist. If he refuses I may take it off.
"No one i know has been physically affected by the blast. But my father was in *** hospital that day - some conference stuff. and he described the grusome scenes: He satyed there till midnight with te resident doctors....X-ray dept. He had never seen anything like
this....In the CT-MRI scans, he saw that someone's kidneys, liver all split....robs punctured the
lungs....he came home at around 2:30 AM....he wasnt able to eat for the whole day.
The next morning i switched on the TV and the fuckers were barking something about the spirit of Mumbai--- i say its already dead. Because we have resigned to the fact that life must go on and there is nothing we can do about it.
Spirit of Mumbai, i believe, is nothing but a concoction of sterile innocence and absurdity, and
false building of hopes....There are reasons why people go to work the next day - they need that salary cheque, or that wad of cash....Its not spirit stupid, its fear of 'no work, no pay.'
What will happen? Considering the 'spirit' of Mumbai, people will go to work the next day, and the days after, and finally within a fw weeks, the dead will become only statistics, and the government will set up committiees and will wait for the reports....In the meanwhile, we will hear the stupidest reasons for the blasts - gujrat riots, general dicontent, poverty among muslims.... and the cycle will repeat...it has repeated 6 times since 1993
Dumb spirit of Mumbai - what could be more convenient for Government? Normalcy resumes Look at what happened in US - 9/11 - in its aftermath, was there normalcy? or was there the talk of spirit of NY? no. instead there was the united blasting of intelligence failures and the impotency of govt...whether they should have attacked afghanistan is a different story...Here, the govt took a long time in trying to blame the terrorists... that soft our
govt is...cant even build a national rhetoric SIMI is banned in India. What the fuck was its chief doing givin press interviews 2 days after the blasts in Mumbai? Spirit of India? no. i think it is this that makes India a soft target...
Lemme know what you guys think
yeah yeah, i know you may call me cynical, but really, i too believed till now in the 'spirit' of mumbai -- but what has that spirit given? not even false hopes that this wont repeat. coming to think of it, the above cycle that i mentioned has repeated 6 times -- so did the 'spirit' give the message to teh terrorists that mumbai will not stop come what may? no. else they
would have chosen some other targets. Infact, it presents India as a soft target...it reduces the pressure on govt to step up the security measures..."
People just never stop amazing me.
And you know what? if and when a mumbaite read this, his/her first reaction won't be "He might have a point" but would rather be "F***in b****rd how dare he abuse Mumbai and its people. Doesn't he know how great we and the city yaar. Where does he live? Iska to patta abheech katna padega"..
God help us all..
Edit: Oh! I almost forgot.. to quote someone I know.. "Why don't they understand that the city will be back to normal tomorrow morning?" .. So what man? so what? It's not about Mumbai and it's "spirit".. It's about the scores of people dead.. nobody outside Mumbai cares about its spirit. We are just happy that we live in relatively safer environs. Thank you, but please keep this "spirit" to yourself.
4 comments:
I agree with your point that the so called spirit is not in good taste. But do understand that this is just the media headlines and from people who just wanted to say something.
If you ask any mumbaites who is actually on way to work the next day, his answer would be 'Do I have a choice?'
Trust me, no one likes to showcase the excitement. This is the first time you can actually see people sad, frustrated and angry.
On other hand, people going to work and just showing it as other day, choice or no choice, is actually a slap in face of terrorists and others who mean bad to us. I am sure, you would do the same.
So your anger, all of it, may not actually be needed.
Here's the thing. A minor(few minutes) delay in local trains can cause a loss of millions in the overall Mumbai economy. Hence, people cannot *afford* to lose time with random nothings. It's a well oiled machinery, a huge one at that. The *only* way it can survive is by not ever stopping for anything. It's not an "emotion thing", in the most obvious sense of that word. It's more of a necessity.
Hence the Mumbai "spririt" that you keep hearing about is, atleast in my interpretation, not about being resilient to hate and wrongdoing. It's about Showing The Finger To Anything That's In the Way, Because There's Work To be Done, Money To Be Earnt.
There's not much that terrorism can do against such things. The goal of the terrorist is to imbibe a sense of fear in the hearts and minds of people, on the pretext of an agenda. The problem with Mumbai is that most of its citizens work 15 hour jobs in perilous conditions with insane commutes, all in the hope of earning the extra money that makes it worth living in Mumbai, as opposed to starving in the village. Also consider the extremely scary organized crime scene that everyone is aware of, but ignores -- there's nothing that can be done about it, this is something that's been there for decades. Hence, any time wasted on thinking about non-profitable concepts such as "fear" is outside of the Mumbai mindset, they really dont have the time for it. It's resilience all right, just a different kind of it.
Funny how Blogging brings like minded people together. Arnab just told me about the similarities between this post and yours. What say, eerie coincidence, or long-lost twins syndrome?
hi,
I came across your blog googling for our surname 'gutgutia'.
I agree with your opinion on "Mumbai Spirit". I am living in Mumbai and people go back to office next day bcoz they care more about their jobs than what is happening to world around them until unless they themselves are effected.
By the way we must be related. I am from Dhanbad. What about you?
You can visit my blog at neerajgutgutia.blogspot.com
keep in touch
Neeraj Gutgutia
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