Iris

Mumbai attacks have left us hurt and shocked. The common (hu)man in the aftermaths of the attack is vulnerable more than ever and feels helpless to be a witness — to the diplomatic upswings, retaliation, counter-retaliation, that is going on at national and international levels. For the first time,  gaps in the system are gaping open. We realize that we are mere pawns in the entire chessboard of international diplomacy. Sometimes Kasab is accepted as a Pakistani national, sometimes he is said to be a Hindu fundamentalist, some say it is Pakistan and some say it is India, sometimes we claim for restraint and sometimes we call for a war. Some politicians question “Who led Karkare into the wrong gulley?” Many claim an anti terror bill will solve the problem, whereas some Human Rights Organizations say such bills will complicate matters even further. And the common human being?, what do we do? Lost in the mindless games of the politicians and diplomats, terrorists and nationalists, we try to grapple with the “truths” served to us as  four-six-eight-ten- course meals.

Anyway, I was away from the blogosphere for the last two weeks, to take a break from the horror. I wanted to observe silently the process of rebuilding the debris. It was good to see citizens awake and angry, but in control of their grief. People were demonstrating against terror, signature campaigning and grieving collectively. After all this there is one thing that comes to light, there is a sense of awareness in the common human being. It took us 72 hours post 26/11 to start making sense and assessing this monstrous terror strike, its causes and its residue. Life has not been the same post 26/11.

Each one is trying to live differently and think differently. The good part of the entire episode is that a majority of us have a knack to build things constructively even though a few have a fierce sense to be destructive.

To make sense of the huge inflow of responses and information post 26/11, I have tried to polarize some of the events into two: the best and the worst steps taken after the attacks (I could not stop myself from making value judgements). Some of the positive snippets of the “post-terror” outcome (if we can at all call this phase as “post”) happened when:

1. The media took self-restrictive measures to make it a point not to broadcast all sensitive information when there is a “national tragedy” at hand after severe criticism.

2. The next significant step was the denial to bury the nine terror-perpetrators in the Muslim burial grounds at Mumbai and any other place in India. A very poignant yet powerful step to prove that terror has no religion and killing innocents can never be acceptable to God, whoever and wherever He is.

3. The other development was the statement of Hon.Chief Justice of India who said that Kasab “deserves” a proper defence and court hearing for himself. It proves the restraint of a democracy which still abides by the Court of Law and ensures protection and fair treatment even to the worst offenders.

4. A significant turn-on was the assembly elections. At the time of crisis it proved the power of the average voter. Some of the record turn-out at state constituencies like Jammu and Kashmir (66%), Madhya Pradesh, Delhi, Chhatisgarh, etc proved that the “Indian” electorate is now more aware than ever. Neither huge political rallies nor anti-terror speeches, nor inflammatory remarks please the average voter; it is your work that works in the ballot-box.

5. If one observes the way the kin of the martyrs have behaved, one can start re-believing that heroic is something which can only be felt. Sandeep Unikrishan’s parents visited Kharagvasla (Sandeep’s almamater) to remember their son’s sacrifice for the nation. There have been no public statements from Karkare’s family except a small acknowledgement in a national daily where in their tribute they have thanked the nation to be a part of their grief. There has been no outcry from the families of the constables, commandos and Jawans who died fighting the terrorists and saving us. They are common beings like you and me, yet they are heroic.

But some of the worst outcomes of 26/11 have been at the political and diplomatic circles.

1. Pakistan has been asking for “proofs” about the citizenship of the terror-perpetrators even after repeated international (including Pakistan media) and Indian proof-giving; even after Kasab’s confessions and his father’s acceptances, the game continues — denial-acceptance-denial.

2. A.R.Antulay’s statement regarding Karkare’s death blowing it into a full-fledged political game is not only unfortunate but criminal. If you want you can have an independent enquiry into the case in whatever means; there can be a high-level inquiry into all the three deaths. But making it a political cross-fire and public propaganda when the country is in a sensitive position is extremely unfortunate. Our political machinery is unfortunately outdated and self-centered to maturely handle sensitive issues. A statement of this magnitude from the “Minorities” Affairs Minister is demoralizing and destructive in its own sense. Statements, post clarifications, statements …. just complicates and confuses. We are already divided in multiple ways, and we have already have had one partition based on religious differences. The result can be seen by the whole world. Please, do not divide people any further.

There is no point in harping about the fear and other political aspects of the entire episode. There are people who create “political mischief” but it depends on the common human beings to understand and analyze the motive behind these “political mischiefs”. Whatever and wherever it is, Karkare died while fighting from the front – he led the battle and lost his life, unlike these people who sit in air-conditioned rooms cocooned by Z++security and give colour to the deaths of people who were fighting to save us. Karkare ensured the security of his force and the common citizen and in the process laid down his life. He “chose” if you can say to be one of the “First victims” of the attacks on Mumbai and we salute his spirit.

As citizens of the world, we had all collectively tried to make sense of 9/11 though the locale was thousands of miles away from India. The pain reverberated through out the world not just in US. Then too the world picked up threads and tried to make sense of the huge debris. 26/11 cannot be directly compared to 9/11, but loss in any form is a loss. Indians are now trying to build things back from the debris and are trying to make sense of the “new world” from the clouds of fire and gunsmoke.

We say “Enough is Enough” …

Indian Republic seems to be united at these crucial moments after 26/11. I have never seen a more severe public outcry against terror and terrorists (some Indians choose to call them terrorists and not militants deliberately). My 7 year old cousin called me up from home and said, “listen, I had plans to go to meet you in Mumbai during these winter vacations, but am not coming any more. You see there is so much of Diwali going at every moment in Mumbai, it’s tough. Can’t you see Steel George Jack, Black beauty, General, Hunter wala all roaming around Mumbai.” I asked him who these people are? these are the names of the terrorists who attacked us, he said nonchalantly. I was shocked and surprised, asked him: “but these are not the names of the terrorists. What makes you think that they are terrorists’ names?” He replied: “boku (stupid)! They are terrorists you don’t know them…everyday I see them in cartoon network. The people who had grenades, bombs and guns in Mumbai are also the same Steel George [et al] and they are still alive. I will not come to Mumbai until Das, Eon kid, Master Liv, Shadow, Captain Magna have not finished them off completely. You know even aeroplane is unsafe now.” Understandably, the second set of names are given to our NSGs and MARCOS. Clearly, the little child has followed the entire operations televised. It has left a very strong impression on his mind and he keeps bugging his parents to call me up and get the latest update. His imagination makes him believe that since all this is happening in Mumbai and I am in Mumbai, I must be the Live witness of the tragedy. When the operations were actually on in full swing, one day he called me up and asked: “do you think you are safe in your hostel?” I didn’t know what to reply and just said: “ye probably, since we have watchman uncle waiting with a large gun at the ground floor.” He was not at all convinced and said: “what watchman uncle will do? they have grenades and they can beat watchman uncle into pulp (chutney is the word he used) and can come into your rooms with AK-47. What will you do then?”

Such is a little child’s memory and the strong impression that the terror attacks have left on his mind. He will remember it for a very long time, but adults suffer from a kind of mass amnesia. Or perhaps our sensitivity level is less than that of a child. We love to forget. The comments that have come to the last posts relate to this theme of “forgetting and forgiving” and the comments aptly point that should we forgive or forget? We say we might forgive but not forget, but actually the fact is that we forget so we forgive. Kargil had left us wounded, angry and painful — but we have forgiven and forgotten. Perhaps, because the war was not between common everyday life leading people. We have started and restarted “samjhauta” every time, and what is the return? 26/11? Now the war has come to our streets and our homes — and when our streets are burning we can neither forgive nor forget. 26/11 has humiliated and insulted us — “hum yeh zalil maut nahin marenge” — we refuse to die this humiliating, soul-killing death, do what you may.

Interestingly, we tend to forget previous attacks so easily in the wake of any new attack. New Delhi, Guwahati, Jaipur, Hyderabad, Bangalaore, it has been happening and re-happening, yet we forget. There was nothing new in Mumbai except the tactics of the terrorists. We forget M.C.Sharma who too was a martyr — he was the first one to die in the aftermath of the terror attacks in Delhi. Therefore, he is so easily forgettable and in the words of some of our own people “forgivable” too (remember he was allgedly violating human rights?).

Yesterday, there was a news in CNN-IBN that a young Jawan was lynched and killed by an angry mob near Bhubaneswar, Odisha, in a train bound from Howrah to Chennai (Koramandal Express), just because he did not allow certain people traveling without tickets into the reserved compartment of the train. People pelted stones at him and beat him to death. This is the respect we show — this is the discipline we follow and rigour that we have as common human beings. What use is the candle light vigil and tribute to the armed forces if we have this kind of an attitude, where we lynch some and make some others our martyrs? Everything is chalta hai and not-my-business for the common Indian. If we say that politicians are corrupt, media is cheap, then who is to be blamed for? We elect the politicians, and we choose the leaders and then forget everything — leave things at their hands, and wait for some supernatural forces to protect us. If you ask Who is accountable? one answer to it is, that we are ourselves first accountable — because a democracy doesn’t need only voters it needs active participants in the governance system. We forget the moment we vote (many of us don’t even vote in the pretext of whom does one vote?) . Then, we wait for terror groups to come and bomb us or take us as hostages, and shriek who will protect us? No one truly, unless we ourselves do.

We have been shouting slogans against the political system — but we are responsible to make that system corrupt. If you see some of the videos of Pak News channels on You Tube, gosh! they are capable of making a falsehood into a complete, palpable, ready-to-dish reality. Hats off to them for propagandist writing — some pathetic hypotheses given colours of truths. Whereas, we are even incapable of handling the reality that are in front of our eyes and projecting it rightly to the world. What to do? We live in the practical possibility of a postmodern world where every individual formulates their own theories to avoid responsibility.

26/11 has made us forget many things. We forget the fire that was shimmering in Mumbai with MNS activists (lumpen elements) fencing off Mumbai from the rest of India. Some of the famous personalities had come out at the time with inflammatory statements about non-Marathis to be not allowed in this state. Rampaging, killing, beating people on the streets — how are you different from the terrorists? These activists (as they are called) also are among the common human beings, waiting for the next chance when 26/11 is forgotten and election season is close. So how does the junta distinguish them from terrorists? If anyone who harms national property, human lives are terrorists, then these are the first people who should be caught. They have killed and they have destroyed national property (railways).

One 9/11 was enough to keep an entire United States on its toes. There have been no attacks since then, even if it meant curbing individual rights. But, I wonder how many 26/11s more are needed to wake us from our slumber? Amnesia is good to a certain degree, but if we don’t learn lessons from these tragedies — then they will become more and more frequent.

Mee Mumbai Boltoae — Doesn’t necessarily mean that I have to be a Mumbaikar, who cries. At present, the entire India and the world is mourning for Mumbai. I wonder how long is so long for India and it’s common people to wake up from the public amnesia?

I kept erasing and writing this blog-post several times — what name should I give to this post?

I was not a direct victim or a hostage, I was not the security personnel fighting against their lives to save the TAJ, Oberoi-Trident and Chabad House, I was not a politician coming to bank votes by taking the sole credit “for our men” and collecting junta for votes, I am not the Human Rights Activists who shout slogans against the “oppression” of armed forces of the so called “human-beings” (terror-perpetrators), I am not the intellectual panelists carrying star-power and aura challenging the Government to do something– talking relentlessly regarding the flaws of everything that exists in the system (something which probably didn’t occur to them earlier), and neither am I the media which at times risks its life for “brave-reporting”, romanticizes events and at other times just cold-shoulders very important happenings. I am not the actors who need the consolation of their blog spots regarding the 30mm guns that they hide under their pillows to avoid a possible terror attack on them. I am an average citizen who stands to see worriedly her own house set ablaze, watching at a distance, on the television set, the destruction of a place which has emotional significance for people. I don’t even know the “legend” of JRD that ghost-haunts the mighty Taj. I am just watching helplessly the hostages and the victims of the buildings from afar and thinking it could have been me, my father, my mother, my brother, sister, husband, friend — anyone. I imagine the attack as an attack on my home, my country, which I have thought is the safest place in the world. In fact in all those hours of anticipation, those faces wreathing with wait and fear, something bound us (the TV sets, the viewer, the reporters and the people out there facing terror headlong) with a common bond — the bond of pain and tragedy.

It’s been a turbulent 50 hours wait for the entire nation. I sat in the TV room of our hostel for these entire 3 day long operation, unfolding in what have been unforgettable moments of my life. These three days I have just come out for a quick tea and some noodles to keep me up through the long nights and the ticking-clocks. At one point of time, I thought I will come back and pour my feelings out on paper — but that was not possible and unwarranted too, when your fellow human-beings are in the clutch of utterly calculating, remorseless terror-perpetrators who have no scope for emotions, it was not entirely justified to pour them on paper. These emotions needed to be stored for the last leg of the operations. As visuals after visuals came from the media, the anger, pain, tears slowly died down into a complete numbness–physical, mental and emotional.

I have had strange disastrous associations with the TV room of our hostel. I don’t go and watch television ever in that room, since each of the hostel inmates has a different taste for channels and there is no point in battling for that one remote control, which rarely comes to your hand. I had spent three long days in that room, in darkness, in hunger and in fear when we had joined this institution on 26th July 2005 — the day when flash-floods hit Mumbai, and our rooms got flooded. After that debacle, this 26th November night to 29th November 2008, I have spent the other three long days of my life in that room. In the first case, it was my personal tragedy and in the second I was a mute witness to the tragedies of people around me. The TV room however was my comfort-pillow because there were many others’ like me who just kept night-long vigils by the TV set to show that we are human beings and if we can do nothing for you, at least we stand by you as mute supporters in the most difficult times of your (and perhaps our) lives. Anyone who has witnessed the entire episode unfold on their television sets in the course of past three days can understand and empathize with these feelings. We needed human company in that room just to be assured that we are not alone in the times of terror. Sometimes the events and turn of sequences, the lull inside Taj or Chabad house or Oberoi got so excruciating, that the inmates of our hostel those who were constant viewers of the live reporting just burst into loud angry analysis, speculations and points-counter points. We sometimes discussed the technical details of the episode and sometimes the general — what must be happening, what must be happening to the hostages, what pain for their families, where are the terrorists, how many of them actually, what are the NSGs (National Security Guards) strategies. But somehow these arguments and angry outbursts were more than what they seemed — this was our way to vent out the extreme emotions, burn passions, the pent-up pressures that kept building within us constantly. With Live reports and Breaking News streaming in with horrendous vividness, it actually felt that our house was ablaze and we were all watching it battle from inside at the closest possible vicinity. It was not just symbolically but literally “watching my house ablaze” .

In one such extremely tensed moments, we went downstairs to the canteen (before it closes) to get a last cup of tea for ourselves in order to keep our nerves steady for the rest of the night. On the black board adjacent to our canteen, we spotted someone has scribbled “terrorists are human beings like us, please have mercy on them.” At that point some broke down completely — sobbing, shrieking and shouting and some scribbling madly — “yes those of you who say that they are human beings have not had your fathers, your mothers as their hostages. Your brothers or your fiances are not fighting as commandos inside. Our lives are the lives of cockroaches to be mashed into pulp according to the whims and frenzies of organized criminals and utterly senseless politicians. Some pseudo-humanists like you (referring to the anonymous scribble) are eating us all up.” Some one in the TV room shouted: “the terror-perpetrators are androids, they have no human heart, they are just a bundle of wrongly gone brains. Individuals who have no human heart have no right to be called human beings.” I did not get to hear the response from the other end of this argument, as there was no counter retaliation. There was commotion and anger for those few minutes , but that soon faded away with the next round of gun shots, explosives going off with the nail-biting intensity of the operations. These are some of the positive aspects of watching a tv live in a community place — it gives a feeling to the place.

Another comment that I heard in the lunch table discussions, was certainly more appalling: “good there has been the operations…India’s population is getting beyond control. At least, these are population-control measures.” Another one was like the following: “what is the D company? Who are Al qaida?” No words to retaliate. These statements come from people who don’t even know what exactly is going on in Mumbai at present, what exactly is the geographical location of India and those who come from their extremely “busy-schedules” to spend some time chilling out in the TV room and catching the “tamasha” on TV for some moments and looking at you as if you are wierdos, watching some arbit news channel for so many hours. In a fiery discussion one of the students said: “Why will then be not a vote-bank politics? If the highest layers of our society talks in this thorough callousness, why can’t the lower economic strata not be bought by utterly undeserving politicians?” Such then were some comments from a few of the so-called intellectual class of Indian society — the creme de la creme.

Today after the last-leg of the operations were concluded, I felt no happiness no jubilation. Others waiting for the conclusion were momentarily delighted. But no celebrations. Yes, the Taj was finally unharmed, yes the Oberoi still stands tall — but what of Moshe’s parents? Who will return them back to the 2 year old baby? What of Sabina Saikia? Who will fill up her gap? What of Hemant Karkare, Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan, Gajendra, Salaskar, Kamte and others’ who though left the world, but left back their families and their departments to mourn? With these questions we came back to our individual rooms to spend the rest of the day in helplessness. I kept thinking about one of the experts comments on media: “they want to terrorize us and we don’t refuse to be terrorized.” My response after some thought was: ” yes we are terrorized — frankly terrorized, because we are not “trained” and “seasoned” like the terrorists calculating and drugged to handle so much of human casualties and deaths. For God’s Sake! Those who are dead are human beings, may not be my own people but someone else’s people.”

Don’t know if I am analyzing it right, but if you see the body language of Jawans and commandos who have seen these operations to their conclusion, they don’t seem to be too happy either. They must have witnessed the worst part of the entire operations — elimination of hostages by terrorists, the visual image that they have been through comes on the faces of these commandos. In the hostel too, people who have witnessed this gory drama unfold before their eyes for this entire period, prefer to keep silent. I preferred to write because I don’t know of any other way in which to pay my tribute to those killed and injured.

It’s now 2.30 am of 29th November and as I am concluding my post, I hear some air crafts taking off somewhere in the vicinity (are they choppers?). They maybe carrying those tourists from abroad who are living on, safely back home (wherever in the world that is). We live on!

I am feeling a little better now — maybe I should weep.

P.N.: I dedicate this article to the souls of the people who got stranded in various locations of Mumbai and were mercilessly killed by terrorists. We love you wherever you are. I dedicate this article to the warriors who fought to free the Taj, the Oberoi and Chabad house and to those who became martyrs fighting for us. We salute you!

Acknowledgments:

1. I am indebted to those media persons who spent almost four nights and days to bring us live coverage. They have done very objective reporting this time.

2. The pictures that I have used here have been taken with my cell phone during the Live telecast of the operations at Taj, Nariman House and Oberoi by the Times Now News channel.