Mumbai is dying. Long live Mumbai.

My city has become scary. I want to yell my wrath out. I want to weep endlessly.

I don't want to hear Mr. CM declare 'we had information but it was not direct information.' I don't want Mr. Advani's futile presence in my city. I don't want Mr. Modi's crore. I don't want hon'ble Mr. Singh's 'strong words'. I want people not to come out & camp at rescue operation sites.

I want martyrs revived. I want Mr. Karkare back. I want innocent people to at least finish their meal before they meet their deathly fate. I want bullet-proof jackets that actually work. I want Moshe reunited with his parents. Irrational? What has been rational in the last 4 days anyway?

I want to appeal to all Indians & foreign nationals alike, daunting as it might be, to revisit & reunite with the phenomenal legacy that is the Taj Mahal Palace. For if we don't rebuild & embrace the Taj, terror wins. I want to spare a thought for the first 56, seemingly forgotten, who got killed at CST.

I don't want to hate that 21 year old. I want to make him fall in love with Maximum City - so much that it alters his meddled brain, so much that it fills him with overpowering remorse for what he has done to it, so much that it makes him cry. Did he not once see the beauty of the Taj, the grandeur of the Gateway by night? Did he not once feel like other 21 year olds at Leo's? Hell, wasn't that backpack too heavy? Wait. I'm talking crazy again, aren't I? What has managed to even border the limits of sanity in the last 4 days anyway?

I am not terrorised. I have retained my spirit but it certainly has been dampened. Empty local trains, empty offices, quiet colleges, bloodied railway platforms, bullet cases & grenade shells strewn about my city's streets. I am not resilient. No one is. I will not move on. This time, no one will.

I want to dine at the Golden Dragon someday. I don't want to 'wonder what that sound was' when I hear firecrackers, scooters, stray dogs playing with empty plastic bottles. I don't want my mother to be worried every time I step out, in my home city.

Enough. I want peace in Mumbai. Godspeed.


PS: Quote of the season - "Mr. Terrorist, I'm alive. What can you do? Mr. Politician, I'm alive despite you. I'm a Mumbaikar."

Bloody Wednesday..

"..their point is to terrorize people. But I am not terrorized, and you can't be terrorized" - Mariane Pearl, wife of slain journalist Daniel Pearl

I'm tired of asking why. I'm tired of watching the news for so long. I'm shocked all this is being tagged 'mundane' because it is happening a time too many. This has to stop!

Our city is not a battleground, you know? We won't let it be. Tears. Blood. Bullets. Grenades. In the streets we walk on? At the tables we dine at? In the trains we hop?

I do not hate the faces of terror that are splashed all over the dailies today. I do not hate their fanaticism, their selfishness, their madness because there's too much love in me - for my city & its people.

I drift away in thoughts of Mumbai, flipping through these old pictures of trains, the now cordoned Marine Drive, the now eerily empty Gateway, now ground zero for the war against terror - the Oberoi-Trident by night & the sea that brought to our shores bloody aimless violence.

Global financial crises, new age terrorism - arbit, brazen & shamelessly brutal. Is this the doom our grandparents told us tales of? Or is there yet more to come..?

Before new age terror changes the face of my Seven Islands, I pray for life, happiness & peace.

Please stop the madness!
Peace.