During my recent visit to Mumbai I happened to visit the sites of 26/11 attacks....and was amazed to see the extent to which the people have returned to their normal life......as if nothing happened ever here......
Be it the Marine Drive (at which the Oberoi is situated), The Taj Hotel, CST or the Leopold Cafe.....all these places are swarming with the ever enthusiastic, ever resilient people of Mumbai....
This brings me to a question.....whether we are really resilient or are we resilient by force?
I hope its the former.....
Whatever it maybe it definitely represents the hope of the people that nothing will go wrong.....Its not only Constable Ombale and Ashok Kampte......the people of Mumbai are also the heroes of 26/11.....They have shown this time too......as always...that come what may be......we will never allow our enemies to permanently cripple our civil life.......(obviously the damage done to the victims of 26/11 attacks can never be repaired)........
CST is still full of running people eager to reach home after a long day at work........People are still taking their snaps with The Taj in the backdrop.........Leopold Cafe is still full of foreign backpackers(not withstanding the bullet marks still present there)......and Marine Drive is still getting lively by the playing children......
Mumbai lives on........So Does India...........
5 comments:
I think it is primarily resilience by force. People have returned to their normal routines. In a way it is good that we move on because it shows our courage. But we also move on because we don't have a choice. There should be something done to at least respect the memory of the people who sacrificed their lives. There was also the manager of Taj whose wife and two kids were killed but he still controlled his emotions and focused first on doing his duties towards saving life of others and resolving the situation.
Anyway, I think the good thing is that the tide is turning and things are slowly changing. We are not there today but hopefully we will be there in next 20 years.
MUMBAI lives on coz it has no choice...i think too much is being made out of this spirit of Mumbai...i guess this is what AGAMBEN talked about when speaking about the football match that he saw in a concentration camp at AUSTZWITCH, GERMANY.To him this normalcy in the middle of the catastrophe was more dreadful than the actual killings. We are all living these wretched dreadful "normal" lives ...but the truth is we are all in a catastrophe.
going on living normally is not chauvinism...living in a world of continous threats is not normal.
I do agree with the fact that its more 2 do with the fact that mumbaikars have no choice rather than being resilient.....
Of course the spirit shown by the mumbaikars in the face of tragedy is neither the solution nor something to celebrate but it is atleast a silver lining in the large cloud.......and an antidote to complete spiritual annihilation of the city by terror......
this spirit is just a shock absorber....a shock absorber doesn't mean we will intentionally create potholes on the road or we won't fight against bad roads....but atleast we can be sure that our vehicle
will survive the ordeal.....
i said mumbai LIVES coz it has no choice...but what i am trying to critique here is the way we survive.you want to make sure your vehicle survives the ordeal...fine!but how does it come out of it?? what what about the quality of survival after that? i see no silver lining in people living as if nothing happenned denying the traumatic condition of their everyday existence.
the modern capitalist lives that we all lead gives us no time or scope to look back and reflect whether our wretched existence is worth this reislience.moreover, it makes impossible the very ways in which we can imagine a positive change.
mumbai needs an alternative...not a new vehicle not a new road...it needs to reject to walk on this same old road anymore....it needs to assert that it inhabits alive human beings who are affected and reject to be affected continously!
Everything begins with a choice. Walking into the sites at which hundreds of bullets were fired just a day back depicts choice and not force. This was exactly what the people of Mumbai did a day after the attacks of 26/11. Defying the fear which the terrorists were trying to instill in them they showed the courage of those who lead the normal monotonous life.
I agree that choices are influenced to a certain extent by compulsion but even then it takes courage to defy your fears and walk into the arms of a dreadful nightmare. Let us ask ourselves how many of us would be willing to travel by an airplane after surviving an air crash? Or for that matter do are we not frightened of driving after going through an accident. While traveling a local recently on my Mumbai trip I got goose bumps imagining the plight of people who commute daily even after witnessing those horrifying blasts of 2006. Accepting your fears and then fighting them day in and day out requires courage and determination. Let us not belittle this spirit of the people of Mumbai or for that matter of the people of many suffering places by terming these courageous acts as “outcomes of capitalist lives”. Kudos to the SPIRIT and SHAURYA of Mumbai and Mumbaikars.
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