(This piece was written a year later, in 2009.)
Mumbai Under Siege
Gunmen take over the city of Mumbai…fire engulfs the iconic 100 year old Taj… explosions at the Oberoi…people trapped in hotels forced to jump from the windows… a numbing stand- off with the terrorists… gunmen shoot indiscriminately in the crowded VT train station…dead bodies and grieving relatives.
All these terrible images flash in the mind’s eye because we’ve seen them so often. Just around this time last year, people across the world were glued to their television sets as the shock waves of the terrorist attacks hit the throbbing, frenetic metropolis of Mumbai. One could think of little else as the fate of a beloved city unfolded in real time on television, on the Internet and through phone calls to relatives. It was painful to watch and yet impossible not to watch. You ate without quite knowing what you ate and a dark cloud of anxiety shrouded everyday life.
For Indians across the Diaspora, the chilling images played time and again on their television sets, stories flashed across the Internet and incessant phone calls to loved ones in Mumbai. The news played out frame by frame on Twitter, with videos and images on Youtube and Flicker. Technology has caused distances to melt away and made disaster touchable, personal and vivid.
It seems hard to believe a year has passed since then.
The shock, the grief is still there. Once again there is an outpouring of words and images as the world remembers 26/11. Anger, disbelief, frustration, helplessness have all played out as a city was brought to its knees but Mumbai, ever the can-do kid, the comeback kid, has risen once again. Watching the news on television one sees that change is happening, and people, known and unknown, are stridently speaking out. The police marched today to Chowpatty showcasing its power and strength, including the new-fangled Force One Commandos.
Mumbaikars are a resilient lot, and what Ratan Tata said about the battered Taj can be said in a larger context about this spunky city: ”We can be hurt but not knocked down. The old Taj will stand again for the next 100 years, as it has for the past 100 years.”
In gritty Mumbai, life goes on and its stoic population soldiers on. In the meantime each one copes with the tragedy in their own way.
Here in America, the day of remembrance coincides with the holiday of Thanksgiving as families gather together to share and connect, to be thankful for life’s blessings. Today we can also be thankful for Mumbai’s resilience, for its unbowed attitude, for its secret indomitable strength – its people.
Related Article: Resilient Mumbai heralds in the New Year (2012)
Ringing in 2012 in Mumbai
“I finally hobble out for a taxi ride to see the ongoing New Year’s Eve carnival of Mumbai, from the Gateway of India to Nariman’s Point to Marine Drive and Chowpatty and it is amazing to see the streets inundated with people. Couples on scooters, entire families on scooters, girls on scooters. Our taxi weaved its way through traffic jams and our driver told us that he was coming from Bandra where the streets were jam-packed with people celebrating and all restaurants and discos were crowded.”
