I wrote this on the day of the Mumbai blasts for The Globalist & the original can be found on www.theglobalist.com


Bombs, Mayhem and the Lifeline of a City

It’s happened again! I can still smell the charred bodies and blood from 2003, and three years later that smell has emerged from the dark recesses of my mind where I thought it lay buried and hopefully forgotten.

Mumbai has been hit with bombs again and again hundreds of innocents have paid with their lives and limbs for complicated domestic and international politics and the anger of a few.

I remember the blood on the streets in 2003. Twin blasts ripped open the most vulnerable parts of Mumbai. One, at the city’s most prestigious monument the Gateway of India and the other killed dozens in the crowded by-lanes of Zaveri Bazaar (The Jeweler’s Market). 52 people died that day and more than 150 were injured.

We were a team of reporters fighting to get the story first and no matter how much blood we had to wade through. None of my team was over twenty five and you’d expect us to have weaker stomachs. Thrusting mikes into faces of victims and their wailing relatives, this was not our finest hour. But the job needed to be done. Just as my team is doing it right now, while I sit in Washington, turning grey at the thought of loved ones trapped and dying in the wreckage.

This time around, in 2006, Mumbai’s sacrosanct Public transit system has been targeted. Sitting at the opposite side of the world, I can only imagine the panic on the streets, the chaos at the stations where seven high-intensity blasts have killed more than 135 people. The toll is still rising as more than 300 injured have been rushed to near-by hospitals.

Phone lines have been cut-off and cellular phones are down, contact with friends and family is only through the blessed internet. I am simultaneously trying to call Mumbai, and send frantic e-mails to my friends. News reports had claimed that reporters from my former channel had been aboard one of the trains that blew up. I pray it’s not a friend, and I pray they are unharmed. I send out a fresh batch of emails to everyone I think could possibly have been on those trains.

My former boss writes back to me. “Our reporter on the train wasn’t hurt. It wasn’t anyone you knew. He’s on the field now, we were lucky that he was there and wasn’t hurt, so we got to break the story. There was a loud blast in one of the train compartments which he was in. When he rushed there and looked, he saw people with severed limbs and grievous injuries. I have to rush, we’re beaming out Live. It’s carnage out there.”

After the nth attempt, I get through to my aunt’s cell phone. An intrepid reporter herself, her voice sounds harried as she tries to re-assure me that everyone in the family is safe. Suddenly the shock emerges as she confides, “I was supposed to be on that first train. I missed it because I was called back to work.”

I can almost visualize her shaking herself and her tone immediately becomes professional. She tells me, “You know the drill, you’ve done it. I won’t be going home for at least the next two days. I’m trying to get through to the hospitals and morgues. There are some extreme rumors floating about. I have to get to work and hopefully get the right information out in the public domain. Exaggeration can potentially cause a communal riot.”

And she’s right. When Mumbai was hit by bombs in 1993, it began a wave of communal violence, which sent this cosmopolitan city into shock. In 2003, the city’s denizens did not give in to the temptation to point fingers and unequivocally bounced back to being an unstoppable economic machine. In 2006, the fear that lurks in the hearts of Mumbaikars is that 1993 must be avoided at all costs.

International and Indian news websites are brimming with the news. The blasts had gone off during rush-hour when the Western line of Mumbai’s train system are at their busiest. Carrying 6.5 million people at that time everyday, to Mumbaikars, the Western and Central lines of the transit system are more than a lifeline, it’s a way of life. To attack the trains, is to attack the hearts and minds of the city’s residents.

The Indian government is claiming that the attacks were carried out by Kashmiri militants who are backed by the Pakistan government. In 1993, when similar accusations had been levied, our countries had almost gone to war. I am left wondering, is there any proof, that these attacks were backed by anyone, had anyone officially claimed responsibility?

My friend Aziza has responded to my frenetic emails. Living in the heart of Mumbai’s suburb of Bandra, she is the closest I have to a first hand accounts of the mayhem. “Bandra station is a mess. There was a stampede to get out of the station when the bombs went off in Khar and Santacruz (Two other suburbs). You should see the state of madness the station is in - Forget the trains; I'd hate to be anywhere near the station! The phone lines are absolutely jammed, thank God for the Internet. My cousins logged on from MSN to check on us.”

I check the news websites for updates. Blogs and opinion pieces are flooding them. Many are calling for an Israel-like military action in Kashmir; others are demanding answers from the Indian Intelligence Agency (RAW). RAW had claimed knowledge of the threat, but had clarified that they had not known the targets. More radical and angry voices are laying blame on the entire community of Kashmiri Muslims while others are begging for calm. The tone is worrying and bringing back bad memories of 1993.

Another friend has responded as well. Aditya writes in saying he’s safe and is sitting tight in his dealing room. The security on the roads is uncertain and he says he would rather stay in the office than take a risk “This is a ridiculous situation. These animals have done it again,” he adds.

And Aditya is rightly concerned. He manages the investment portfolios of powerful foreign investors, whose confidence is already shaky after the Indian market plummeted drastically over the last few weeks.

In the past, the 2003 blasts had made these investors jittery and attacks of this proportion can only lead to capital flight at a time when the market desperately needs stability.

I manage to get through to another friend. Dhruv and his brother regularly commute by train. They tend to be in the compartments were the bombs were planted. Mumbai’s yuppie professionals tend to congregate in the first class compartments of the Western line. This is where I feared they both could have been. This is where the bombs went off.

Dhruv picks up the phone and answers in an unflappable tone. He reassures me that everyone I know is safe and the only reason I could get through to him is because he is in another city. “I called everyone before they (the police) jammed the networks. Everyone is either already at home or are staying at their offices for the night. This has happened to all of us before, three years ago and thirteen years ago. Don’t worry, we’re Mumbaikars, we bounce back from everything!”

I hang up feeling a little better. Mumbaikars are a mature people. When the blasts ripped through the city’s fabric in 1993, everyone picked up the pieces. When it hit even closer to home in 2003, the city didn’t pause, going back to work the next morning.

If politics, freedom and terrorism are intertwined, so is the heart, the gumption and the drive to make money for Mumbai’s residents. Blood, bombs, mayhem or Armageddon wouldn’t stand in their way. For those who hoped to make international headlines with this incident, they have succeeded. For those who hoped to break the spirit of Mumbai, my friend Akhtar had only this to say, “I Reached home safe and sound. But as I was getting home, I got the distinct feeling that individually and collectively, Mumbai has had enough. Blast after blast, natural disaster after natural disaster. But this is a city which has a rich tradition of swallowing it and moving on. Terror might kill one Mumbaikar or hundreds, but our spirits are too strong to be destroyed. One more punch in the gut will hurt only for a short while!”