Don’t Snooze the alarm, Wake up!

‘Cooooo…‘ (sound of the horn of a train) and then…. ‘khatak khatak, khatak khatak, ..., swoofff…’  Then I heard the announcement ‘Train going to Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus is expected to arrive shortly on platform no 6.’  Standing at the Dadar station, one of the suburbs in Mumbai, I was waiting for the train to Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus.  Feeling very sad and low, I got into the train and reached the station.  Standing in the middle of more than 5000 people going in all directions, I started walking, slowly looking at the face of every person I could see and trying to feel the situation when there was a terrorist attack just a couple of weeks back.  Reached the Gateway of India and from there I watched ‘The Taj’, the palatial hotel.  It was all sealed and no one was allowed inside. 

I started walking and with every step I took I started thinking hard.  I have been living in Mumbai for almost 4 years and this city is very special to me.  Though living alone, I never felt alone in the city.  As my work demanded, I was a frequent guest at the Taj and some smiling faces were familiar to me.  The monument itself brings a lot of pride not only to me or the residents of Mumbai but many other Indians.  And what do I see on a morning of 27^th of November 2008, that ‘Taj’ is under attack!  Shocked!  At that time, I was back at home in Baroda and on leave for a couple of weeks.  Then I suddenly recalled that the previous night my client from Qatar had made a sudden visit to Mumbai to meet me and my superiors for a new project discussion and visit of the facilities here in Mumbai.  I had promised them to arrange their stay at the Taj this time and so I called him up immediately.  Then I understood that they were lucky not to get reservation in Taj this time and I could hear the fright on the phone.  Even I felt lucky for not being there but were all others lucky enough?  Perhaps not!  What was their mistake?  What harm they had done who went through this terror being inside these monuments and witnessing it?  We all may say that they were unlucky.  All we have is just sympathy for them and their relatives and friends and nothing more.

For almost 3 days, I was stuck to the television watching every move of the reporters on all the channels.  Everytime I thought of the people who were trapped inside, it ached me, it made me feel angry and it made be think ‘What I can do to see that such time do not fall again on us.’  For three days from 26^th November 2008, about close to 200 people lost their lives and many more injured.  This incident didn’t have effect on only these people but many others in the country.  I certainly do not feel proud of such things happening in our country but I certainly felt proud of the National Security Guards (NSG) commandos and the news channel reporters.  Someone might say that they were just doing their job but if we think hard, perhaps we will realize that we are not even doing that. 

These three days were very disturbing to me and many others and how can we let it go just like that?  Government has to answer us.  They cannot simply keep on playing with the sentiments of the citizens who make them what they are today.  It’s every right of every citizen of India to get justice and not just promises from them.  The anger of the people could be seen yet the spirits were high.  Mumbai had never stopped, nor can anyone ever stop it.  Somewhere I knew that I won’t be able to find the same faces which I used to see earlier in Taj but today I have questions which I am unable to answer.  It’s been almost a year and where is Kasab, the only terrorist caught ?  What has been done to him?  Has this episode made to end here and buried forever?  Is this what we worth the great lives of our citizens?  Do we just need the prayers of other people sitting at home?  Or we do something more?  I want each of us to think on this and do something to make this place worth living and also worth dying.  It’s been rightly said by someone that ‘Our Jackets are not bullet-proof. Our spirit is’.  Long live the spirit of Mumbai!