Monday, December 1, 2008

Mumbaikar.

Sometime he/she has kids, sometimes he's a bachelor or a student, he may be a native or a migrant, he's been here for the past 5 decades or the past 5 years perhaps, he loves this city. He gets up in the morning at 6, picks up his lunch tiffin and the morning newspaper and goes to the station, he catches the 7:30 train, rush hour has started, sometimes he gets a place to sit, in the evening he always stands though. He meets office colleagues, train friends, talks cricket and rain. He works hard through the day, in the evening he buys something for his kid, or fruits or something else. The train journey back is a literal fight which can border on dangerous and can even be fatal sometimes. His friend lost a leg when he hit a pole while traveling in the train, but our MUMBAIKAR is not worried much, he holds on for dear life. Bus isn't an option, his office is far, he cant afford a 2wheeler everyday and definitely not a 4 wheeler, atleast not yet. The traffic is anyways so bad that he'll get a double cross everyday if he travels by any other mode of transport except train and probably loose his job. He trusts the trains though. He reaches home, tired but happy. One day he gets up in the morning and sees there have been bomb blasts in his beloved city. He is pained and grieves for the friends he lost, some of his train friends, no one he knew by name but faces that could have been his. He knows this. Mumbai stops for a day or perhaps 2 minutes(?) and there are voices screaming to be heard but no one listens, fingers are pointed, someone resigns, situation - status quo. The next day he goes to work as usual, he is scared and there's silence on the roads and in the trains people talk in hushed voices in the morning. But our man didn't have any CLs left for this month, he had taken 2 days holiday when his kid was sick of leptospirosis. Some label this as the Spirit of Mumbai. But he didnt have any choice other than to move on and he knows this. Is he immune to terror?? Does he tolerate terror?? Has he accepted terror as a part of his daily life?? His kid asks him in the night why did the trains blew?? He says there are some bad people who do this and the kids asks "TERRORISTS??". He is surprised at his kids vocabulary. Then one day he dies in the train blasts. Or maybe a gun totting man kills him, or may be he drowns in the floods or falls into an open manhole never to come out again, perhaps he falls off the train and dies, He died a little every day anyways. He/She was a Mumbaikar.