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Lessons from Mumbai
Vrijendra
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Whether the glitterati of India or the swashbuckling media would
learn any lessons in and look deep beyond the immediate is
questionable, but Vrijendra manages to learn some hardcore
lessons about the state of affairs during and after the violence
in Mumbai. You are invited to share. |
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 1.The first
thing I learnt: the number of editors and columnists for whom Taj
and Oberoi are second homes. Wow! I had no idea journalists had so
much money. Of course, for all these journalists, English has to be
their first language.
2. It is then no
surprise that on English TV Channels and media reporting and
coverage about Taj/Oberoi and their victims are so extensive. These
journalists were reporting as if they had been orphaned! As if it
was the truly first time that the terrorists struck in
India. So, that
is the second thing I learned. That there are different Indias, even
among victims of terror: some deserve non-stop reporting on the
front page, others deserve the inside third page.
3. Many members
of the staff died at Taj/Oberoi in their attempts to save the guests
at the hotels. I have yet to hear about any guest who offered to
save the life of the staff along with his/her own, any guest who
tried to calm the staff by suggesting that, in the midst of terror,
we are all the same. That you should not die to save our lives; that
together, we are all victims of terror. (On the other hand, more
than 100 policemen posted at the CST with lathis and paid to protect
the citizens out of taxes, clearly knew that, in the face of terror,
their own lives were more important than that of the public they
harass all the time. As soon as these policemen saw the two
terrorists shooting at people, they ran for their lives, most of
them, anyway. As a result, a few who did their duty are now being
rewarded handsomely by the state agencies, again out of public
money!)
4. We all know
that our politicians are corrupt, vain, vile and self-seeking. Even
in such tragic moments, many of them could not resist scoring
brownie points, for example, Narendra Modi. But what I learnt in the
last week was something else. I learnt was that our chattering
classes and the swish set hate politicians, are patriotic to the
core, are not corrupt and vile and are angry that politicians do not
listen to them. Till now, my own complain has been the opposite:
that our politicians listen too much to the chattering classes, are
too sensitive to their needs and are more than willing to squander
public money to help their friends among the chattering classes. So,
it was refreshing to know that the (non-voting) chattering classes
hate the politicians even more than the voting public does.
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Anybody from the swish set is welcome to comment on terror
issues and suggest solutions. It is preferable if you are a
model, a TV actor and a socialite. Any one from the show
business is more than welcome. But clearly, writers, historians,
social activists and academicians are out of favour. In Bombay,
they do not exist, they do not matter. Between intelligence,
scholarship and designer clothes, designer clothes look much
better on TV. |
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5. The fifth
thing I learned? That between the chattering classes and the
politicians, I like our politicians, despicable as they are. At
least, they know when to shut up and disappear from the scene. Our
chattering classes, on the other hand, do not know what to say and
how to say it. Increasingly, almost every time, one of them opened
their mouth, I was struck by their pomposity, frightening ignorance,
a clear disregard for the facts such as they are and their sheer
contempt for the ‘largest democracy’ in the world!
6. For the
elite, for whom Taj is their second home,
India stops at
Churchgate, may be, Bombay Central. Beyond that, the nation does not
exist and they do not care. Instead, they want to fortify their
enclaves with full-proof security and commandos, if necessary, so
that their parties do not get disturbed and they can dine in peace
at the Taj. Their real anger is that the rest of India does not let
them party the way they want without drawing them into the politics
of terror. It was as if they were saying: Why should any one of us
die? And if we have to die, why pay taxes?
7. I learnt that
cab drivers have enormous wisdom. So many columnists have talked
about how wisely skeptical and informed cab drivers were that I was
left wondering why nobody was asking these drivers to their shows.
Then, it struck me. Cab drivers, in
India, do not
know good English.
8. Anybody from
the swish set is welcome to comment on terror issues and suggest
solutions. It is preferable if you are a model, a TV actor and a
socialite. Any one from the show business is more than welcome. But
clearly, writers, historians, social activists and academicians are
out of favour. In
Bombay,
they do not exist, they do not matter. Between intelligence,
scholarship and designer clothes, designer clothes look much better
on TV.
9. Our
chatterati watch too many war movies and they have too much awe for
George Bush. I think they clearly remember George Bush in a fake
army dress on a naval ship soon after the
USA attacked
Iraq (they are still struggling to get out of it) and are inspired
by his slogans. I have lost count of number of times, they mentioned
9/11 and America’s military response to it and how they would love
similar ‘muscular response’ from the Indian government. None of them
seemed to remember at all that this response finally made George
Bush the most hated President in the USA and the world.
 10. The elite
hate the Indian public: the vote banks. They are clearly unhappy
that at the first sign of trouble the PM did not invite them to
Delhi
to ask them what he should do. If he had done it this time, like he
does so often during economic crises, it would be democracy, when he
does not it is because of the vote banks. For the elite, vote banks
are not people and citizens, they are a herd driven to the ballot
box to vote for cash and other things. (It reminds me of the RSS
theory of conversion. The poor people who convert out of Hinduism
never do on their own and cannot decide for themselves. They are
almost always ‘induced’ or ‘coerced’ to convert to Christianity.)
11. Finally, I
learnt the biggest lesson of all. We do not learn from crisis, any
crisis. We love to rave and rant and then go back to our own silly
devices. We love cowboys. We love toughness. We love to beat the
hell out of the bad guys. We all know who they are. We love the
pleasure of street violence. We need no intelligence, no courts and
no justice. All we need is to hand over the messy business of
politics to the army, who know how to ‘order’. Order, shouted by a
young, handsome man in army uniform, would redeem the nation and
make these Pakis run away from our beloved nation
India. (That
such an order can also kill an innocent citizen and protestor as in
Kashmir or the North East is something that the elite do not wish to
know about.)
I learnt that
more than anything else, we believe in Superman comics, even in real
life!
Vrijendra is an
academician and civil rights activist from Mumbai. He is a regular
columnist for World Sikh News. He may be contacted at vrij.08@gmail.com
17 December
2008
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