User talk:Surtarangini jena

morning after7/11- mumbai blasts
The Writer is Piyush Roy, Special Correspondent Hindustan Times

Rains, riots, bomb blasts in a span of just 10 days… why punish us for our guts to carry on with our lives?

When I decided to board the train to work today, irrespective of restraining calls from family and friends all recommending the road, I gave the concern a patient ignore… Was it a dare? Was it courtesy that journalistic license that allows one access to flash points from where others would shy? Or was it a case of concerned yet morbid human curiosity (that gets us clued to accident images on TV post any tragedy)to track the trail of destruction… most of the blast site stations being those on my regular travel route to office and back… Jogeshwari, Khar, Bandra, Mahim… However, today, an uncanny silence connected the few and far between passengers in the otherwise crowded like sardines rush hour Mumbai locals, as the inter city trains are fondly called. You don’t have to be a Mumbaikar (that’s what we call a resident of Mumbai) to know the lifeline like necessity of these speeding caterpillars. They are the connectors that make a unit of this city of seven islands. Lives are lived and loved in these… a must do, a must ride no Lonely Planet guide would list, but every Mumbai based friend of yours would fondly recommend, even trifle indulgently with a touch of pride… May I add with a fond affection? Yes the trains maybe crowded yet we keep complaining that they just might just get a little more breathable…but not this way.The ample space today surprisingly was more stifling than a crowded ride. Yet today, somewhere some faith had snapped, nobody would readily take a bag of the bystander to plonk it without question in the luggage rack; the morning din, the arguments, the hanging commuters between the compartment connectors, the care a damn riders on the rooftops, the clanging kirtan players, all silent, every eye was searching something… perhaps tell tale remnants of last night’s rampage.

Some still intact, the physical hurts may have been shifted for treatment to the hospitals, but the emotional mess was still screaming a hear… And yet the moment I stepped out of the first class compartment at Mahim station, the sight was enough to ring home the tragedy. The roof of the platform at the spot where I always alight on my way to work was blown off to smitherns, the cement slabs piled over, with some still fresh bloodstains… terror could have been that near. Indeed, how many more tests the average Mumbaikar will have to give? Just because we have the resilience to bounce back, will Mumbai keep on being a recurring testing ground for terrorists ? Ever since the 13 serial Black Friday blasts of 1993 targeting the commercial capital’s financial strongholds, 11 other bomb blasts, big and small, in buses and trains, have scalded the city’s spirit.

Terror’s many faces now familiar, however this time, their victim was new. The target beyond doubt were the young and professional in Mumbai; most blasts took off in the first class compartments that’s generally packed in with members of the business and service class, and the time couldn’t have been worse, 6.30 pm, when most are on their way home, after the end of a regular 9-5 or 10-6 day. Little console, it was that day that we journalists worked odd hours… If one picture could tell it all, it was of a rescuer trying to pull off a body from a pile of injuries by the tie, and his shock and horror over the realization that there was no head to hold it… Heart rending, just as the fact that in the face of terror at such horrifyingly close proximity, none did really run away for personal safety. As the speeding trains came to bloody halts, passengers stuck on taking the injured to the hospitals, as all and sundry spilled out of the comfort of their homes offering food, shelter and calm; slum dwellers and corporate, housewives and householders,old women and little kids. My long drive back home (ordinarily 25 minutes this time extended to nearly two hours) was busied with liberal offers of snacks, a old lady walked up to my stuck rickshaw with an offer, “Have a few biscuits you need the energy,” while at another a kid was stopping commuters insisting that they had some hot tea and samosas to keep them going in the cold rains. At another place a prim and proper socialite stopped her Mercedes and offered to fit in as many drenched young men as she could… the stories could go on… the voices are still keeping coming. We did a poll; one voice that touched me most was of leading actress Smriti Irani, who had spent the night of the blast with the injured. “I salute all those people who took the trains to work on Wednesday, for they had the guts to carry on with their lives. But please don’t punish them further for that.”

Personally, taking that train, I realized what was that abstract unseen, that we all felicitated as the never; say; die; spirit of the Mumbaikar. A bit of it had rubbed in close… It’s indeed a small world, if bomb blasts in Mumbai’s local trains gets New York to beef up the security on its railway network, or when well being calls and messages come not just from your family and friends in Mumbai and beyond, but from all over the globe… if the motive of the perpetrators of “Terror Tuesday” was to scare, sorry you failed, the world just got a little more closer… mine too!

PS: My deepest gratitude and heart felt thanks to all of you who called, and those who tried and couldn't reach, yet i know you all had a prayer for my city and its people, including me...