26/11 Mumbai on War!!

I finished my meetings at the World Trade Centre in South Mumbai and I came out to find my cab had been towed away from cuffe parade. The driver perplexed, requested we went to church gate to get our cab back. Finishing the formalities I asked the driver to drive me around South Mumbai. It is always a pleasure to see this part of Mumbai, tall buildings, iconic structures, and million dollar business happening, may be with very tide lashing the marine drive.  From structures and property worth billions, to road side shopping at the fashion street, to the iconic café’s or a sandwich walla’s, or our own dabbawalla’s it is a pleasure sight and hustle bustle around this place is very enjoyable.

But who knew the fate of this place in another couple of hours, when it transformed into a battlefield. The lashing waves bought some unwanted people to the city, who took over this place, its buildings, its people, held up guest at Mumbai’s most prestigious hotels and created chaos and rampage for the last 40 hours and still counting.

It was in the morning, when I started from my hotel near the international airport for a meeting in South Mumbai, and spent most of the day around here and headed back to my office at Prabhadevi and then to the airport for a late evening flight. I left the city, with fond memories of a family function, some good meetings and an eagerness to be back with family after a week, only to know about the horror that started in Mumbai once I reached home. The feeling of being there just few hours before, was itself scary imagine the horror innocent people and our braving soldiers went and are going through even when I write this!! My family is happy to have me back home, but I fail to get answers to how? why? & what for?

The answers to this may be a long silence, but what we lose in midst of all this is reputation as a nation, innocent people like Maloy Banerjee, who happens to be a known face to my inlaws and was getting married after a week & above all few brave sons of the soil like Karkare, Salaskar & Kampte, one of the best men we had in our ATS & police forces. These brave men stand up and face the music when it comes to real war, and sadly, they are same men who gets bashed, condemned and humiliated through our dirty politics when ever these men do their job honestly.

Today the brave of the brave politicians are numb. Where his Raj Thackrey and his band wagon of goons, always standing up for Mumbai and its people, or is it that since its foreign nationals, they have shoved up their bravery. With country facing one of the worst terror strikes, with operations happening over 40 hours, the home minister Mr. Shivraj Patil has not opened his mouth. Is he waiting for some kind of a political agenda to speak up, and I guess his time for speaking up is over, he should own up and resign immediately. I have lost count of terror attacks in last few months.

I fail to believe that such a large scale of activity from teens terrorist is not a one day affair. It is a planned activity and carrying it out in such secured place and in such iconic buildings is sheer lack of negligence or involvement of people within. It is a planned attack. I was surprise to find the Maharashtra CM giving excuse that people could come from sea route is because they do not have speed boats to do vigilance around the dock area. He claims it is under approval. I fail to understand such security issues being “under approval” status co.

Today we all are wishing, it comes to an end, but is it really the END. Have we become so used to such events or become so complacent that today we only wish for our safety, our family, our state, our caste, our religion and hindsight to problems at large. I am sure; our media will unearth more masala out of this issue, and our politician will try to gain mileage and point fingers at each other, but do we realize that all this points at Us, after all we are still democrats, remember By the People, For the People, Of the People.

May Peace Prevail and payers for all affected in this unfortunate incident.