26/07 is now a day in history - but for many of us it's much more personal. i knew 2 people (1 directly and 1 indirectly) who died in that tragedy - both from kalina...property loss and other stuff is less to crib about - after all, there is insurance.
so i put down my thoughts a few days ago - and i sent letters to the mumbai mirror, toi, mid-day - as i've done before on various topics - but these letters have never been published - maybe they don't agree, maybe they don't like my tone -whatever...
i think - the biggest mistake is yet to be made - as a survivor of the wwII holocaust once said - the biggest mistake that human beings can make is to forget what happened.
anyway - here's what i wrote - peace.
Fiddlers All…
As the dust of 26/07 settles, and Mumbai grinds itself back to normalcy – a few thoughts on the sorry state of affairs that will sooner or later engulf us and bring us everlasting misery.
The government:
While no one needs to know again how bad the government and the authorities really are, let me just say that coupled with the power lobby – of builders and developers, we have now a machinery of complete corruption and ineptitude, which is, by far the worst kind of nightmare imaginable for the citizens of this country.
We the press:
In a situation of having a government as bad as we have above, the most important role must be played by the media – because they have the power to galvanize, educate and inform the masses. Yet, the media’s attention span is terribly short – after all, only ‘hot’ news sells, at least in the minds of the trp rating mba s, so old news is stale news – no matter how important and how crucial.
We report frivolity and gossip and make it prime time and interesting. As I write this on a Sunday, Aug 212005, when reading the newspaper is an essential part of the morning, the headlines of TOI read ‘Sunjay deserted me, Karishma tells HC’! This from the highest rated and most widely respected English newspaper the country has to offer! A supplement is devoted to the useless shenanigans of the glamour brigade – when any one of them shakes their lace-covered fanny, the press is there to photograph and report the event in its entire splendor.
Let’s see a similar supplement being devoted regularly to the things that matter, the issues that dictate our lives and the problems of the city. Why is it when an NGO / or an activist begs for the media to report a story, all they can get is a few lines of space in an obscure part of the newspaper, while the current state of Karishma Kapoor’s life gets headlines in the Sunday TOI? Our press will report important news only for the day – while KK’s divorce settlement will be followed and reported avidly for the next 5 years. Let reporters go out in the field and report about the corruption, the inefficiency, and the problems that we face. Let’s expose the shameless ministers and the cheaters and the liars, and let’s praise the ‘real’ heroes and the people who fight for this city.
Are we a responsible press, or just a pandering shameless fiddler, talking shop, as the city burns in the hell that it has lit for itself?
We the people:
Sure, the BMC has never cleaned up the plastic from the gutters, but who the hell put them there in the first place? Unfortunately, we Indians are culturally and socially challenged. I expected that some lessons would have been learnt from the 26/07 disaster – and at least people would have had some sense knocked into them. But even today as I walk along the streets where I live, people are littering and messing up – the plastic bag is back on the streets and we are back to building our plastic bubble.
Our culture dictates our quality of life – and it is evident how things can go terribly wrong, when we do not do things right everyday. Everyday, we cut traffic signals and disobey rules like we own the roads – and it was evident how bad that became in a disaster that was 26/07. I mean, who gave some motorists the right to cross the divider and travel on the other side of the road – causing kilometers of jammed traffic on the western express highway that didn’t clear for more than 2 days. Who gave hundreds of people the right to throw plastic bags in the gutters and litter the streets everyday, so that drains don’t work effectively and the flood waters came back to drown scores of people and destroy crores of property.
Who gives people the right to do this? What have we been taught in school and by our parents and peers? It’s worse, when one sees the guy in his posh, manicured car rolling down the window and throwing a Pepsi bottle on the road, breaking the signal and talking gaily on his mobile phone…I mean we may forgive the auto rickshaw driver, for perhaps, he didn’t go to school and may have had a troubled life and no good peers – but what about the other thousands in their santros and optras?
No Hope:
I hoped there was hope, but there is none – we are back to square one, The press, the people, the government and the authorities are all to blame…Our fathers and forefathers left us a city of nightmares, made us socially and culturally retarded and messed up our lives. Now it’s out turn to leave this same legacy to our children. Maybe, in the event of another natural disaster, our children will realize how bad their fathers were, and how they inherited such a miserable life. But maybe, they won’t have to wait for a natural disaster. They will see this misery soon, as epidemics become a norm, as diseases take over, as corruption prevents us from getting anything done – and as we die in an ambulance stuck in a traffic jam, waiting to get to a hospital.
Divine Intervention:
The bible has this – in the Passover, where the first born male of every non-conforming household was killed by the hand of the avenging angel – of course similar stories would exist in every other holy book. More likely, divine intervention will come to us as the face of nature’s fury. 26/07 was just a gentle warning, an unpleasant breeze. The storm will follow soon – and in this storm, the only hope is that all the guilty should be punished. Perhaps the first born of every politician, every news paper editor, every man who threw the plastic bag in the gutter and every driver who skips traffic signals must die too. Only then, when this disaster becomes so personal to all, will we wake up. Only then, will we be able to rise from this mire and filth, and only then, will our children smile at us and say ‘Dad, Thank You’ instead of ‘Dad, F**k You’
25th August 2005, 21:58
