Where to from here?

Warning: This post is going to be very emotional and is likely to ignite passionate feelings in you the reader. Don't tell me I didn't warn you beforehand.


All right so Mumbai burned for 60 hours and we watched. Some of us on tv, some of us from close range, some of us through news channels reporting it live on the internet (thank God for good internet speeds) and some of us refreshing the timesofindia.com website every now and then. So bad men enter city, fire randomly at people, hold people hostage, kill innocents, kill the ones protecting the innocents, get killed....news over. Far from it. In fact this is where the story begins. What next? Where to from here?


It's not that Mumbai has not been attacked before. Quite the contrary in fact. Mumbai is not new to terror attacks. What Mumbai is not used to is such well planned massacre of innocents, and such lack of respect towards the city by it's very elite. The less we speak about politicians the better. That would perhaps be best discussed in a different blog post where I can sit and bash them. But hang on there is a bigger question at hand here. Mumbai faced serial bomb blasts 15 years ago and they came by sea. 15 years down the line they still come by sea....what have we learnt in this past decade?? Apparently nothing....All that our govt. is good at is the blame game, and that has already begun. Rather than taking a united stand against terrorism what are the people who are responsible for our safety doing?


All of us are at this point very proud of the brave policemen, the army, the navy, the firemen and of course the NSG commandos. Yes, they risked their lives so that the city could live (dare I say peacefully?). And this is not to belittle what they did, but lack of planning is so evident in this entire operation, if you will. The terrorists apparently had blueprints of the hotels that they had attacked and were hiding in (notice the word hiding is important here...cowards). It took more than 5 hours for the NSG commandos to reach the city of Mumbai after the Govt. of Maharashtra decided that they needed NSG help. Fine, it takes time to reach from Chandigrah to Mumbai. Why don't they have their own plane that they can use and reach in time? Why do they have to be transported by BEST buses from the airport to the hotel? And why in God's name are they not briefed about how the operation needs to be carried out in this entire journey? Wouldn't it be logical that by the time these guys reach the Taj, they should have been provided with blueprints of the hotel, and a plan already made about where to enter, how to plan the attack and how long should this operation take? No. Instead they reached Taj and were just sitting in the trucks there, having no clue about what to do, waiting for orders from the higher authorities?? In a situation such as this, where every second counts, how can you have these highly trained people just waiting for over an hour to get orders??? The fact that it took over 60 hours for 200 men to kill 4 terrorists says a lot about how well planned the entire operation was from the top brasses of NSG. I don't blame the commandos. I have nothing but good things to say about them. I understand they are just the pawns who are sent to fight, they cant make decisions about planning the attacks, and I have only admiration for their courage. My angst is with the lack of planning on the part of their seniors.


There are few people worth mentioning here that I and I am sure you the reader are also very proud of. Hemant Karkare, the ATS chief, Ashok Kamte deputy commissioner, Vijay Salaskar the encounter specialist, Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan and those brave soldiers of our armed forces, the police, and the firemen who fought for you and I. What I am not proud of is the lack of decent arms that they are provided by the Government. It is ridiculous to call the vest that Hemant Karkare was wearing as bulletproof. He was fighting terrorists armed with AK56's with his 303! How can we expect him to fight these terrorists armed with such arms with what the government provides our cops? Some of our havaldars are expected to go in with their lathis! (I don't have a reference for this, but I swear I read this somewhere, or heard it on a reputable TV channel).

Yes I am ANGRY. I am angry at the terrorists first for entering my city. How dare they enter my city and create such havoc. I am more ANGRY at the people who are supposed to maintain decorum and people who are supposed to govern this city though. I am angry at Vilasrao Deshmukh, I am angry at R.R. Patil for making ridiculous statements, such as "in big cities such small incidents happen time and again". Are you fucking kidding me? Your country just face probably it's worst ever terror attack, people have died here and you're saying this is a minor incident. I am ANGRY at the same cliched, "SPIRIT OF MUMBAI". I want to scream and say that no the spirit is dead, we don't want to talk about it. I want accountability. I don't want you to forget this, like we forgot any of the past attacks...not any more. We are used to this entire "chalta hain" attitude for way to long and this has got to change. We need answers and we need them now. This cannot wait and this cannot be another of those incidents that we just forget about.


I definitely won't forget those innocent people who lost their lives and their families and silently as I watched the news, I couldn't control the tears that started to flow as I heard about their stories. My prayers are with them and their families....

As I was sitting down and thinking about this entire mayhem that occurred in my city, in my Mumbai, in my home, I thought of the lines Barrack Obama had said about the terrorists after the 9/11 attacks, "My powers of empathy, my ability to reach into another's heart, cannot penetrate the blank stares of those who would murder innocents with such abstract, serene satisfaction."