Recovery period

Mumbai seems to be gradually limping back to normal. After a traumatic time during and just after the terror attacks, as they are now known, the city and its collective psyche pulled itself together, albeit with some pain, and restarted the business of living. The newspapers reported how people had become more cautious and, as proven by one shocking test conducted by the railyway police, less careful about their own security and that of their environment. But in Mumbai, life has to go on - after all, it is the commercial capital of this country and business will always continue, no matter what is done to try and stop it. We all need to live; to live, we need to make money; to make money, we have to work, never mind tragedy, disaster or grief.

And so it has been. The places that were attacked - CST, the Taj, Trident-Oberoi, Cama Hospital - have beefed up security. It takes quite a lot of determination to get into the hotels, though the station is still easy enough to access. It has to be, the traffic flow is so much greater there. The hotels opened yesterday, with multi-faith prayers and huge crowds proving their devotion to the high-life of the city. The Trident is a businesslike and very modern hotel. Even as Mumbaikars were shocked at the attack, they do not get as emotional as they have been with the Taj, which is in its very walls a symbol of the City of Gold. And so the who's who flocked to the old intitution, to be greeted by Ratan Tata, the man who watched his heritage burning and vowed to bring it back to its former glory in record time. There are all sorts of stories of amazing courage and dedication that came out of the carnage and it makes me, for one, very proud to be part of the ethos that makes up this wonderful city.

That apart, what I wonder about is whether we have learned anything from what happened starting November 26. We are angry this time, more than ever before, because to each one of us, the terrorists were attacking us, personally, individually, their cruelty deliberate and direct. We are also more determined this time, perhaps because we saw these people shooting at us, and want to put an end to this deadly potential. But at some level we have been wearing blinkers. We do know now that the terrorists were of Pakistani origin; but we assumed that from the moment the first shot was fired. And we, almost all of us, even with good sense prevailing, want them and their country to be annihilated. How does that make us any different from them?

The ceremonies at the two hotels and their equally ceremonial openings felt good, even if you were only watching it on television. It showed that we as Mumbaikars are determined not to be cowed, even if we face death. And it shows that in the process of rebuilding, in the manner of being brave, in the way we all face a crisis, we are not seen as rich or poor or privileged or not. We are all just people, fighting to survive and battling forces that want to destroy us and our city and our identity. And for that, we should all stand up and say, with almost religious fervour, Jai Hind.