Alive Mumbai

For days we were waiting for some action…some event… some signal to tell the world that we are not a bunch of stupid citizens who take every bit of the dastardly attacks inflicted upon them, lying down….That day came soon enough, exactly a week after every Mumbaikar spent his night glued to the news channels and helplessly seeing his innocent fellowmen succumbing down to the bullets fired by some unknown brutes.

Never in my life have I made a plan with my friends and been hundred percent sure that it will work out as it was planned to the T… This time it simply couldn’t go wrong…there were to be no excuses, no late comers, no absentees…We had to come together because each of us had made an unspoken promise to our beloved city on an unforgivable night.

Calls and messages started flooding in even before the clock struck 6, the stipulated time to start the protest march to Gateway of India. The area outside Regal was ‘crowded’ in the real sense of the term…you could be standing right opposite a person and yet not see him…Maybe that is what must have happened because we were just not able to spot most of our friends in the rush. The networks were jammed so the only option we had was to go ahead with the flow and make new friends on the way. And trust me, it was quite a sight to see complete strangers coming together to make their strong yet bottled opinions heard.

Moving forward, people started screaming out slogans; some very innovative, some funny and some outright silly…definitely didn’t agree with the people who were echoing chants of ‘Ek do Ek do…Pakistan ko Todh do’…because I for one had come to protest against the inefficiency of our own countrymen and not to shift the blame on to some insecure country, which time and again gets jolted back to reality about its inadequacy to bring India’s might down…To hell with those opportunists, guys let’s take care of our wonderful politicians first, Pakistan’s despicable efforts will automatically bite the dust then.

But there was a lot to keep me from pondering on that particular issue…The colourful posters held up by proud Mumbaikars was a welcome distraction…Let me list a few
1. Mr Terrorist – you wanted us in large numbers na….here we are!!!
2. Dear Chief Minister, Instead of taking RGV to Taj…you should have shown the terrorists RGV Ki Aag, they would have definitely killed themselves then.
3. Bring the bar girls back…They might be able to protect us better.
4. RGV made two Sarkars and helped bring down one.

Mannn…if I had an advertising agency, I would have definitely hired these guys…they were just too good. Secondly it kept pumping up the enthusiasm into each individual who was forced to walk at a snail’s pace, thanks to the overwhelming crowd.

For the first time we didn’t see people complaining about how overcrowded Mumbai is... There was a glint in everyone’s eye which came from knowing that they are doing something worthwhile for the city in their own way. Everyone secretly congratulated each other for turning up and being a part of this once in a lifetime event which we would remember even 50 years down the line. I completely agree with my friend who said, “I have never seen so much crowd in my entire life yet I can bet that there won’t be one single case of the crowd getting out of hand or misbehaviour. That’s the power of tonight.”

That’s the moment when the Taj came into sight…a structure which was already a legend but now it shall be remembered with the gory details of the massacre that changed the life of every individual who takes pride in calling himself a Mumbaikar. Anger, frustration and God knows what all welled up inside me at that instant and I could sense that everyone around me felt just the same.

Moving further, we saw a bunch of people, distributing water, snacks to the people in the gathering for free. Wow…that was thoughtful and something I had least expected, somehow. We also passed people whom we had seen on our way to the Taj. They were still screaming aloud slogans, against the politicians and about the unity of Mumbai, with the same enthusiasm that they oozed one hour ago.

Then we lit candles on the pavement, clicked a lot of snaps of everything around us…after all we wanted to take home every inch of this proud moment.

Before ending this post, I would like to add that the significance of the protest march was heightened when all the radio stations came together and without any need to outdo one another jointly played the song ‘Maa Tujhe Salaam’ on all the radio stations, sharp at 8. Talk about a magnificent conclusion to a breathtaking night…Let’s just hope that the conclusion to the cause we came together for will also be equally bright

Jai Hind!!!