//
you're reading...

DesiPundit

Mumbai

By ⋅ November 27, 2008 ⋅ Post a comment

I was out last evening and it was pretty late when I was catch­ing up on my tweets when I saw a post about blasts in Mum­bai. After that, there was no sleep for a cou­ple of hours as I was fol­low­ing the reports com­ing in from dif­fer­ent folks.

It’s been numb­ing to say the least. Every time some­thing like this hap­pens I am seized by dif­fer­ent reac­tions — sad­ness, anger, frus­tra­tion, and help­less­ness to var­i­ous degrees. And I am sure that must be the case with a major­ity of peo­ple. To be so vul­ner­a­ble to attacks in the spate of a year is extremely scary a sit­u­a­tion. Imag­ine how pow­er­less our Intel­li­gence must be to not have a CLUE about the blasts / attacks com­ing to any of the cities this year.

I hope all of you readers/bloggers from Mum­bai are safe and sound. I’ve already called the few peo­ple I know there and every­one is shell shocked and depressed.

I am lost for words. Really.

Mean­while, the folks in Mum­bai have revived the help line blog so do fol­low this for infor­ma­tion:
http://mumbaihelp.blogspot.com

And I’ve been fol­low­ing Twit­ter for most of my updates, so if you folks are on Twit­ter, then you’re already prob­a­bly get­ting many of them. You can fol­low the Mum­bai related tweets here.

Vinu has put up a whole load of pic­tures. He’s been out and about for a while cap­tur­ing on cam­era what’s hap­pen­ing around. And Arun Shan­bag too ven­tured out for a bit. but says that his big bazooka lens will prob­a­bly get him into trou­ble. He’s posted his first hand accounts here.

There’s a news arti­cle here which quotes about peo­ple flock­ing to social net­work­ing sites for infor­ma­tion — quite true I think. Since I don’t have tele­vi­sion, I’ve been fol­low­ing the news mainly online and through Twit­ter. A CNN arti­cle reports how the social media reacted to Mum­bai.

Some reac­tions from world lead­ers. Need our Indian lead­ers to now stand up and talk tough. And act tough.

MJ Akbar writes here: “India is a tough nation. No one should have illu­sions about that. It has fought off Mus­lim ter­ror­ists in Kash­mir, Sikh ter­ror­ists in Pun­jab, Chris­t­ian ter­ror­ists in Naga­land, and Hindu ter­ror­ists in Assam and across the coun­try (there is a Maoist insur­rec­tion in a broad swathe of states in the cen­tre of India). India has learnt that you can­not blame the whole com­mu­nity for the sins of a few. But under inef­fec­tual gov­er­nance, par­tic­u­larly in the last three years, a tough coun­try is in dan­ger of degen­er­at­ing into a soft state. Instead of being the inter­na­tional leader in the world­wide war against ter­ror­ism, India is sink­ing into the despair of a con­tin­ual victim.”

An Inde­pen­dent arti­cle quotes the UK For­eign Sec­re­tary, David Miliband, describ­ing the killings as an “attack on all of us”. That it is, definitely.

Read:
Wiki Entry
Dina Mehta
Neha’s Global Voices
Indian blog­gers
Twit­ter Feed
Cit­i­zen Jour­nal­ism
Guardian’s blo­gos­phere round-up

Discussion

8 Responses to “Mumbai”

  1. The whole coun­try is indeed “seized by dif­fer­ent reactions”.

    What sur­prised me truly is that twit­ter has emerged as a source of news. I read about the role of twit­ter at http://www.labnol.org/internet/terror-attacks-in-mumbai-and-twitter/5671/

    Your story of fol­low­ing the news on twit­ter with­out a TV is a proof of the impor­tance twit­ter has gained.

    Posted by Krishnan | November 27, 2008, 9:19 pm

  2. There is one more site in mum­bai that has also come up.
    http://helpmumbai.pinstorm.com

    Any­way, I am glad I don’t have a tv, because it agi­tates the mind more than any­thing else. Half the blogs I have read today are either scream­ing mur­der at Barkha Dutt or thirst­ing for revenge. Its like a live movie show that every­one is par­tic­i­pat­ing in.

    Posted by Grasshopper | November 27, 2008, 11:00 pm

  3. It is ter­ri­ble how these Mus­lim fun­da­men­tal­ists have wrecked lives, dis­turbed peace and forced us to sac­ri­fice some of our best offi­cers. May the police­men, offi­cers and com­man­dos who sac­ri­ficed their lives for us rest in peace.

    Posted by SS | November 28, 2008, 3:27 pm

  4. Anita,

    With regards to what MJ Akbar said about India, I hope you or any Indian for that mat­ter does not really endorse that! I think con­trary to what he has said about India being a tough nation. It is infact hilar­i­ous, unfortunately.

    Most of the ter­ror­ist attacks in India have been the works of ter­ror­ist peo­ple of mus­lim ori­gin. This gives out a strong mes­sage of what really cooks in their com­mu­nity. I have good mus­lim friends but hon­estly, I can’t take them and call them as a major pro­por­tion form­ing of the whole com­mu­nity. And it is a known fact that even a mod­er­ate mus­lim actu­ally fails to gar­ner courage and speak leave alone act, against any wrong doings hap­pen­ing in their com­mu­nity. I can­not seem to digest the idea of good mus­lim and bad mus­lim exist­ing in two dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties either! These ter­ror­ists attacks in the last 4-5years have proven again and again the role of localites majorly involved.

    Also, why the hell do we have to care about for­eign lead­ers. India has been bruis­ing with these fata­laties for years only to get noticed now! More­over, west­ern coun­tries still call these ter­ror­ists attack­ing India as mil­i­tants! Don’t you think it is enough to prove whether they have a help­ful agenda?

    This is the time to make tough deci­sions and action them! We all can under­stand very well that under the cur­rent government’s regime, how many ter­ror­ist attacks have actu­ally taken place. Hon­estly, it is shame­ful to even think about it!

    Please do not take my opin­ions as per­son­ally offen­sive to any body.

    And hindu ter­ror­ists in Assam?!! Absolutely ridiculous..I am sure you would know what ulfa peo­ple are fight­ing for…definitely not under the name of religion!

    Posted by Gina | November 30, 2008, 9:22 pm

  5. Inspite of being a mumbaikar(not the raj thackeray’s way), i feel the spirit of mum­bai is being over-hyped. It is the absolute pathetic pas­sive­ness thats being por­trayed as the unbreak­able spirit of mum­bai. I under­stand and agree that it has matured enuf to not let a riot hap­pen. ppl do help each other in such sit­u­a­tions but why to tol­er­ate repet­i­tive attacks. why cant some action be taken? we grossly under­mine the value of life.

    Posted by Nandish | December 2, 2008, 12:46 am

  6. It is very sad and dis­turb­ing what has hap­pened and scary too..and I know India is a HUGE coun­try and we should not see these attacks only as on Mum­bai but on India as a whole. I so wish some­thing pos­i­tive comes out for the country…given the kind of politi­cians we have we can be attacked again and any­where, no place is safe.

    Posted by Shalini | December 7, 2008, 8:44 am

  7. Sad times these. And the cacaphony of diver­gent views continues.

    Posted by Lubna | December 7, 2008, 3:52 pm

  8. Nice Blog. Amaz­ing con­tent. Really liked some con­tent.
    But the world needs to see it yaar.
    Con­sider sign­ing up in this Indian Top­site to get more traf­fic to your amaz­ing blog. http://www.top100india.co.nr
    Just as a sug­ges­tion.
    Thanks for your Time in read­ing this.

    Posted by Rutul Naik | December 17, 2008, 8:07 pm

Post a Comment

Photos on flickr

Tweets