Mumbai Rocked by Seven Bomb Blasts

Re: # 11

Finally someone tells as it is!

Usually I dont advocate for death for the terrorists!

but...
T

That is what they deserve! You take other`s right away to live, and Your should be taken away!

#15 stukey i talked to some bambaiyyas..they are saying it was in 1-st class since muslims are less likely to be in it...interesting logic!

while a subset does the bombing, a support-system does exist.

Re: # 16

You got proof about Smita Thackeray Stuka. Or is it the usual newspaper feud?

You`ve got to admit the Jihadis tried to kill some politicians in Delhi but found it a tad difficult. Then the brave souls figured its better to knock the defenceless ones down.

They seem to have defused one bomb. They`ll probably find out where it came from.

Now stop all this sanctimonious bullshit about being impotent. People died in Madrid and London too. Were they all impotent?

Somebody will be caught and killed. Hopefully the right people. But you bet the real leaders will be living somewhere else safe and sound and in places where you will need Interpol to hunt them down legally. Hopefully we shan`t be squeamish or coy about that.

stuka:
you are forgetting peeps on this very forum were speculating more bombings on indian civilians with glee not too long ago. zeemax have already stated the terms of conflict on unplugged. general ``muslim`` public is irrelevant to this thing silent or vocal, doesnt really matter. It is gonna be mainly between the ones who got the firecrackers and i sure as hell dont wish anything but complete utter annihilation on jihadis before they get to the wmds (nuclear, bio, etc).

Re: # 14

Who are we kidding?

If you even care to put a little bit of logic on who would constitute the majority of commuter traffic in the 1st class compartments of Bombay trains
before writing that, you would get the answer.


This is exactly the kind of rationalization which allows for more attacks like this...

Re: # 18
Jang
That was the first thing that came to my mind. But don`t think its because they wanted less Muslim casualties. They want to stoke the fire so that there will be more riots and more reason for folks to get estranged and further increase the polarisation. These guys don`t care about any lives Muslim or Hindu or .... If they did, in Iraq Muslims would not be killing Muslims with such barbarity.

swarrier:
it is like recursive application of hellfire. first infidels then ahmedis then ismailis/bohris then progressive/quranic-muslims then shias then barelvis. in iraq alqaeda group mainly is interested in engaging americans and killing the dispensible tending to hell muslims, the shias. Muslim bias is like a monster that after eating everyone around starts to tear up its own flesh.

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Now stop all this sanctimonious bullshit about being impotent. People died in Madrid and London too. Were they all impotent?

What impotence? Maybe someone else`s post...??? U are right about the soft target bit...yaar, these guys will kill in an indiscriminate manner.

hamidm #11 I agree with you 100%. These terrorist animals have no religion, no respect for human life. They are common criminals and killers and should be treated for what they are. At a minimum, the musharraf government should provide whatever assistance the Indian police need to hunt them down. Anything less would be a disgrace. There is a time for rivalry, and a time to stand up and be counted for what you stand for. And today is the time to stand up for all true Pakistanis to stand up and be counted as being at one with our Indian brothers and sisters whose lives have been disrupted or lost due to this bombing.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/12/opinion/12fernandes.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

India’s Indestructible Heart
By NARESH FERNANDES

Published: July 12, 2006
Mumbai, India

MY Tuesday morning began with a flashback of the tragedy that “buried Lower Manhattan in a cloud of toxic dust that for a moment blotted out the sun.” That’s how a former colleague of mine from The Wall Street Journal had ended the first chapter of her memoir about her experiences on 9/11, which she had just e-mailed me from New York.

Twelve hours later, Indian news channels reported an explosion on a rush-hour train just past Bandra, the suburban stop where I’d gotten off an hour before. Our commuter rail’s western line carries three million of us back from work every evening, so almost everybody I know was a potential victim. Just as I was absorbing the enormity of the blast, there was news of another — and then some more. As the evening wore on, we learned that there’d been eight blasts, all timed within a few minutes.

Many of us had seen this before. On March 12, 1993, at least 10 bombs shattered the spine of our city, then called Bombay, in two hours, tearing their way northward in short, deadly bursts. That attack left 257 dead. Since then, the city has been the target of several other vicious bombings, most recently in 2003, when car bombs went off at the city’s most recognizable symbol, the Gateway of India.

The last few years have been difficult for overcrowded Mumbai, but this fortnight has left nerves especially taut. Moderate monsoon rains caused such enormous flooding that the whole city was shut down for three days. Those floods evoked memories of the cloudburst last July 26, when more than 400 people were drowned, electrocuted and crushed after their homes collapsed on top of them.

It was a tragedy that brought into focus how years of willful neglect and breathtaking corruption by municipal officials, working in tandem with avaricious politicians and real estate developers, have brought India’s financial capital to its knees. After “26/7,” as the press immediately labeled the day, our politicians and administrators fell over themselves to assure us that they’d set things right. Last week’s rains showed that their promises were as empty as our drains were full of rubbish.

Then, when the rain stopped last week, we found hooligans rampaging through our streets. As we settled down to brunch on Sunday, our TV sets brought us the chilling sight of buses being ransacked and burnt across Mumbai by cadres of the Hindu nativist Shiv Sena party. They claimed that a statue of their leader’s late wife had been vandalized, and they were protesting in the only way they knew how.

Despite the long history of sporadic violence, Mumbai has always picked itself up by its bootstraps and marched off to work as soon as the trains started working again. Our ability to jeer at misfortune is attributed in the Indian press to the “spirit of Bombay,” which is variously described as “indomitable,” “never say die” and “undying.” But our spirit has been saluted so frequently of late, all the praise was beginning to annoy me.

Before I left the office Tuesday evening, I finished a magazine article complaining that this illogical faith in Bombay’s innate resilience had the unfortunate consequence of absolving the city’s administrators of the responsibility of actually fixing our problems. No matter how bad things get, they seem to suggest, we have an infinite capacity to cope.

Soon after hearing about the blasts, I made my way to the local hospital to see if they needed blood donations. It had been less than an hour since the first explosion, but I’d been beaten to it by nearly 200 people.

When the volunteers found that the authorities had adequate supplies of blood, they waited patiently to help carry victims into the wards. Others stood over shocked survivors, fanning them with newspapers and helping them contact relatives.

Stories of exceptional selflessness have flooded in all evening. One came from my friend Aarti, who was in one of the trains on which a bomb went off. As she jumped out of her compartment, she saw streams of slum dwellers from the bleak shanties along the tracks rushing toward the train with bed sheets. They knew that there would be no stretchers to be found and were offering their threadbare cottons to be used as hammocks to carry victims away.

Perhaps the newspapers have it right after all. An anguished night has fallen over Mumbai, but when the city eventually sleeps it will do so secure in the knowledge that its spirit is unbroken, that it is, exactly like the myth has it, indomitable and undying.

Naresh Fernandes is the editor of Time Out Mumbai.

``Chowk Staff condemns these deadly blasts and sympathises with the victims` families. Unfortunately terrorist bombings have become a part of life these days and no country seems to be safe against them. ``

What use condemnation! Even they condemn these ghastly crimes against humanity who are obviously responsibly for them, directly or indirectly. No doubt such bombings have become a part of our life but the government must do something to protect lives of the citizens
or if they cannot do anything to stop spending billions in the name of security and defence to lighten the burden of taxes.

In fact it being an international phenomenon now something must be done at UN level, treating it as the most important issue facing survival of humanity.

All we can do is pray for the departed and breaved families.
God Bless

why the first class compartments? I am going to throw my uncooked raw theory here...if you don`t like it throw it out.....I think ``damn capitalists``, ``damn rich elites`` opressing the ummah is finally trickling down from Masadi like web pages to the grassroots level of jihadism...finally Marx meets Mo.

First of all it would not be fair on part of Indians here to make it a ``Hindu Alone`` Tragedy. Looking into the composition of Indian cities, such crowded places, at any time, will have 5-10% Muslims in the crowd. On the Indian TV Channels, many Muslims were seen in the hospitals and many more muslims were sending SMS Messages to their relatives that they were safe. This means that the victims included Muslims as well.

But Indians, of whatever faith and whereever must keep in mind that during the past one year or so these groups are trying to foment Hindu-Muslim Trouble in the country. Their pattern i.e. Ayodhyaya-Delhi Diwali-Benares-Nagpur and now Mumbai shows a clear and distinct pattern that Hindus lose their cool and pounce upon minority muslims. Insecure Indian Muslims ,in turn, will have no choice but to take shelter under these groups.

India needs two pronged strategy- No.1. Hot pursuit in Pakistan-you know what I mean and No.2 International Pressure on Pakistan to close Jihadi Camps. Direct action against Pakistan/ these groups is not desirable as international community will not support it. Indirect action is.

Re: # 27

Well written piece! As cynical as one gets uttering things like ``never-say-die Mumbaikar`` and ``the spirit of this indomitable city`` etc., it`s all true! I was almost in tears watching the coverage not (just) because of the senseless waste of life, but because of the way the ordinary citizen reacted to the situation. Let`s face it, when half a dozen bombs have gone off in rapid succession, your first thought would be getting home to your loved ones in one piece. But apparently not everyone thinks like that.

One of the news channels interviewed a Ramesh Solanki who helped rescue survivors from the Bandra blast. When asked how many people he had managed to bring to the hospital, he muttered an embarrassed ``just five``. I almost choked. Never mind that this gentleman has eschewed the safety of hearth and home to save the lives of people he doesn`t even know, he is actually abashed that he could not have done more! Redeems your faith in ole humanity, does it not?

Another man spoke of how he and his five ``karyakarta`` (workers, probably political activists) friends rushed out of their building near Mahim and helped the victims out, some bleeding profusely, and literally carried them to the nearby hospitals. A young student recounted angrily how the RPF (railway police) refused to touch the bodies instead directing onlookers to pick them up and cart them to nearby hospitals. In fact the cops looked totally helpless and ill-at-ease, seemingly having no clue how to tackle this situation.

Every reporter on every channel, including many of CNN-IBN`s citizen journalists, reported how people willingly opened the doors to their cars, their kitchens and their homes to ensure their stranded fellow citizens` well-being. A student hostel in South Mumbai opened up its kitchen and dorms to total strangers, mostly women, elderly people and children scouted by young student volunteers from nearby Churchgate station. A grateful father of a sleeping one-year-old girl said deadpan that were it not for the volunteers, his child would be starving in the street. Taximen and autowalas, so often reviled for making the most of situations like this, offered to take the wounded to nearby hospitals, many for free. Trucks, buses and private vehicles on the Western express highway opened their doors to anybody in need of a lift.

Like the author Naresh says, it`s almost galling to have to praise the spirit of Bombay because that spirit conceals tha sheer apathy of the corrupt and venal administration that purports to run the city. Still, it`s something to be proud of. If New Yprk is proud of its mayor, firemen and cops, we mumbaikars can tilt our hats to the nameless, faceless men and women in our midst who give from the heart and expect nothing in return.