Mumbai Rocked by Seven Bomb Blasts

Re: # 21

Well if thats the way you look at things... how many Hindus vs how many Muslims.. then you should have no problems with the violence in Kashmir.. since the insurgency began, majority of those killed there have been Muslims. This what I call sick minds at play. We dont need people like you in these trying times.

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: # 12

Was it just Hindus who died in the Bombay Blasts, or did Muslims die?

Its not Hindus, nor Muslims!

Terrorists have no religion.

Oye Veh!

There goes these Islamic fundamentalist ba$tards again !!

Actually it is not these guys who are to blame.

It is us Hindus, who inspite of multiple provocations, do nothing but turn our heads away.

It is us Hindus, who pay lip service to the religion, but default to Caste/Region/Language when it really matters

It is us who are impotent.

How many more incidents need to happen before we wake up?

Hmm, as one can see, the biggest haters of Hindus are the right wing Hindus who will call the community cowards leechers etc.

``We seem to have developed a Stockholm Syndrome. We still tolerate all the abuses. I don`t know if we will ever find the courage.
``

Also, I find hilarious the assumption that all victims are Hindus. Did not realize that rich Muslims, Christians and Sikhs of Bombay travel by Taxi or helicopter and hence do not need train service. Let`s face facts..the victims were Indians, anonymous Indians. Random people at the wrong place and the wrong time. The perps were believers in a specific ideology. TAhmed or some random Chowkie or Pakistani was not blowing bombs. A sub-set of a subset planned and activated the carnage. What will be the reaction...some people in India will be arrested, some platitudes will be spoken, relief measures will be announced for which the victims of the families will have to run around and pay bribes, a few weeks or months hence some babu will put a signature on a piece of paper sanctioning some money and the result will be a blast in Karachi or Quetta and meanwhile life will carry on and the victims will be remembered by their individual family members and close friends. No more and no less. So the hysterical rants are getting rather boring.

I would say I find Mohar`s comment to be sensible..

``why can`t we have some half-way decent emergency services..... in any other country - you will see uniformed professionals with modern equipment handling such situations .... but in India, it`s always the passers-by and onlookers using bedsheets to carry wounded out from the sites..... no paramedics, no ambulances, no fire trucks, no police, no professional help.... whether it`s a small auto accident or a big terror attack - the response is the same..... callous, un-organized, chaotic..... so pathetic..
``

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.

The defenders of the Hindus, the Shiv Sena, was busy rioting in Bombay a day before the blasts because someone desecrated a statue of Bal Thackeray`s wife. The irony...a man who sleeps with his own daughter in law is generating riots because his wife`s statue was defaced. The police meanwhile stays busy protecting the same so called VIPs. The Jihadi bastards, why don`t they kill such defenders of Hindus or even the defenders of Indian democracy (our politicians) instead of killing ordinary commuters in trains or gardeners outside Parliament???

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.

#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.

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).

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.

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.

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.