Freitag, 28. November 2008

Bomb-Bay

Friends,
For a while now, I have agonised whether I should start a blog. What can I add to the cyber chatter crowding the space? Are we not victims (and perpetrators) of too much information, to much gratuitous opinion, too much gossip? How can my soundbites make a difference? Should I not protect the space most in need of protection today - the private space, of oneself, of family and friends?
On the other hand: After I have left my job, many friends have (I believe honestly) told me that they miss my voice, my impressions on India, my stories. Would this be a way of re-connecting with them? Would my occasional blog give them a sense of perspective, a handle for understanding a reality which is getting more complex by the day?
I don't know, and so this first blog is a trial balloon, which I will send to some friends, asking you to respond (or not respond, if you feel indifferent about it).

You won't have to make a judgment just by reading this 'mission statement'. In fact, I have chosen this moment because it is a singular moment for the city we live in, and for us - a moment, therefore, to give vent to a few emotional reactions.

The attacks against South Bombay on November 26 is a watershed event. It is not the first, by far, but it does cut more deeply than earlier ones. Why? We may huff and haw, but we have to accept that we are part of the city's elite. The Taj and the Oberoi, Colaba Causeway and VT, Metro Cinema and the Gateway have been part of our social and psychological home, for a long time - in my case, for forty years. To see the flames leaping up towards the cupola of the Taj, to see the columns and arches turning black and shuddering under the impact of hand grenades, to see the water jets entering into rooms which were suffused with care and grace and luxury - all this was heartbreaking. It robbed me of a part of my own biography, my own history.

The Taj and VT and Cafe Leopold had provided, over the years and thorugh all the changes they witnessed, a quiet visual reassurance that life was a continuum, that some of the innocence we had felt in our youth, in the Sixties and Seventies, was still alive. We knew it unconsciously because the Towers were still standing there, the Sea Lounge was still looking the same, as was that magnificent staircase and all those paintings along the corridors.

For the last few days I have had hardly a chance to think about these things, since I was forced back into my old journalistic job. And I during one of the radio interviews I suddenly noticed that I was slipping back into using the name of 'Bombay' instead of 'Mumbai'. Was it a sign of nostalgia? Was it a sign of rebellion? I did it unconsciously, so I don't know. But what I do know is that the name 'Bombay' embodied some of those feelings which I have just described - a city of wide spaces, of beautiful old buildings, ramshackle or elegant, of tree-lined and deserted streets, laidback and also a bit lazy, casual even in the midst of furious haggling at Crawford Market.

This name has been officially replaced by 'Mumbai', and I have long resisted to using it. I have nothing against 'Mumbai', because it is the name given to the city by its non-English speakers, which is after all the majority. I also acknowledge it because it has this resonance of Mumba Devi, the local goddess of the Koli fisherfolk. But I object to the exclusiveness which Mumbai is now given, the obliteration of the old name, which after all was its birth name, given to it by the Portuguese and the Brits, when the islands from Mahim onwards started to be strung together.

But now another version of the name keeps getting into my head - Bomb-Bay. In the last few days the name took on a sinister ring, as bombs and bullets rained down on the people of Bombay, on ordinary travellers at CST, busineess tycoons at the Taj, on rich socialites at the Oberoi and nurses at Cama Hospital. And just as the facade of the Taj has lost its purety and innocence, the name of Bombay too has lost some of its charm, perhaps forever.

It has been stained before. Who could forget that other variation - 'Slumbay'? That is also part of the city, the Bombay of the shantytowns and the hovels along the footpaths and the railway lines, the Bombay of the poor. But 'Slumbay' never gained currency, perhaps for the shame it implied, perhaps because we refused to accept it as part of that proud city, because we felt that the slums too would one disappear and give its inhabitants some dignity of living.

Will it be the same with 'Bomb-bay'? Will we be able to erase this memory? Perhaps that is asking too much. Just as we cannot forget so much of what happens in the world, we can forgive the world. And so perhaps with Bombay: We will not forget those nights with flames billowing out of the windows, with the heavy curtains drawn on the third floor of Nariman House, with the furtive bodies appearing at the windows of the Oberoi. But we may forgive the city for what it has done to us, forgive its politicians and policemen, its fixers and babus - forgive ourselves. Maybe the bombs have woken us up to the war that is taking place, and the dangers it brings to all our lives - not from the AK-47s, but from the people who have sold this country to the highest bidders, and from us who have allowed them to run away with the loot.

As I write this I look sometimes at the TV screens - at the funerals of the police officers who have died under the bullets of the jihadis. One retired police officer had this to say: "Hemant Karkare has not been killed by the terrorists. He has been killed by our corrupt system". And we are part of it.