Indeed, Mumbai is the very antithesis of a maximum city, everything about it is minimum. It survives, barely so. It breathes, just about. It grows and goes on, because there’s no alternative. It picks itself up after each disaster because that’s the only way to be. Now, it’s also a city struggling to live with unprecedented rage, frustrated with its own limitations, fed up with the very idea of Mumbai. It’s a city waiting to explode, or implode. It won’t fall because Mumbaikars won’t let it, but it has tripped. To the world outside, it seems like a city that "bounced back" and returned to normal in enviable time. To the Mumbaikar, very little about the city is now normal. Indeed, the very essence of normal has changed since 6.24 pm on July 11.
Absence of violence is not normalcy. What is now abnormal is the Mumbaikar’s fear that unprovoked violence of the sort that comes in RDX packs could be right round any corner. That commuters still look askance at fellow commuters who place their bags on the luggage racks in suburban trains. That a paan-shop fight over loose change can turn life-threatening. That a family thinks the goodbye each morning could be its last. That so many Mumbaikars now look over the shoulder, under the seats in trains and buses, peer at taxis and rickshaws so closely. That so many Mumbaikars should be so very angry, frustrated and fearful of what lies ahead. That so many accord this strange mix of emotions a slot higher than the famed resilient spirit. It’s not a normal time at all.
Not that Mumbai is not used to violence. Political aggression, Shiv Sena goondaism, trade union violence, underworld wars, bomb blasts. Mumbaikars have been caught in the wrong place at the wrong time many a time, but with a difference. In the past it was possible to identify the enemy; the perpetrator of violence was not nameless and faceless, as it is this time round. "This is enough reason for the uneasy calm that underlines an average day in Mumbai now," says Congress MP Priya Dutt who spent hours with blast victims and others. "Terrorism has no face, no religion, but unless it’s identified and taken care of, people won’t feel they got justice." Uneasy calm, uneasy peace, uneasy Mumbaikar seething within. Their common refrain: we must do something. That something ranges from a mild "let’s have peace rallies" to a venomous "let’s smash those terror training camps in PoK".
The anger is primarily against political governance—the prime minister and the chief minister, the terrorists whose identity is fuzzy after days of investigation, and finally the police who just don’t seem to get anything right. The rage, mixed with trepidation, is everywhere. When the city’s largest-circulated newspaper invited readers to sign a petition to the prime minister saying "Enough is enough, Mumbai is tired, impatient and very angry", 20,000 messages of support poured in a single day, and the lines haven’t stopped buzzing.
Representatives of the diamond trade threatened to turn their backs on the government and arrange their own security in the future, which would entail cordoning off the industry-dominated areas of the city. This is hardly practical but that does not matter.
"The rich and poor, the educated and uneducated, everyone feels they can indulge in this orgy of anger this time because they can do it without the feeling of reprise," says Rahul Bose, actor and activist. "By all means let’s direct the anger against the government, but my point is that governments have been unable to stop Sati for 59 years, forget pre-empting terror."
Bose’s perspective is unique: he boarded half-a-dozen trains the morning after the blasts, to speak to people and understand their emotions, then addressed public meetings across the city. "We have to learn to factor in terror and violence into our daily lives," he says. "We must arm ourselves saying ‘I am bigger, broader, deeper, richer than the terrorist’ and move on. This does not mean we must live in fear and kowtow to terrorists."
Mumbaikars want action, the need to do something. This Tuesday, exactly a week after the first bomb went off, much of Mumbai observed a two-minute silence. Trains halted, commuters stood up, people stopped their cars. Through the difficult week, Mumbaikars found other modes of expression. Gandhians held prayer meetings like the Mahatma used to every evening, prayers in mosques were followed by condemnation of the blasts, cohesive groups organised peace demonstrations, thousands lit candles. College principals decided to channelise student anger and energy into generating more support for the PM petition by getting them to collect signatures.
None of this could bring back the 200 dead or alleviate the suffering of the 800 injured in the blasts but each action was important for its own sake. Psychologists and trauma care specialists remarked that each gesture was a release for the perilous set of emotions that Mumbaikars went through; that it was good to redirect raw emotion towards peace and harmony. The desire was simply to hold hands, literally and figuratively, to reinforce the Mumbai belief that life in this city can be better than it seems just now. In a strange way, Mumbai seemed to have matured. The rage seemed controlled, rerouted towards specific entities like the government. It did not spill over to the streets, against specific communities.
Hindus, by and large, live in the fear of another strike, very conscious that they are an easy target as a community, though most did not approve of Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi’s visit. At the other end, a Muslim man boarding public transport immediately gets a once-over, Muslim women wonder if they will hear obnoxious and unfair statements in women’s compartments of suburban trains. The Muslim clergy pointedly condemned the blasts, their intellectuals drew attention to the fact that Islam does not approve killing of innocents. Mohalla committees in sensitive areas have been working overtime to keep tempers under control and the two sides talking to one other.
But it’s not all over yet. Each passing day that does not bring a breakthrough in the blasts investigation, each time the PM avoids direct references to Pakistan-sponsored terror, each e-mail—fake or otherwise—that warns of more strikes, each news story that talks of a specific alert to the Maharashtra government about possible terror attacks, each memorial plaque at the seven railway stations where the blasts happened, are a reminder of how much can still go wrong. Mumbai was, and is, a minimum city—without the basic services to house nearly 14 million people, safely and securely.
The very nature of Mumbai makes it vulnerable. A huge population, the sheer anonymity that a big city offers, easy and often unregulated access to what could be terror targets, and the fact that it symbolises India’s economic strength. Those in power contribute to making it more susceptible. A railway administration that postponed installing CCTVs at railway stations for four months after the proposal was approved, the state government that finds resources to purchase spanking new cars for its ministers but makes excuses for not providing minimum security at public places, a police force that should have spent money and effort to gather intelligence but is so resource-strapped that its uniforms are sponsored by corporates. It is this callousness that makes Mumbai defenceless against the designs of anyone who wants to strike. Historic sites like the Gateway of India were a target, trade hubs like Zaveri Bazaar were hit, corporate offices like the Air-India building and Bombay Stock Exchange were targets, and now it’s the suburban trains. To dodge terrorists’ strikes would be to stop living. Mumbai is incapable of that. But it doesn’t stop Mumbaikars from being, and staying, angry.
