Looking Bombay Talking Bhopal

After the Bombay incident of 11/26, Bhopal duly participated in the prominently media covered show of anger. Obscure,  remote and never heard of locations of Bhopal were flashed on news papers when candles were lighted in rememberance  of the martyrs of Bombay.

When asked the middle aged aunty said 'Arre sab jala rahe the, kaha ki aap ka bhi photo ayega , so hamne bhi jala diya'.

'Lekin Bombay? '

'Bombay?  Uska kya? Thehro, sabzi jal rahi hai, gas bandh karke aati hun'

Meanwhile, Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi is a hit. India won the test match, after winning the one day. In between there was a planned T20 World cup, which was canceled due to another 24 hours live telecast event which lasted about 60 hours. The excitement, the media coverage and the discussions were almost the same. In place of asking 'Kitne run hue' we asked 'aur kitne bache hain?'. The delay in commando operation was similar to the delay of Ganguly coming for toss. After 20 odd days, everybody is planning for New Year party.   Non-state actors trains a person to kill 17 Indians on average. Send 10 such persons, you get 11/26. What if they sent 100 such persons ? Then also nothing will happen. People will watch Chandni Chowk to China in record numbers and get on with life. We have achieved what Buddhist monks call Zen. Nothing or nobody can make us angry. Say Non-state actors sends 1 lakh persons tomorrow on some Cruise ship to Bombay. Each one takes on 17 Indians. 17 lakh Indians will be minus. I am sure, the rest will watch Billo Barber.

Dilip D'Souza wonders in his post "I mean, take the killings of 3000 innocent Indians in Delhi in November 1984. Have we had a Parliament session to unitedly condemn that tragic outrage? Had we said about that atrocity that "we will take all action to protect our citizens"? Or that it is an attack on our "civilisational ethos"? Or that those perpetrators must learn about the "cost" of "killing innocent Indians"? Did that massacre prompt calls to "change how we view the lives of individual Indians"? Did ordinary Indians get killed then, and if so, did their lives go in vain?"

He however does not talk about December 1984, which is taken up by Latha Jishnu who says "The International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal (ICJB), a solidarity of volunteers fighting for redrresal, says around half a million people were exposed to the gas and over 20,000 have died so far as a result of their exposure. Among the 150,000 seriously affected, at least 50,000 are too sick to work for a living. Worse, children born to gas-affected people suffer from serious congenital defects. Some have no lips, ears or noses, others no hands or feet."

Meanwhile the general citizens went about there business as usual and voted Shivraj Singh Chauhan, not necessarily BJP, to power again. There were reports  in the local media about the lathi welding policemen of Bhopal and elsewhere in the state of Madhya Pradesh and how they would take on the AK 47s, to which many cynics said that Madhya Pradesh is the shelter of the terrorists and will never be attacked! Some others took solace in the fact that Bhopal might be too small a place for terrorists to take notice of. They said “A friend of mine sent me an email from Beijing asking whether I feared for my life in Bhopal after the Mumbai terror attack. I replied by saying no because the terrorists target big urban centers to make a statement. It is unlikely they will target smaller towns”. However, the new Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh appears to have a different opinion, and has approached the new Home Minister of India asking for a NSG center at Bhopal. 

The Bhopali, as indeed all Indians, are more busy with their survival, till some terrorist somewhere gets them. As the one and only Prem Panicker puts it " The ‘spirit of the Mumbaikar’ meme be damned, the state needs to recognize this for what it is: helplessness. We go to work come hell or high water [where Bombay is concerned, hell and high water, literally so] because as long as we are alive [over 80 of our fellows, going about their usual business 12 hours ago, are no longer alive—spare them a thought, a prayer], there is nothing else to do; nothing else we can do. We go to work not to prove a point, but because there are no options. We go to work like we breathe—because there is nothing else.Respiro, ergo sum."