Hi all,
I was wondering to make an first person record of the past weeks in Mumbai...and was collecting my thoughts when my sweet cousin sis of 13 yrs sent me something she wrote for her school article... I wound up grey cells and decided she has really voiced something that I wouldn't express in those many words. Here are her thoughts...
MUMBAI MERI JAAN- A WEDNESDAY IN MUMBAI…
Horns, buses, cars… people with hi-fi gadgets and hip-hop branded clothes… sound of waves lashing on rocks, a cool breeze… yep! It is Nariman Point in Mumbai, and this is what I could see all around me!
Next, we (mother, brother, Shanky baba- my uncle and I) were headed for a taxi ride around Nariman Point. I was overwhelmed with joy! I was seeing the city which mesmerized 7 years of my life and holds me spellbound even now- The city that never sleeps! I was reliving 7 years of my life after 6 years… my people, here I come!!!
There, I set my eyes on the Taj hotel for the first time in the 13 years of my life, hoping that I would one day stay here in one of its rooms! There was a huge crowd outside the Taj…why? India’s heartthrob (mine too!) and our cricket captain was staying there and was going for the IPL finals at Nerul… Dhoni! I was eager to catch a glimpse of him due to reasons mention above…
In the midst of this ecstatic (not to mention *blushy*) atmosphere, hardly did I know that the next time I would see it would be on the 27th of November, 2008 (on T.V.), exactly 180 days later. I had absolutely no idea that I would see it ablaze with people swarming all around it. I also did not know that the same media which had come for Dhoni would then be there for a completely horrendous reason, which troubles me every second now… I didn’t guess that the feeling of joy would be emptied when I see the Taj on the 27th of November, 2008 and instead be filled with the feeling of dread, fear and repulse cutting through me as my mother cuts veggies, or terrorists cut humans. Terrorists cutting humans… that shows how easily this feeling was killing me!
Two luxury hotels, a restaurant, a railway station and at least one hospital… hostages, deaths… Where I would have heard laughter and good wishes now rang with the sounds of gunshots and bomb shells.
More than 100 of my siblings now lay dead in the beautiful hotels and the hospital with a beautiful infrastructure. The hands meant for hugging their family after a long sickness, the hands meant for playing, the hands meant for writing love-letters…all stained with blood! The eyes now reflect what they cannot see! The taxi which would have got my siblings (known and unknown) nearer to their loved ones at times of anxiety and happiness now lies outside an airport, blasted into pieces… The sunlight which would have illuminated a perfectly busy city, a city with life, now illuminated a city ablaze… with people as well as fire, the element that cooked food was now cooking people!
What is the cause of this atrocious incident? Terrorism! A familiar everyday word isn’t it? But ask the terrorists and the victims; they will tell you about its dreadful and disgusting past, infuriating present and hopefully a future of nothingness… you will know terrorism back-to-back even without watching NDTV or BBC.
I know not the cause or solution to this… I only feel that the seeds of this horrible thought are sown by the misinterpretation of religion and well-watered by the people who misinterpret religion and feed it to innocent faultless minds, souls… My heart is overflowing with fear…
I just know and feel one thing at present- religion is humanity, and condemning other religion will not take you anywhere near God, it will only pull you away from the Lord.
The crime of criminal must be killed, not the criminal himself. Then only will this intolerably horrid incident never disturb minds as it does now…
Then only will people look at the Taj and rest assured, they will know that the next time they look at it, it won’t be on fire!
-Aishwariya Sunder
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