India's Indestructible Heart.

July 12, 2006

The New York Timeshttp://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/12/opinion/12fernandes.html?pagewanted=printJuly 12, 2006Op-Ed ContributorIndia’s Indestructible HeartBy NARESH FERNANDESMumbai, IndiaMY Tuesday morning began with a flashback of the tragedy that “buried LowerManhattan 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 thefirst chapter of her memoir about her experiences on 9/11, which she had juste-mailed me from New York.Twelve hours later, Indian news channels reported an explosion on a rush-hourtrain 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 workevery

evening, so almost everybody I know was a potential victim. Just as I wasabsorbing the enormity of the blast, there was news of another — and then somemore. As the evening wore on, we learned that there’d been eight blasts, alltimed within a few minutes.Many of us had seen this before. On March 12, 1993, at least 10 bombs shatteredthe spine of our city, then called Bombay, in two hours, tearing their waynorthward in short, deadly bursts. That attack left 257 dead. Since then, thecity has been the target of several other vicious bombings, most recently in2003, when car bombs went off at the city’s most recognizable symbol, theGateway of India.The last few years have been difficult for overcrowded Mumbai, but thisfortnight has left nerves especially taut. Moderate monsoon rains caused suchenormous flooding that the whole city was shut down for three days. Those floodsevoked memories of the cloudburst last July 26,

when more than 400 people weredrowned, electrocuted and crushed after their homes collapsed on top of them.It was a tragedy that brought into focus how years of willful neglect andbreathtaking corruption by municipal officials, working in tandem withavaricious politicians and real estate developers, have brought India’sfinancial capital to its knees. After “26/7,” as the press immediately labeledthe day, our politicians and administrators fell over themselves to assure usthat they’d set things right. Last week’s rains showed that their promises wereas empty as our drains were full of rubbish.Then, when the rain stopped last week, we found hooligans rampaging through ourstreets. As we settled down to brunch on Sunday, our TV sets brought us thechilling sight of buses being ransacked and burnt across Mumbai by cadres of theHindu nativist Shiv Sena party. They claimed that a statue of their leader’slate wife had been

vandalized, and they were protesting in the only way theyknew how.Despite the long history of sporadic violence, Mumbai has always picked itselfup by its bootstraps and marched off to work as soon as the trains startedworking again. Our ability to jeer at misfortune is attributed in the Indianpress to the “spirit of Bombay,” which is variously described as “indomitable,”“never say die” and “undying.” But our spirit has been saluted so frequently oflate, all the praise was beginning to annoy me.Before I left the office Tuesday evening, I finished a magazine articlecomplaining that this illogical faith in Bombay’s innate resilience had theunfortunate consequence of absolving the city’s administrators of theresponsibility 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 seeif they needed blood donations. It had been less than an hour since the firstexplosion, 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 overshocked survivors, fanning them with newspapers and helping them contactrelatives.Stories of exceptional selflessness have flooded in all evening. One came frommy friend Aarti, who was in one of the trains on which a bomb went off. As shejumped out of her compartment, she saw streams of slum dwellers from the bleakshanties along the tracks rushing toward the train with bed sheets. They knewthat there would be no stretchers to be found and were offering their threadbarecottons to be used as hammocks to carry victims away.Perhaps the newspapers have it right after all. An anguished night has fallenover Mumbai, but

when the city eventually sleeps it will do so secure in theknowledge 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. "Our ideal is not the spirituality that withdraws from life but the conquest of life by the power of the spirit." - Aurobindo.

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