My city

When Mumbai was burning I was eating panipuris. Sounds suitably dramatic. Well, Mumbai wasn't burning but I kept my panipuri date and my stomach came out better out of this ordeal that Mumbai was supposedly going through. I am sick of this bullshit we are being made to face. Politicians and their goonda supporters hold my city to siege and the common man suffers. As always....his plight (as an aside, why is it always common man and not woman I wonder?) is that of suffering, mute..sometimes it takes the shape of a violent outburst aimed at innocent people who are not party to anything.

What is this outsider business I ask? I am as good as Maharashtrian manoos as any..sorry bai as any..(not the servant wala bai for the udiots who walked in late) My grandparents made their lives here and some idiot turns around and tells me that I am an outsider. Go take a flying fuck is what I would say.

Dee and me did conversation about this. RT walks out of the court dressed like an American yeppie, his lawyer is a North Indian and he talks about sending North Indians back to their land. I once did a very nice conversation with a Banarasi rickshaw wala who told me that since the past 25 years Bumbai was his home. Like me and possibly thousands and dare I say millions of people, Bumbai had opened her heart to him and given him a place to stay and kept his family fed, educated and happy and giving him a living. His daughter was in school. I told him at the end of our rickshaw ride that it was important that she continue her education. I don't know if my words will have an effect or not but I would like to hope that it would.

This man made his life an open book to me. He has land back in his gaon, but the land wasn't able to sustain him and his family which is why he chose to move to Bumbai and make his life. So then Bumbai became his home. How does he become an outsider? Has he not been contributing to the city's economy? Has he not ferried people around the city? Has he not seen the city's slow deterioration from an open minded place to something that can be manipulated n used by an ever pliable and rabble rousing media?

I squarely blame the media who is 24/7 in our faces. There are stories plenty in my country but they are not sensationalist enough. Not enough sansanni! I had argued this previously with another friend when that Prince fiasco happened. While I do agree that Prince was saved that day only because of the unrelenting media attention, there were definitely more important pressing issues than Prince happening in the country at that time. But Prince, Prince - 24/7. We got the point. It was the same yesterday, the same shots of RT walking out of the court. The media allowed itself to be manipulated a limp rag doll, causing people to panic. Why should we allow ourselves to be used like this? Why show fear- bow down to the the *idea*, mind you the idea that there are people out there ready to attack us for no fault of ours.

Who decides who is an outsider? Society, laws, dumb, attention and vote seeking politicians? I wonder. Where does the line get drawn that you are one of us or the alienated other?