Lady in elevator with twin girls in a pram: Konnichiwa
Me: Konnichiwa (stealing glances at the very cute girls)
Lady: Atsui desu ne (Hot innit?)
Me: Hai, so desu (Yes indeed)
Lady: Garbled question which I translated in my head as (Is it as hot as where you are from?)
Me: Dochira mo atsui desu (Both places are equally hot)
Lady: Ahhh (The Japanese are big on exclamations :))...Doko de (where the hell is this that you are talking about)....(trailing off)
Me: Indo de (In India)
Elevators clinks to a stop...end of conversation.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
The famed Bombay spirit
died in 1993 when Hindus and Muslims went to war in my city. Nothing has ever been the same. Ever. I was too young to know what it meant when a mosque in another city is destroyed and there are repercussions elsewhere. We learned to live again. Some said the spirit had come back. Normalcy had returned.
Cut to 2003 and blasts rock Mumbai through the year. And then came the 7/11 train attacks. I was working in Powai then and understood what those attacks meant. Everyone talked about how Bombay went back to work the next day. What option do people have I ask? You take the very same trains that someone has planted a bomb in the day before and head to work. Or don't get paid.
And then came our biggest attack - 26/11. That destroyed our city as much as it destroyed me. I spent a week, even two, soul searching, binging and trying to come to terms with the fact that terrorists had attacked my city. The city recovered, I recovered, much to my surprise. And we had our 'spirit' to maintain non?
And now yesterday. The pointlessness of the situation makes me cringe, it makes me to want to rave and rant. One press of a button, lives are lost. Innocence destroyed. The bomb doesn't see who is Muslim or Hindu. It just kills without thought. Whole families have been torn apart because someone somewhere decides that a bomb blast is the solution to their problems.
And the famed Bombay spirit. It is but a shadow of what it was. It limps and struggles to be.
Cut to 2003 and blasts rock Mumbai through the year. And then came the 7/11 train attacks. I was working in Powai then and understood what those attacks meant. Everyone talked about how Bombay went back to work the next day. What option do people have I ask? You take the very same trains that someone has planted a bomb in the day before and head to work. Or don't get paid.
And then came our biggest attack - 26/11. That destroyed our city as much as it destroyed me. I spent a week, even two, soul searching, binging and trying to come to terms with the fact that terrorists had attacked my city. The city recovered, I recovered, much to my surprise. And we had our 'spirit' to maintain non?
And now yesterday. The pointlessness of the situation makes me cringe, it makes me to want to rave and rant. One press of a button, lives are lost. Innocence destroyed. The bomb doesn't see who is Muslim or Hindu. It just kills without thought. Whole families have been torn apart because someone somewhere decides that a bomb blast is the solution to their problems.
And the famed Bombay spirit. It is but a shadow of what it was. It limps and struggles to be.
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