Disconnected

Something’s moved me immensely and it’s a train of unconnected thoughts. I was winding my day at the HT office at Mahim when a non-descript gentleman at the office declared that there had been a blast at Khar Station. While people were just reacting to that, another voice boomed, “Blast at Mahim too. It’s serial!”

And before we even knew we were rushing upstairs to the Editorial floor. It was on Television. 4 blasts had rocked the western line of local trains ripping through the heart of Mumbai. Anywhere in the world such news would be depressing but watching the events unfold on television monitors on the editorial floor of Mumbai’s HT office was nothing less than spine-chilling. After this, I don’t know when exactly this evening, I felt disconnected from everything else.

Myself and my colleague walked the distance from Mahim(W) till our Bandra Guest House and in between I spoke to my dad disinterestedly and lost my temper with my colleague on a discussion that on an average day would have been settled in my favor without any recourse to high tempers.

The events that followed touched me deeply simply because the worst one can feel in life is when he/she is completely helpless in controlling things surrounding him/her. People at office frantically trying to reach their loved ones, the Editor telling a reporter “Find out whether people jumped off or if there was a fire…” and the bubbly girl, with a bag around her shoulders nodding with a smile and walking out (while news of only 4 blasts had poured in) or the sirens of the ambulances on our way back, everything had a forbiddingly grim sense about it.

It set me thinking a bit about a lot of things and I cannot help but stay perplexed at the motives of those people who engineer such pusillanimous acts. What exactly must be their reaction to all of this? Do they feel vindicated? Or are they plain happy? Are they celebrating their success of giving 198 innocent souls a horrific end to their ordinary lives?

I went out for a walk at 11 this night and in my more than 2 years of knowing Mumbai; I’d never ambled through a quieter time in this city.