Resilience in times of rudeness

Words have specific meanings. Words like spirit, resilience. But coming from the mouths of those whose entire careers are based on the buying and selling of human votes and emotions, they almost sound like abuse.

Words have specific meanings. Words like spirit, resilience. But coming from the mouths of those whose entire careers are based on the buying and selling of human votes and emotions, they almost sound like abuse.

The recent blasts in Mumbai have proved all over again that we don’t really need a government in Maharashtra. When the crunch comes, the people of Mumbai are absolutely capable of taking care of themselves and — what’s more — others. Within an hour of the blast, the injured were well on their way to hospitals, if not actually already admitted. The ‘aam janata’ came out on to the highways and arterial roads to stop vehicles, and request them to take passengers in their cars.

Entire building societies chipped in with blankets, food stuff and transport. Slum-dwellers who may not know whether they will have a house next week, ran out with bedsheets for transporting patients, and climbed into the train to extricate the casualties. College students returning home, found out that they could help the police control the traffic and keep things a bit more organised.

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People who I cannot classify (and will not classify) under any category but that of saviours even stood out in the rain handing water bottles, tea, hot snacks, food packets and even simple accommodation, to those people returning home from work, standing for miles together, crushed in a bus, because their train had been blown up; and those unknown folks who stayed on at hospitals, contacting relatives, comforting the hurt till some family member turned up.

They did this in the recent floods, and now during the blasts. And they will do it again, because it is ingrained in them. (Reader’s Digest, please note: one cannot learn this, like one can learn to say ‘thank you’, wish others, hold open doors. Some of the folks we are talking about don’t even have a door to open.)

That is what one calls ‘spirit’. And ‘resilience’ is the ability to keep on showing this spirit, blast after blast, flood after flood, carnage after carnage, one inefficient shameless government after another.

Our so-called elected representatives do not need to waste their time passing resolutions in the legislature when they should actually be amidst the people who elected them, trying to make their lives a bit more tolerable. Announcing a Rs 50,000 dole to those who have been injured and Rs 1 lakh to the relatives of the dead is not the end of responsibility. The government, if it means what it says, should have remained in the frame — expediting things: ensuring, for instance, that money needed for special medicines for the blast patients is directly paid to the municipal and state hospitals.

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Mumbai has the spirit and resilience despite the politicians. And it will continue to have it, irrespective of blasts, floods, carnages, and — yes — politicians.