Quick Conclusions

Suketu Mehta, whose book was my guide to Mumbai when I first arrived, writes in the NYT:

In 1993, Hindu mobs burned people alive in the streets — for the crime of being Muslim in Mumbai. Now these young Muslim men murdered people in front of their families — for the crime of visiting Mumbai. They attacked the luxury businessmen’s hotels. They attacked the open-air Cafe Leopold, where backpackers of the world refresh themselves with cheap beer out of three-foot-high towers before heading out into India. Their drunken revelry, their shameless flirting, must have offended the righteous believers in the jihad. They attacked the train station everyone calls V.T., the terminus for runaways and dreamers from all across India. And in the attack on the Chabad house, for the first time ever, it became dangerous to be Jewish in India.

The terrorists’ message was clear: Stay away from Mumbai or you will get killed. Cricket matches with visiting English and Australian teams have been shelved. Japanese and Western companies have closed their Mumbai offices and prohibited their employees from visiting the city. Tour groups are canceling long-planned trips.

But the best answer to the terrorists is to dream bigger, make even more money, and visit Mumbai more than ever. Dream of making a good home for all Mumbaikars, not just the denizens of $500-a-night hotel rooms. Dream not just of Bollywood stars like Aishwarya Rai or Shah Rukh Khan, but of clean running water, humane mass transit, better toilets, a responsive government. Make a killing not in God’s name but in the stock market, and then turn up the forbidden music and dance; work hard and party harder.

If the rest of the world wants to help, it should run toward the explosion. It should fly to Mumbai, and spend money. Where else are you going to be safe? New York? London? Madrid?

So I’m booking flights to Mumbai. I’m going to go get a beer at the Leopold, stroll over to the Taj for samosas at the Sea Lounge, and watch a Bollywood movie at the Metro. Stimulus doesn’t have to be just economic.

His initial analysis is right on, but veers off course at the conclusion, which is unsettling in its familiarity to what Bush said after 9/11:

When they struck, they wanted to create an atmosphere of fear. And one of the great goals of this nation's war is to restore public confidence in the airline industry. It's to tell the traveling public: Get on board. Do your business around the country. Fly and enjoy America's great destination spots. Get down to Disney World in Florida. Take your families and enjoy life, the way we want it to be enjoyed.

We see where that got us. Instead, I'm drawn to Anand Giridharadas' article for the NYT Week in Review:

A text-message moving among Mumbaikars expressed the uniqueness of the now: “Brothers and sisters, it’s time to wake up and do something for the country — however little — related to this or not — start today and continue it through the years — do not forget as easily as we are used to forgetting.”

Many told themselves and each other that this time would change things, just as Americans had told themselves after 9/11. But they knew their own history, and America’s, and they seemed, even as they spoke the words, to disbelieve them already.

Closer to the scene

As a follow-up to my last post, this is the best collection of personal reflections, context, and analysis I've found, so far, about the attacks:

http://www.indiauncut.com/

Mumbai

(photo Arko Datta/Reuters, NYT)

The news out of Mumbai has felt very personal, very painful, and very close to my heart. Fortunately, those closest to me in the city are safe. And yet, watching, listening, and reading the accounts of the violence as it unfolds – the senseless loss of life – is simply stunning.

When I first heard the news, it felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach. Automatic weapons and grenades: guerrilla warfare was taking place on streets and in places that hold deep meaning for me. I used to walk by Leopold, glance at the backpackers drinking huge mugs of beer, and somehow feel superior to those who had come to India and essentially stayed home. Those thoughts are now distant and meaningless. Westerners were certainly targets, but meanwhile, scores of local commuters were gunned down in the CST railway station. Eerie pictures of the aftermath show pools of blood amongst abandoned luggage.

Over the past three days, I’ve felt lost between many worlds: the comfort of home, the memories of Mumbai, and the new images – both real and imagined – that fill my head, of Mumbai as a war zone. I feel endlessly sad and empty.

The Mumbai I experienced is a city of extremes. You see it, smell it, and feel it when you’re there, but it’s far more than sensory. It’s personal. Life is lived out in the open, and it’s messy. More than any city I’ve ever been to, you can’t just observe it; you’re forced to internalize it and reflect on your place in it. Particularly as a foreigner, your presence in a crowd or public space affects and changes what happens, just as much as what happens affects and changes you.

That which is subtle elsewhere is polarized, magnified, and held directly in front of your eyes in Mumbai. The city’s most obvious juxtaposition of extremes is excessive opulence co-existing beside wretched poverty. And for me, nowhere in Mumbai was the contrast more visceral, or more likely to start a fit of existential anguish, than at the Taj Hotel.

I visited the travel desk at the Taj every few weeks to purchase Indian Railways tickets. For a small service fee, the staff inside the hotel was always impeccably friendly and eager to serve. I could never get over how helpful and patient they were, and how earnestly they worked at their jobs. I imagine they were caught in the middle of gunfire, and it hurts my heart to think what may have happened.

I remember traveling from my apartment to the Taj on the city’s local trains, packed in amongst thousands of sweaty male bodies jostling for space. The smell of raw humanity on those trains – hot armpits one moment, raw sewage (from the tracks below) the next – is unforgettable. Once, a teenage boy was staring at me from across the crowded car. I was standing near the open door as the train shot through the city. Suddenly he pointed at me and said to his friends, “Foreigner!” Eyes turned toward me and stared. I froze, unsure what would happen. Nothing did.

The station nearest the Taj swarms with maimed stray dogs, orphaned children, and others living and suffering whose eyes haunt you. I used to stop at the Coffee Day vendor and buy a shot of sweet milky coffee on my way through the station.

A taxi from Churchgate station to the Taj costs twenty rupees (fifty cents), but occasionally a driver asks double. After living in the city for months, there’s a swelling sense of frustration and righteousness when you know you’re being cheated. The feeling isn’t really about the money; it’s more the reminder that you’re looked upon as an outsider. Frustrated, I’d catch a glimpse of the glittering lobby outside my window and remember where I’d asked to be taken. There’s a good chance the taxi driver who took me to the Taj would return home at night to the slums. I’d usually pay double.

At the Taj, an Indian doorman with a Hungarian moustache, dressed in an elaborate white suit, smiles and greets you as you approach. He pulls open a glass door, and a wall of cold filtered air comes gushing out into the hot thick night, inviting you in. The lobby is full of lavish carpets, sofas, chandeliers, and white people who don’t know, or don’t care, to dress modestly and cover their legs. I’d make my way across the oval lobby, aware that this was one place in the city where I – a foreigner – would not be singled out, solicited, or started at.

To leave the hotel, I would walk past the famed bathrooms, through a long hallway lined with some of the world’s most exclusive retail shops. I remember a Luis Vuitton and a fancy bakery at the end of the hall. I’d pass the guests-only pool, and well-dressed people along the way, most of whom walked slowly, talked loudly, and smiled.

I’d step out the door, back into the thick air. Heading west, away from the water, I always looked up: the last chandelier hanging from the vaulted ceiling above the sidewalk always swung in the wind, and it always made me nervous. I’d look ahead and see a dog in the road. Then there might be a woman begging for change, or a child tugging at my arm, or a thin man selling humongous balloons. I never understood the appeal of those balloons.

I’d walk past these people, away from the Taj, through Colaba. I felt like all the people out there knew where I had been. Though I continued on my way, eyes glancing down occasionally, I’d feel my heart fill with guilt, anger, and a sense of alarming injustice. I’d walk on, acutely aware that I’d gone from a carefully manufactured world of wealth, the world for those who have ‘made it’, to one so unpredictable, oppressive, and real, full of those who have not.

A friend in Mumbai tells me this attack feels painful in a different way than others before. As I write, the latest news says the siege is over. Nonetheless, the stories from the last few days are heavy and hard to understand. I can’t seem to find a narrative to make sense of what has happened, and hold it all together. I’m not sure anyone can, just yet. I’m afraid something new has emerged, something awful, something that stokes fear and seeks death. I wonder whether something even more powerful will emerge, something powerful enough to meet people who choose such horrific violence before they walk that path, and show them another way. I’m not sure what that is, but I’m ready to look. I’d bet it’s somewhere between the polar opposites, so evident and so exploited this week in Mumbai. Meanwhile, life will surely continue to be lived out in the open, messy as it is.