SOLITUDE SCRIBBLES

Who killed my Mumbai? Mumbai is dead and gone. The Mumbai that lives in my heart, I mean. As I sit watching the electronic images that beam in to my soul, I drip blood. I am pained by the callousness of my Home Minister. I’m pained at the non-intelligence of our national intelligence infrastructure. Imagine a bunch of terror mongers sailing in, on a raft loaded with ammunition and taking over important landmarks in global Mumbai. Imagine a scenario where in a security system claiming to be on par with world standards not even seeing a flickering spot on its intelligence radar even after lives at the Taj and VT were snuffed out with sheer gun power. These all happened in a night, while we were all sleeping or about to sleep. Sadly, the Home Minister is still sleeping. If he is awake he must be out to choose his best attire to come on TV. Remember, he did that a few weeks ago when another set of terror vendors continuously struck different spots across the north. Guess he should have bee

RIP: Mumbai, meri jaan Mumbai, my Mumbai. What has come of the by lanes once I tread upon! The gateways that gave me the confidence in a world of cut-throat competition are stuffed with RDX and gelatine. The trains that gave me new companionships in the form of the kids that exchanged chitrahaars and the chitramalas on the Ektara for a penny or two are now missing. My Mumbai is dead and gone. Lovely Victoria Terminus, which once upon a time provided me with the best avenues for the babe-watch of the lustful kind and the vada pav-Pepsi dinners, sports a nightmarish garb. Faces that once used to sport a smile for even the stranger are now veiled in gloom after nasty gun men rushed in with the firing machines. Mumbai, I weep blood at your fall! Wednesday nights will never be different. Blood soaked and wounded, my Mumbai writhes in pain. Is this the price a metropolis would have to give for having gained the strength to go global? Is this what means to be the financial capital of a secula