26/11/after-effects
If you were not in Mumbai when 26/11 happened, is it OK to write about it? Not a good idea but I could probably show a few pictures that reflect the after effects.
I was not in Mumbai when there was a terror attack on Mumbai from across the sea and border on what is now known as 26/11. A few days after the attack, I only had to step out of the airport in Mumbai, to realize that it was a different city than the ones that it was. Instead of taking a taxi from the airport, I was about to hop across to the road leading to the Western Express Highway to take an autorickshaw and came face to face with a newly erected bunker with a stern looking jawan pointing his machine gun at me. I froze. All my excitement of visiting the city disappeared and the fear that enveloped the city had touched me too.
A few minutes later, I met this young boy from UP who had been hired as a security guard at a construction site.
Look at his shoes.
This was a city that had witnesses deadly attacks but this one was different and as devastating as the riots and bomb blasts in the early 90s.
Earlier, through the 00s, I have lived in the city when there have been bomb blasts in trains and cities but it never affected the way the city functioned. We paused, checked if everyone we know is fine and moved on. Not in 2008 and for understandable reasons.
A couple of years after the attack, this was a toy being sold at the one of the places that was attacked, the Taj Mahal Hotel.
Does the dome of fear over the city also mean that terror has succeeded?
Looking back, it didn’t.
It didn’t succeed in building walls around people but it drew temporary curtains between people in a city where people are mostly friendly to each other.
One reason for this is that the attack that was probably meant to start a major war and unleashes large-scale violence didn’t happen as planned by handlers of the armed men or terrorists.
The gradual waning of fear.
Soon after this incident, I moved to Mumbai for good and started shooting the streets of the city. A camera is one’s hand changes the way one perceives the city. To begin with, there were parts of the city where cameras were not allowed or attracted police who were extra vigilant. The area around Gateway of India, Sassoon Docks, Cuffe Parade, etc. Security checks when entering buildings frequented by the middle or upper class became a major part of daily life. CCTV or surveillance cameras were becoming common. 26/11 was not the last terror attack that the city witnessed. An attack on July 13th of 2011 tried to bring back fear and terror back to the city by specifically targeting the crowded marketplaces in the city. What did not happen thankfully was the people didn’t become too worried about each other or unfriendly. If we can call it the spirit of Mumbai, we should because it saved our city from violence against each other.
Maybe the fear became the glue that brought us together.
Meanwhile, in the city, security became a lucrative business or a cost for the businesses in the city. The well-off, scared and scarred by the incident needed to feel secure and gatekeepers who never really checked only patted us down. It was a placebo that calmed us while it irritated some. Security became another word for gate-keeping that discouraged the not so well off to explore places that belonged to the people who were relatively richer. The state invested in security that always fail in surprise checks. The fancy automobiles and boats with holes or guns that are supposed to guard our coast are gathering rust and dust.
Was 26/11 a turning point for the city?
26/11/08, seems like an unintended but important punctuation in the history of the city. Violence in Mumbai has coincided with important turning points in the city’s history.
Just like how the the partition of India with the birth of a new country and the liberalization of Indian economy coincided with violence in Mumbai, I get a sick feeling that 26/11 was the punctuation that marked the beginning of a slow decline of the city. The reasons have nothing to do with the attack.
Rising real estate costs along with the rise of technology slowly took away many of the advantages the city had away from here in the last decade. Big businesses now have headquarters in other cities. Companies that needed to suck up to the government in Delhi moved there. Financial markets are going fin-tech and away from here to younger cities. The city itself has shifted northwards and on to the mainland with Thane and other satellite cities expanding to make room for people and businesses. The old communities that incubated and protected industries are being disrupted by technology. The world is changing faster than the city what was famous for being faster than everyone else. We still manage to create an impression of always being on the move. Entertainment is probably our biggest influencing business now.
Where is the Mumbai Plan?
A Brief Memorandum Outlining a Plan of Economic Development for India, written in the 1940s for the soon to be liberated India, was called the Bombay Plan. The memorandum itself was rejected but it did have some lasting influence on the country. Now, Mumbai is not outlining any plan for the next 50 years for a nation increasingly connected through information and data. The framework for the future is now prepared in Delhi or Bangalore. 26/11 may mark the road bump that was not responsible for the slowing down but a road sign on this unfortunate turn of the city’s fortunes on the national and international stage.
