Mumbai: Is it resilience or is it expediency?

By John Cheeran
Mumbai is back on its feet.
Nothing can stop the people of this great city. Nothing at all.
On Wednesday it was again business as usual in Mumbai. Trains, schools, share markets and all other places were bustling with life, defeating death itself in the process.
Mumbai's resilience is amazing and touching..
Or is it just the Who Cares attitude?
Whoever has gone, is gone, we have got bills to pay and burden to carry on and please leave us free, we are in a hurry..
Was that the message from Mumbai on Wednesday?
May be there is relief among the survivors that the next wave of blasts will take at least a year or two to visit and till such time we are safe....Let us carry on with the life without pausing to find out what led to these dastardly acts and without remembering that it could have happened to us as well...
Time is precious...and we don't want to mourn our brothers whose lives were taken away in a random stroke of fate so that we could breathe a sigh of relief..
The point, however, remains that those who are alive are plain lucky.
Malcolm Gladwell had rightly brought up the broken window theory in his celebrated book Tipping Point. There, he says, if we did not take immediate repairing actions, those who have broken the windows succeed in what they set out to do in the first place. Inflict damage.
In that sense, Mumbai's spirit of bouncing back will defeat the terror merchants.
They tried to cripple the city and prevent its people from functioning without fear.
But the terrorists' designs did not work out in that fashion. Mumbai lived its Wednesday as if 7/11 never happened..
Is it a sign of courage or curse?
Would it not have been a greater resistance to terror and its dalals if Mumbai suspended its business as usual approach and dedicated the Day After to console the near and dear ones of those tragic victims.
200 Indians dead. That's what the death toll in a mini war could add up to.
Make no mistake, it's war on the streets, folks!
Mumbai could have set a shining example by mobilising its manpower to find ways to minimise the trauma of those who have suffered in this terrible tragedy.
It should have been a day when the citizens of Mumbai sat together, thought together and prayed together and repaired together its battered dreams and hopes.
I pray that Mumbai's celebrated resilient spirit is not a case of mammon prevailing over those sublime human values of sharing the sorrow and spreading the joy.
Long live Mumbai, Long live India!