It was quite an emotional moment for Mumbai I hear. People present tell tales of people breaking down and crying at the sight of our beloved Taj in tatters. Watching all the candle lighting, Mashaal holding and Jai hind ka Narabazi on the telly brought tears even to my eyes! I think it was a good cathartic action and really do hope outcomes of relevance can be achieved.

I totally loved some of the posters the people came with. Here are some of my favorites

• Mr. Deshmukh, don’t play a Joker. Remember, you are our Nauker!
• Chief Minister, Instead of taking Ram Gopal Verma for Taj Terror Tourism, If you would have shown the terrorists, Ram Gopal Varma ki AAG, they would have anyways killed themselves!
• Call back the Bar girls. Maybe they can protect us!
• A-Chute-A-Nandan! CM of Kerala. A dog himself.
• We would prefer a DOG visit our House rather than a POLITICIAN!
• Dogs and Politicians are not allowed in this Rally!
• US Politicians from Yale. Ours from JAIL!
• ‘DESHMURKH’ – a film by Ram Gopal Varma. Starring ‘you know who’!

Some posters were made to take pot shots at the MNS chief and his total absence in this whole episode. Don’t know if that was due to a gag order or he’s finally decided we’ve been traumatized enough.  

• I am Indian. There is only one SENA that I believe in. That is the INDIAN ARMY!
•  A Missing poster with Raj Thackeray’s picture.

Well we might not be so great at the security and protection stuff. But we sure are good at the rallying and doing it with style. J   

Gosh! Can you imagine if we have any of the balance terrorists still loose in the city? The telly has been reporting that they’ve gotten 10 so far and there might be a very real possibility of more of them who got away. If they did and if they have some means of blowing people up, then this meeting will be like icing on the cake. A whole lot of people in the one place they surveyed so well. Their target of 5000 might still be achieved.

I’m sure no one is thinking about the security aspects of this meeting. The police is already exhausted with all the blaming, running around, trying to pick up their skirts and do something that I’m not too sure if they will be thinking about putting the right security measures that such a large gathering would need.

Might just be another example of how we are such sitting ducks for terror, albeit passionate and united ones!  

I was watching this interesting piece of reporting on CNN IBN yesterday. They were calling it the operation water Rat (you know Indian telly with their inclination to drama!).

Anyways, the piece had a smart looking reporting doing a dry run of smuggling suspicious looking wooden crates (that the reporter claims could easily be carrying 100 kgs of RDX) into the waters of Murud Janjira (a little ride north of Mumbai) and then moving on land in a tavera all the way o the gate way of India. The reporter claims to have tried this 3 different times and in different ways and not being challenged even once!! It’s that easy. He was saying it was such a cakewalk that anyone can do this…you don’t really have to be a trained terrorist.  That’s how vulnerable we are!

Some further investigations by the reporter took him to the customs office in Murud J. The customs have a joint responsibility of shore security. He reports that the office list 21 customs inspectors on its roll, but he has to wait till 12 pm to find the only one that decided to saunter into the office that day. Wearing casuals, yawing and asking the reporter to switch off the camera, he is hardly a solace to us Indians whom he is to protect.

The customs officials are expected to patrol the waters around their post and ensure no materials in being smuggled in or out without proper check and authority. Locals who were interviewed shared that some customs officials come in only 2 -3 times in a month and that too only to sit around and drink tea. On being questioned further on what really the customs office is supposed to do, the inspector very calmly says, “I don’t really know! You should check with the bahe sabih” (that being his boss)!! Apparently they have only a few boats that are used to patrol the seas and most of the time they do not work. And the people who patrol the seas are contract workers who have no clue what to look for! On being asked what their job is, they claim in broken hindi that they’re not very clear on that. They are asked to just take the boat for a ride around and bring it back safely.

This is the state of shore security….after the 93 blasts, after the train blasts and multiple other threats that the police receives on a regular basis.

I really have nothing else to say except…. OMG!! God save us… ‘cause we are definitely not going to do much else except find someone to blame.   

• The floods of July 05
• The train bombings of 07
• The multiple bomb blasts of 08
• Three different occasions of unrest when MNS chief was arrested and Mumbai shut down
• The terror attacks of 26/11!

I can’t remember such times in the past. I can’t recall an incident in my many years in other cities which would warrant family/ friends from other cities to call and check on my safety. What is happening to our world? Is it dangerous living in this city or are our times itself dangerous?

It’s definitely a threatening time to live in… threats from crazy terrorists; political vandals and sometimes from poor frustrated Mother Nature.

P.S: Dear Mice, if you’re listening… we’re done here. This experiment has gone horribly wrong and Deep Thought II ought to really shut it down before we make a bigger mess!

Police, Army, NSG, Navy commandos have been battling them for over 20 hours and we still don’t know what the hell do these people want!! Over 101 people randomly killed! This is so freaking insane…!!! All this pointless killing and scaring people… Why?? What are they going to get out this all?

Sorry… this is hardly a blog… I just feel like venting. AAAAAAaarrrrrrgggghhhh!!! @$#%#^&#^#%^!!

There have been many times, when frustrated with the way things are in India, thoughts of actually doing something about it have entered my mind… but then I come back to reality and realize that there is really no point. Politics is a quagmire and anyways how can one person make a difference? Also how can one go to work, and yet be involved in something like politics? I recently got my answer…. A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to meet Mr. R V Krishnan, the founder of the Professionals Party of India!

Krishnan, an engineer-entrepreneur, who runs a market research Bureau, was also disillusioned with Indian governance and he decided to actually do something about it. He had some unique thoughts on how educated professionals can contribute towards running the country which he put down in his manuscript, ‘Manifesto in Search of a Party’. He waited after his publication hoping someone would sit up and decide to do something about the solutions he had proposed for the country… but nothing really happened.

Saddened but not deterred, he then decided to implement some of his ideas. He called 15 of his friends (mostly professionals raging from 30 to 60 years of age) and mooted the idea of a political party. Thus started the journey of this Pune based Professional Party of India. After 11 months of working in local areas, this party finally got an official acknowledgement when the Election Commission of India registered it as a political party. That’s a step that has formally equipped them to start working towards their aim – of changing the way the country is governed through the active participation of educated professionals. Their belief is that they can bring honest, professional & progressive governance in our country.

The unique thing about this party many members are working professionals who contribute to the party and its goals while keeping their regular jobs! The party has grown quite rapidly and now has chapters and members in most big cities. As one would expect the party is quite tech savvy and uses technology to propagate its cause. Email campaigns, Blogs, seminars at corporate are some of these. Check out one such blog by them

http://professionalspartyofindia.blog.co.in/about/

 In his talk to us, Mr. Krishnan made a moving speech to the young professionals of India. He highlighted how young talented Indian professionals are leading large conglomerates across the world successfully. Then why if we got together can we not lead our country to success?  

Listening to and meeting him really made me re-think my inertia.  We need to make an effort and do something other than complain. I think it is commendable that Krishnan and PPI have taken this positive step towards doing something.  So what can we do? One doesn’t have to join politics to make a difference…. One can start with getting on a voters list and vote for the right people!

The preamble to the Indian constitution states that we promise to ensure equality in status and in opportunity and yet on a daily basis our politicians pass out decisions and make speeches that are against equality. If Raj Thackeray’s rant on about ‘Me Mumbaikars’ and ‘outsiders go back home!’ is not a racist outlook then nothing is!

We are all part of one country and we should be able to live and earn livelihood in any part of this country no matter where we are from. Then why is it ok for Raj Thackery and his flunkies to go about creating mayhem and attacking successful north Indians in Mumbai? Why hasn’t anyone from the legal community / central government reined these people in and charged them with racism? Why it is that Amitabh Bacchan has had to apologize for something innocuous that Jaya Bacchan had said? Damn it… she is from UP, so what is the big deal if she made a comment saying that she is from UP and she will prefer to speak in Hindi? I don’t get it.

Raj Thackery goes on about the lack of opportunities for the ‘Marathi Manush’ and the lack of focus on the Marathi language. What they don’t get is that if Mumbai belonged to and was built only by the Marathis, then it would not been the commercial capital it is today. The opportunities that exist today in Mumbai, would probably not have existed if the UPites, Gujratis, Marwaris, Punjabis, North Indians had not come to the state and contributed to it as they have.  If it’s not reservations, they go on about the Marathi language. They rant on about how it’s important and all the legal and government documents should be in Marathi only and shops should all have their names written in Marathi so that the poor Marathi speaking Manush can get around his own city. If all this raving and ranting about Mumbai for the Marathis isn’t targeted racism against Indians from other states then nothing is.  

More than 50 years of having a constitution that believes in Equality and do we have it? Nah…I don’t think so.

55 dead and more injured… that’s just one of the more obvious impacts of the terror attacks.  But what else is happening because of this? People across large cities are retreating in fear and decidedly not going out gallivanting in public places. Protective mums are telling their children to ‘come straight home!’ rather than hang out with their friends after work or college. So people are going out less, and by virtue of that buying less, spending less. And guess what will happen if this continues for a bit…? Inflation will come down…!!

For an economy which is being adversely impacted due to runaway inflation, these are desperate times. The government has tried almost everything from raising repo rates, CRR limits, lending rates, etc etc. But nothing seems to work to reign in the upward trend of inflation…. So in trying times, would it be too far out to think that the desperate government could resort to scaring its own population into their homes and hoping they will in turn tie up their purse strings? Just a thought.