Try Saying S.P.A.D.E

Yet another disaster has come and gone in the life of Bombay and yet another spate of headlines like “Bombayites are so resilient”, “Look how Bombay is back on is feet”, and some such must have been screaming at us from newspapers and news channels across the country. I say “must have” because I don’t follow the news. I would’ve been a journalist if it weren’t for the fact that journalism has been dead in this country for a long long time.

I have a problem with any Indian being called resilient. It is sad and ironic that the media which shouts in your face that it is all about bringing truth to the people has never bothered uncovering the truth behind our “resilience”.

“Survival of the fittest” has long been the mantra by which people in Bombay live. But who is “fit” enough to withstand the impact of a bomb, or a gunshot, or a premeditated attack involving both?

We are not a tough people. We are resilient by necessity. And sometimes only by force of habit. We do not have a choice. Show me a Bombayite who can sit at home the day after a terrorist attack and I’ll show you a person who has means to subsist without his daily bread. The majority of Bombay, however, cannot afford the luxury of revolting, or even reacting to the abysmal conditions of living that are thrust upon them by that thing we call a ‘government’.

Rich people don’t board local trains. Neither do they wade through chest-high water when the sewage system fails every monsoon. Rich people sit in their cozy little penthouses or fly away to exotic destinations while the masses face the wrath of disasters both political and natural. It is the common man who faces the threat of being obliterated via the means of terrorism and/or natural calamities.

So it is not courage that takes them out into the world after a 7/11 or the more recent, and the more in-your-face, terrorist attack. It is sheer necessity that brings them back on to the roads and trains. It is the need to earn yet another day’s livelihood that constantly puts them in the line of fire.

I can’t imagine when news people will stop patronizing us with the resilience crap and actually call a spade a spade.