I have always felt very tranquil sitting on the shores of Arabian Sea watching the sun set deep in to water. While the gigantic ocean has always given me, a sense of my minuscule and unassuming existence the setting sun has always inflicted an eternal hope for resurgence, belonging, and being relevant and connected with the world as an important fraction of the universe.
I was born in Bombay about four decades prior to when it was christened as Mumbai and approximately a decade before the Maharashtra was born. I had been in the city during the day and the night. During the good times and the bad times. I have always felt that I have not lived in a city I have lived with the city. It has been the city of my ambitions, my struggles, my hopes, my aspirations, my failures and my successes. The city, which was always with me in every thick and thin. The city where I had never felt lonely & threatened.
But on that evening all was changed. For me the falling bodies at VT (CST) station were unambiguously declaring the death of this majestic metropolis. The burning Taj and Oberoi shattered all hopes. Though it was a national tragedy, I felt it as a personal loss. Very personal. First time in Bombay or Mumbai I felt threatened. No one to share my grief. I felt very lonely and very helpless.
However, on the spontaneous resolve by Bombayites to gather at the Gateway to demonstrate solidarity towards city and pay reverence to the departed I dragged myself to the venue with a couple of friends. On the shores of Arabian Sea it was the ocean of humanity touching the fences of VT station.
First time the ocean gave me a sense my enormous existence with a sense of hope and optimism. I realized being an integral and an important part of the movement. I felt very safe and accompanied. The feeling of oneness overwhelmed me. I felt being relevant. The hopes re-energized and faith looking up. Once again, sensation of living with the city came alive. I was fully reinstated.
Now a year later I wonder if that reinstatement will continue to live long or will run down in absence of any concrete and visible positive outcome. If the strength and solidarity shown by citizens that became impossible for establishment to ignore and enforced the authorities to own up the responsibility of attacks still exist or had melted away with passing time.
Will the year of death and disaster be commemorated with some real resolutions and commitments by our self-proclaimed masters-the politicians or will end up with just insincere rallies, dishonest tributes and worthless speeches? Will the mood and concern of Gateway will prevail amongst people and force the government to perform or all that was a momentary emotional outburst, which has faded away with time.
With vital evidences misplaced and important witnesses lost and reprimanded politicians restored to their past glory one is bound to have doubts on the intentions and integrity of the people responsible to deliver justice and can easily imagine the shape of things to come.
