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ShareWith the accused in the bomb blasts case now facing sentences, it is imperative that justice be afforded the victims of the 1992-'93 riots. Is there any amongst us who can honestly say that the bomb blasts in Mumbai were not a result of the attacks against its Muslim populace at that time?
Can anyone who lived through those months forget the fear that stalked the street, the odour of death that pervaded the air and the breakdown of civil society as lumpen elements went on a rampage against the most vulnerable, while the police looked the other way?
An editor, who went in a delegation to appeal to the then CM, remembers him as sitting stone faced with a stenographer's pad in front of him, oblivious to the pleas for sanity and state intervention to prevent Muslims from being attacked. "After that we went to meet Sharad Pawar and the difference was palpable. He was fully aware of the situation, but waited for three days before he called in the Army.
Meanwhile, hundreds had been killed. It was a farce."Embedded with a group from Citizens for Peace, I recall visiting the worst affected areas in Tardeo and Mahim, where slums and shanties had been torched and destroyed.
Amidst all this I remember the fury in an old man's face who had lost his family, his home and his work. There will be retribution, I had written, in a column in Mid-day that week. And there was.
The mother of all self-help books 'The Secret', embraced by millions of woolly headed ingénues the world over, holds as its basic premise that what you think about the most, is what you see most around you. Think about success and that's what you see, ditto money, yachts, fast cars, top jobs.
All very well and comforting no doubt, but what does it say about me that on Mumbai's streets, I am constantly seeing the crazies in the crowd? Stark, raving, gibbering, cursing, muttering, waving frantically, Mumbai's population of the mad, the deranged, the disturbed and unhinged seems to be getting bigger by the day.
Every busy street has its resident loony if you look closely. And such is the city's apathy that their presence elicits no real concern, only a few shudders of horror or a few laughs.And now I read that the Thane Mental Hospital says that it is overbooked and will stop admitting any more patients, until the relatives of those cured agree to take them home.
Apparently 15% of the patients who have completed their treatment and can go home have overstayed, as their families don't want them, says Dr Sanjay Kumawat, secretary of the TMH.
Acity on the edge with no place to go - and it's only getting worse. Much is being said about the BMC's Rs 65 crore-beautification plan to desilt the Powai Lake. I have a better idea-why can't the money be used instead to cover Mumbai's potholes?
