Is Mumbai desensitised to bomb blasts?

“‘Mommy, can I sleep with you today?’ my 11-year-old daughter asked me after Wednesday’s bomb blasts,” says Varkha Chulani, clinical psychologist at Lilavati hospital.

“I had to tell her that terror is a reality she has to learn to accept. Letting her sleep in my room would have only reinforced her fears.” This is a dilemma most parents in the city have to face every time there’s a terror attack: How do you explain to your child that terror is here to stay?

Every few years, just as we get used to life in Mumbai, a bomb or gunman comes along and shakes our faith in the idea of ‘normalcy’. Psychologists say that such a continuous attack is changing how we define ‘normal’.

“In a war zone, people are prepared for bomb blasts and gunmen. But we Mumbaikars are not. Each attack desensitises us a little bit, and though we bounce back to normal pretty quickly, we know there will be another one soon,” says counselling psychologist Natasha Thomas. “Once we’ve called our loved ones and made sure everyone is okay, we get on with our work.”

“I took a cab to my clinic on Thursday. Of course I wondered if my cab was going to blow up. But I believe everyone in the city felt more angry than scared,” says Shefali Batra, psychiatrist at Mindframes. Psychologists say that the city may be suffering from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or other anxiety related disorders. For most people, this could last from a few days to a few weeks. For others, it could be months before they stop looking at every bag in local trains as suspicious. Experts agree that PTSD every few years makes us more resilient as a city.

That is not to say that we have more ‘spirit’ but that we’re just becoming more thick-skinned as a people. “Like someone who grows up near a garbage dump has better immunity to diseases, we too are becoming immune to terror attacks,” says Rhea Pravin Tembhekar, psychologist at the Coffee Counselling Centre.  

“Five years back, the day after the July train blasts, I was back at work. Not because I was brave, but because there was no other choice. I had to cope,” Tembhekar said.

Psychologists say that there are largely two ways we cope with continuous attacks in Mumbai. We either become hyper-anxious or resilient and thick-skinned. In the long term, both are bad for us. “If this keeps up, we’ll soon constantly be ready for a fight-or-flight response. That hyper-preparedness isn’t good. In fact, the adrenaline rush is bad for the body in the long run,” says Chulani.

The other reaction will only desensitise us. “If we stop to actually think about a bomb blast, we realise the danger it poses. The numbness then is an easier way to get up and move on,” says Thomas. The worst affected are children, who don’t understand terror or what is normal. “Imagine a generation of kids growing up with ‘terror attacks’ defining their reference point for what’s ‘normal’,” says Thomas.

“The best thing a parent can do in such a situation is to make their child feel.