Living with Terror

Background: This came out on 19 Jul 2006

The original link is here.

Man From Matunga: Living with Terror

I then wrote about the terror attacks of 26/11.

Two Constants in Life: Death and Terror

20 days after 26/11

Bhavin's WritingsBhavin Jankharia

and then again in 2025 after the Pahalgam attacks

Counting Down to 90 - Week 1552 - Staying Sane When the World Goes to Pieces

Each time we make a difference to someone’s lives, because we have the power and ability to do so, we add a strong string to the fabric of this world that holds people together in the face of the disruption cause by terrorists and other similar people the world over.

Bhavin's WritingsBhavin Jankharia

Like a lot of people, I always remember precisely what I was doing at times like these. In 1993, I remember, we were in Bombay Hospital, when the first casualties from Dalal Street started pouring in, with head injuries and blood-splattered clothes, accompanied by their broker friends. Those days, without the kind of information dissemination we have now, it was all about rumors and for most of us, that was our first experience with terror of this kind.  

On July 11, I was sitting and working at home, when someone casually mentioned some bomb blasts. For at least another half hour, we didn’t think much of it, until we put on the news-channels and saw the mayhem. And they kept mentioning Matunga as one of the sites of the blasts, when in reality that was Matunga Rd station in Matunga West, just before Mahim, not the Matunga we live in.

Matunga in reality, has rarely been affected during either the riots or the blasts. The worst that has ever happened was a major train derailment at the Raoli camp junction, on the harbour line, some years ago. During the 92-93 riots, though adjacent Dharavi was burning, Matunga was a sea of tranquility. We spent most of our time playing cricket on the roads and even the ice-cream parlors opposite Don Bosco were open. The big scare in our lives had been a truck we saw left discarded in one of the bye-lanes, which we thought may have harbored a bomb, but had only been left there for safe-keeping, by a scared truck-owner.

Maybe it’s the homogeneity of the population, maybe it’s the location, but in times of crises, Matunga seems an oasis of peace. Unless of course the crisis we are talking about involves the rains, in which case your sense of well-being completely depends on which side of Gandhi market you live in.  

And all this is only true provided you’ve managed to get home to Matunga, in the first place. Which is not always an easy thing to do, when the city is hit.

As the face of terror becomes more and more visible in our lives, as terrorists from conflict areas around the world step up their activities, often without any reason or sense, we also will need to start accepting the presence of terror in our midst and then to get on with our lives. Which is what most of us did the day after, returning to or staying on at work …and thus deny them any sense of victory that the terrorists might have otherwise felt if they had succeeded in disrupting our daily routines.