The recent Mumbai bomb blast - some thoughts...

7/11 - Mumbai was ripped apart by 8 bomb blasts - around 200 people killed, hundreds more are gravely injured. The many 24x7 news channels across Indian TV space scramble over each other to provide the details - live feeds, audience reactions, expert panel interviews...

7/12 - Mumbai is trying to slowly crawl back to normal, people are going back to work...TV channels such as CNN-IBN go gaa-gaa about the "Mumbai spirit".... images are being shown of people helping each other on the streets, water & food being provided to the stranded, people are queuing up in front of blood banks...

People going back to work the very next day after the blast are interviewed, especially those who are traveling by the local train network...Mumbai is returning to "normal"...

7/13 - The security agencies and police are woken up from their slumber and they pretend to be doing their work - more than 350 have been detained...LeT & SIMI are being suspected as the perpetrators.

7/14 (today) - The bomb blast news is no longer the sole story hogging the headlines - the 'breaking story' is now just another story....

Tomorrow - Mumbai returns to "normalcy", the bomb blast story vanishes from the headlines and most importantly - we forget...

A regular and familiar pattern - all of us are proud and resilient Indians - we can take pain (give us more, please)...we are famous for our ability to "bounce back"....

Question is, do we really "bounce back"? Are the people who are traveling by Mumbai local trains today doing so because they want to show bounce back or prove to somebody that "India will not be scared of terrorists?". Or is it because they are taking the train because taking a taxi will cost more money and taking a bus more time than they can afford?

For the people who HAVE been the real victims, people who have lost their family, their friends...people who lost their limbs and will never lead an active life again....will things ever return to "normal" again? In my opinion, no...

There will be some arrests surely (maybe after 10/15 years), a high profile trial - and then mostly likely an acquittal. The accused will then proclaim himself as the "victim of the media's witchhunts" and win an election on a sympathy wave..

Okay, maybe I have gone too far in the last bit - but the reality is nothing will never happen, nothing will change. The whole nation will seat glued to TV watching the "breaking news", there will be reams of newsprint printed, parliament will see heated discussions, people will chat, rave, rant, blog (like me here!), and then we will forget - and then the cycle will start again for yet another story.

This brings me to a question which is related to what I have already said above - I have never understood why our collective public memory is so short? Why do we forget so quickly? Why is it that any issue which is burning today is not even in the fine print tomorrow?

There are so many examples in the recent past - the reservations issue for example. Protests, hungerstrikes, resignations and even self-immolations. Ultimately all that has changed nothing! And then quietly, slowly but surely that issue has vanished from each our minds.

Even non-issues such as during the release of Da Vinci Code will stir the Indian media into frenzied activity. Issues such as these have shorter lifetimes but during that time they even have the capacity of displacing the more important issues from the limelight.

Another area which gives (or used to give, in my case) us national identity is cricket. There also, for example a cricketer turns in a great performance in a match. He is hailed by all and sundry as the next Sachin Tendulkar or the next Kapil Dev. The whole nation will idolise him, people will sport his hairstyle - and then he flops in the next match. Lo and behold - all that was said & sung before is conveniently forgotten. That very same player will then be the villain and will be put down to the dust...

Or take for example the scant regard with which we treat our own history and our own monuments. How many times have we seen people deface our monuments by scribing their names on them? Or for that matter monuments covered in 'paan' stains and garbage?

All of this is something which arouses great curiosity in me. What is it that has caused our public memory to be so short? Why do we forget (and perhaps forgive) the past so quickly? Is it the role played by the media? Or is it the fact that given our continuous struggles with the present we can afford no time for the past?

I wonder....can someone answer?