NOTHING (For Jane Frostina, my Life in the time of Death)

Come tomorrow, and reams of newsprint will spell out just one word: MUMBAI. Many have died, and some others might collapse in the hospital. But, we can do nothing. Such is the heartless iniquity of some self-centred assholes that Mumbai’s soul is afraid of dying for ever. But, we can do nothing. The small screen is consuming hours of footage, telling us a story that is hurting us. But, we can do nothing except sit near the TV, shivering at the thought of what is happening. Once mentally screwed up, we can reach out for the remote and move over to some channel that gives us momentary peace. Because of what we are, and because of what we cannot be, we can do nothing.

Heard a politician just now. He was saying, “We condemn the attack….” Condemn: that word has turned into a convenient escape route for these suited-booted netas. Can we ban its usage or, at least, make it a synonym for ‘praise’ so that no politician would dare use the word to express his ‘compassion’ and conceal a systemic failure? Perhaps, we could, if we start a campaign to tell what condemn does not mean when used after a terrorist attack. But, we can do nothing since we know what language can do. Once used by the system that has failed, it turns into a tool that manufactures myths and feeds the masses.

Yes. We can do nothing.

The heart is hopeful. Tomorrow might change, it wants us to believe. But the mind, the rational part of our being, offers a different picture. Tomorrow will not change even if we want it to, it tells us. If America could not anticipate 9/11 – an expression repeated so often that we are tired of it – how can India, poor India, expect what the messiahs of doom have in mind? In today’s times, 9/11 has come to symbolize a defence mechanism rather than a tragedy that brought down the World Trade Center.

Just as ‘condemn’ has become an easy-to-use expression, 9/11 is a metaphor that is repeatedly flogged to say why nothing is right with the world. Have we sat back and actually bothered to calculate how often India has been assaulted in recent years, and how badly it fares when compared to most other countries? We may have, or we may not have. Does not make a difference, does it? We can brood, cry, shout, whatever.

But, we can do nothing.

A few days later, the world will ‘salute the spirit of Mumbai’. Even as many will hide their tears to board trains and reach their distant workplaces, those who have suffered no personal tragedy will write about the city’s ‘resilience'. Every time Mumbai gets back on its feet, what sort of resilience do these bullshitters talk about? Do they know what it means to lose a cousin to a blast? Have they even been close to a train that has been blown to pieces? Have they seen the rich and the poor rush inside hospitals in a tragic manifestation of egalitarianism? Have they ever done anything that has touched a single person’s life? Even as we wonder when the world will come to end, we have reasons to hate everyone who camouflages his absence of sensitivity with a sequence of well-rehearsed words.

But, we cannot stop such people from talking rubbish. We cannot believe in a system that fails repeatedly. We cannot expect more dynamism from our politicians. We cannot stop blasts, shootouts, deaths, and all those bloody AK-47s which can permeate Mumbai with the ease of an amoeba. That being the case, is there any damn thing we can actually do?

Forget it, my friends. Why discuss it anyway? For, think as we might, try as we can, we can do nothing.