Ajith Nair

Hotel Taj : icon of whose India ? Gnani Sankaran- Tamil writer, Chennai. Watching at least four English news channels surfing from one another during the last 60 hours of terror strike made me feel a terror of another kind. The terror of assaulting one's mind and sensitivity with cameras, sound bites and non-stop blabbers. All these channels have been trying to manufacture my consent for a big lie called - Hotel Taj the icon of India. Whose India, Whose Icon ? It is a matter of great shame that these channels simply did not bother about the other icon that faced the first attack from terrorists - the Chatrapathi Shivaji Terminus (CST) railway station. CST is the true icon of Mumbai. It is through this railway station hundreds of Indians from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, West Bengal and Tamilnadu have poured into Mumbai over the years, transforming themselves into Mumbaikars and built the Mumbai of today along with the Marathis and Kolis But the channels would not recognise this

Before 26th Nov, the biggest congregations in Mumbai happened at Mumbai CST and Churchgate railway stations during peak hours. A million anonymous faces jostled with each other, garnered inches, all with the common purpose of getting that prize foothold in a suburban local. Strangers and even more strangers poured in and out of these stations like a giant assembly line. In between, strange circuits sparked conversations, cricket scores, what’s the time now, can you shift a bit, is this the Borivali Fast or the Andheri slow and so on. Such transactional pieces of conversation defined the crowded space that we all shared. Elsewhere, stock prices, prices of vegetables on the street, saale ****ve baaju hat na in traffic or a more paternal baap ka rasta hai kya. This is our lingo, defined by ourselves either as the ones who launched these or the ones who received these. This common code defined the language of transaction, transaction of every kind in Mumbai. Yes there were the show of emot

A daily dose of madness That rare moment to smile That breathless march of life Gasping once a while Life eludes me everyday I chase and cling to the rails Manage to hold my course somehow With wind against my sails Balance daily my burden Wife, home and kid And frustrated sometimes at work I wish I never did When the routine day ends and I wish I wouldn’t live again a terrorist shoots at me point blank Relieves me of my pain