I am angry. Pissed. Like never before. Bombay, the city that has made me the man I am, the city that I carry with me no matter where or what I am, is still burning.

And this time, we don’t give a fuck about the ‘Mumbai Spirit’. Or the famed Mumbai resilience. This time we want action, and we want payback. Mind you, I am not blaming a country or a religion or a sect or anything. I don’t believe in most of these, but I do believe in the dignity of human life. And in the freedom to live happily in one’s own country. To go to work without having to worry if one would get back in one piece.

The Taj hotel in flames. Massacre at VT. Policemen being shot without remorse. Someone just came into our own house and slapped us in our face and peed all over our sanctum.

I don’t care if it was Hindus or Muslims, don’t care if it was Pakistanis or Afghanis or Indians. Find who did it and fuck their happiness. Set a public example. Make sure the world knows, and make sure everyone takes note. The rudravataram better come soon; I don’t know how much longer so much pent up public anger and frustration can wait before it consumes everything in its path.

Some pics and links, just in case anyone forgot.

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/11/mumbai_under_attack.html

http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/nov/29mumterror-how-karkare-kamte-salaskar-were-killed.htm

Like I said, humans who condescendingly believe that it is their prerogative to decide who lives and who dies; what memories survive and what get snuffed in a momentary whim, also earn and deserve the liability to be killed.

Stay angry, Mumbai. Stay pissed. Very, very pissed.

p.s: The next time I see any politician talk about regionalism and vote-bank-agendas in such times, I will pray to all gods possible and make a public appeal to every terrorist in the world that they get a nice warm grenade in their ass. Fucking maggots. Have some shame, some humanity. Save your dirty politics for later, and behave like a human for now.

Human creativity, ingenuity and effort: what I call the ‘human solution’ to a problem; sometimes underpinning, sometimes obvious, but most of the time uplifting.

We as a species have been far more creative and efficient at solving the problems that faced us. Engineering and design have grown manifold over the centuries, but startling simplicities still astound me when I encounter them on a daily basis.

Example for today: Latest trend in Tokyo:

“Socks sold in packs of three, so that when one develops a hole, the spare
can be used.”

Whatay! Makes me shout “How the hell did no one think of THAT before?!” And that happens quite a lot with me, I must say.

Dilbert creator Scott Adams on some reasons why the economic slowdown is good in certain ways; I especially liked the one below:

I remember driving home in 1989 and thinking I had a flat tire because the car went all wobbly. I pulled over and discovered that my tires were fine; the earth was moving. It was the Loma Prieta Earthquake, and I soon discovered my apartment in shambles. But a funny thing happened.

All of my neighbors were outside, stunned. We talked. We shared stories. We bonded. It was a strangely good time. And I felt connected to people at a deeper level than ever before. Shared disaster does that.

A shared disaster brings people out in the open, out of their comfort zones, gets them talking, and makes them know a bit more about each other that they did not discover before.

Happened with us on campus too. Mashed by force and by situation, we were business school students who had lots of time with each other; but still most of us were huddled in our own rooms with Gtalk / MSN / Yahoo / whatever chat program we used and we continued to hang on to whatever few friends we had for dear life.

It took the ‘Russian salad’ incident (food poisoning), the summer placements and INDEX preparations to get us out in the open, and these shared experiences are some of the best memories of L that I carry. br /br /Also one of the reasons why I love the selling line of Smirnoff: “Life is calling, where are you?”. Our generations needs some more face to face interaction. We sometimes forget how much fun that can be.