The Spirit of Mumbai... A well planned Hoax!!!!!!

The last few days have been very frantic and terrifying with the terrorists knocking right on our doors (okkk cities...), the commandos trying their best to keep them at bay, the news channels coming up with a new "breaking news" every second, politicians doing nothing as usual, and people having lost their beloved ones and all their hopes as well. The news papers and the news channels have been screaming on the top of their voices about the "Spirit of Mumbai", the talk about the resilience shown by the city, its ability to return to normalcy in a few days and the brazen people who get back to work the next day. All these qualities are applauded and appreciated for. Even the people seem to show nonchalance towards these disastrous acts of cowardice.

It just made me think if its really what it is portrayed as or if there is something else which is very grave and needs immediate attention or is it something that is just an excuse for our inability and reluctance to act. As I thought about this, an incident from "The Fountainhead" by Ayn Rand, came to my mind. The incident describes how a shrewd and mean man called Toohey uses the power of media to mould a public opinion. And then uses this force of the masses to his advantage. Sometimes I sniff a similar kind of conspiracy all around. A big plot by the media and the politicians in which the common man, always suffers. Let me unfold it for you.

There is a terrorist attack somewhere (I don't want to ponder over the motives behind it right now) and many people are killed. As the logic goes, this is collective failure of the politicians (they are least bothered), the intelligence agencies (they fail to intercept), the security forces (as the explosives are brought from outside the country) and the police (they fail to track the terrorist activities). Now no one of these wants to take the responsibility so they keep blabbing about the "foreign hand". In the mean time the helpless people with fear in their hearts (you can make that out from their faces while traveling in the local train after a bomb blast) and all their hopes on god (because they have already lost faith in others), set out with a brave face in the search of their daily bread.

The media salutes their heroism and the country admires their courage but what everyone fails to see is their vulnerability and despair behind this so called "Spirit of Mumbai".


This reminds me of this poem by Ravindranath Tagore:

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action--
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.