Mumbai is the city of our dreams too

An article by Moni Mohsin, a Pakistani....

To all Mumbai wallahs and particularly those who have been wounded or have lost friends and family in this atrocity, my deepest, heartfelt sympathy. My sympathy too to this city of dreams, this New York of the east, this pulsating, vibrant, thriving metropolis now under siege. Sitting in front of my television screen in London, I have watched with mounting horror and disbelief thick columns of billowing smoke rise from the elegant dome of the hundred year old Taj Hotel; from thousands of miles away I have witnessed commandoes being dropped from helicopters on to roof tops where ordinarily pigeons roost; I have seen pictures of the blood spattered railway station through which thousands of eager, hopeful commuters pass each day, and worst of all I have seen the dazed, confused faces of otherwise irrepressible Mumbai wallahs stumble through eerily quiet streets. And for all this I am both saddened and enraged. The deserted, tense streets of Mumbai remind me of Karachi on December 28 last year – the day after Benazir was killed possibly by the same bunch of extremists who have visited this horror on Mumbai. As petrol pumps blazed, shattered glass lay on the roads and plumes of smoke rose from various points in the city, Karachi had the same haunted look that now afflicts Mumbai. And the state of the Taj brings to my mind Islamabad’s Marriot Hotel, three months ago, when half the hotel was blown up by a single savage bomb. The shattered, blood bespattered lobby of the Taj Hotel now probably looks little different to that of the Marriot then. And in the terrorised, grief stricken faces of Mumbai wallahs, I see reflected thousands of my own country men and women whose homes have been razed, whose schools have been burnt down, whose crops have been destroyed and whose relatives have been brutally mown down by a handful of brutal, merciless men who masquerade as holy warriors. Terror has visited my own family too. My brother-in-law and sister, who run a newspaper in Lahore, fiercely critical of sectarianism and religious extremism, have received a number of death threats from these same people and are forced to live with the roundthe-clock police protection. Every time I go stay with them in Lahore, I bristle with resentment at the incarceration they are forced to bear. Every time I leave the house with them, I keep watch over my shoulder. Every time the phone rings at my bedside late at night in London my heart stops momentarily. So I feel for you, for I know all too well how angry and sad it makes one feel. But even in times of rage it is important to place blame in the right place. If this outrage has been perpetrated by Pakistanis, and it looks increasingly as if it has, then it is the doing of the same small bunch of extremists who killed Benazir, the same people who have taken over our beautiful valleys in the north and stalk our cities in the south, the same people who kill and maim us every day. These are the holy warriors who have killed more Pakistanis than have died in any war with another country. These are not ordinary Pakistanis who want, just like the people of Mumbai, to go peacefully to work each morning and return safely home each night. These are the people, in fact, who want to undermine that search for security, stability and prosperity that ordinary Pakistanis crave. They are no part of us. I hate them as much as you. Perhaps more so, for they have destroyed my country and killed my people and do so every day. Ordinary Pakistanis share your grief unreservedly. Mumbai, the city that gave us Shahrukh Khan, Salman Rushdie and Zubin Mehta is also the city of our dreams. We salaam your courage, mourn your loss, abhor and condemn those that have caused it and wish you speedy recovery.