What can I do ?

A son of a widowed mother, husband of 9 months pregnant lady, a fatherly figure for a younger brother there he was lying on the hospital bed with a broken leg and stitches on the head, the face --- And as I stood there besides him that Saturday evening , the seriousness of it all struck me. Talking to him, I could make out that he was very lucky - a miraculous escape considering the fact that he was in one of those 7 compartments! Things could have easily been very very different and far more tragic. I shuddered at the thought of how many families and friends have lost their sons, brothers, and father.

It filled me with anger and frustration -- anger at what wrong have all these innocent people done. why do they have to suffer and frustration at not being able to contribute something worthwhile to help out (or rather not being able to figure out what to do)

Then there's a talk about the Spirit of Mumbai. No doubt it was wonderful to see people helping out strangers in this moment of crisis. But to say that the city is so resilient that it got back to action the next day looks like glorification/ romanticism. Its more about the lack of choice - people have to work to earn the daily bread, the hawker, the businessman , auto-driver cannot afford not going to work and the trains are still the fastest way of commuting. This talk about Spirit of Mumbai, might just shift the focus from those who need to be held accountable and answerable - the government, the intelligence agency, and the police. How are the families who lost the sole bread winner going to cope up? The monetary compensation might help in the short run, but the vacuum which is created by the loss of a near and dear one is impossible to fill!!

Although I strongly feel that each one of us can contribute to make things better, I still have no clue ..where to start ...I am still thinking....

The Second beginning

It's almost a year since I joined the bloggers club.....and the second post hasn't' come through.
Quite a few topics on which I started writing, scribbled ...but never keyed them down, infact I could write something on "Things I'd like to blog about". Meanwhile, at office one my colleagues came up with an idea of a Team Magazine - Darpan ,it's in a Powerpoint format with team-members contributing write-ups, book/movie reviews, photographs and other trivia. I was an active (was I ?) member of the team and did pen down some things. I'll prolly re-produce some of those here .....but for the second beginning...something which I happened to write after the Mumbai Serial Train Blasts - unfortunately one of my college buddies, one year senior to me, was travelling on one of the ill-fated trains !