Singing away the heart of darkness
We respond to terrorism by invoking brotherhood, charity, fortitude, resilence and heroism.The reflective narratives written immediately after a terrorist attack are stories about these qualities. In the specimen below, the people of Mumbai may as well be the people of Madrid or New York or any other terror-struck city. As the story goes, their "indomitable spirit" and allegiance to the rebirth of the polis transcends mere trivialities like language or religion. But we all know that is only part of the truth. Terrorism also brings paranoia and loathing; it makes bigots out of the merely opinionated. And there is fear.
Those made suspect are welcomed by glances held too long; quick steps to marginally safer spaces on the platform; clutchings of bags and children. But this does not make for good storytelling - especially when a whole city must be raised and reassured of its imminent return to the mundane.
"Profiling" is, in its most benign sense, a way of finding order amid uncertainty. It’s comforting to think that our ill-wishers look a certain way and believe in one simple thing: it gives us something to sneer at and someone to run from. I wonder how this plays out in repeatedly-struck Mumbai, where everyone is a different shade of brown.
India’s Indestructible Heart - New York Times
Stories of exceptional selflessness have flooded in all evening. One came from my friend Aarti, who was in one of the trains on which a bomb went off. As she jumped out of her compartment, she saw streams of slum dwellers from the bleak shanties along the tracks rushing toward the train with bed sheets. They knew that there would be no stretchers to be found and were offering their threadbare cottons to be used as hammocks to carry victims away.
