Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Mumbai Blood

Mumbai Blood.

Dec 1, 2008

Sometime ago
When left the Brits, to go home,
They left behind some towers
Some palaces, some domed houses
To become hotels of 5-star lore.
Now the press and TV
And the repeat-diseased media
Have discovered the word iconic!
Iconic, like the Plaza hotel in New York!
People who go there are the
People that matter or care.
So the Taj and Trident got the coverage
While the peasants and workers, so bucolic,
Who built Mumbai lay bleeding and bloody
On the railway platform
Which got no coverage.
Bucolic, not Iconic!
And some silly clods in black ninja duds
Rope down from an old copter
After the fact,
And play to the camera
While 10 boys with nasty eyes
Do what they had to do
Wade ashore
Mow down the gentle folks of
Of Mumbai, bloody Mumbai.

Now Obama-nation needs something
They need the peace in the Asia nation,
So he can clobber the Taliban,
The same Taliban they nurtured
Coddled and played footsy with
When the Soviets roared and rumbled.

Mumbai bloody Mumbai
Where Jews, Sikhs, Muslims, Christians
Have lived together with Hindus,
Rich, poor, builder, shopper, sailor and tradesman
Before the children of midnight were born
In 1947 dawn!

Mumbai, Bloodied Mumbai!

11 comments:

Pinku said...

Rana....it hurts but its the truth...the deaths this time count for double the actual figure just because the names are those that frequent Page 3....

Mithe said...

Wow!Gritty lines in their stark reality...Nice blog. Am blogrolling you

Usha Pisharody said...

Courageous!

And yes, ironic too, vs iconic, as with bucolic as well.

Fine, and absolutely on the dot, esp. the close.

Indian Home Maker said...

Sad. And we were talking about making a Shanghai of Bombay :)

Anonymous said...

Well written Rana...i salute your spirit of courage. Shame on so called icons of indian TV news channels.

Dr. Tejbir S. Sandhu
Amritsar

Anonymous said...

Well written Rana...i salute your spirit of courage. Shame on so called icons of indian TV news channels.

Dr. Tejbir S. Sandhu
Amritsar

sukumbho said...

Our reactions and responses are governed by our class consciousness. This is what the elite media played on, tactfully, during the Mumbai crisis.

Now the Rice visit to India and Shiv Menon's to US smack of an impending Indo-Pak border conflict before LS elections.

DeeplyDip said...

came to your blog through Mampi's....very well put...and well i watched most of this disaster on NDTV and Barkha Dutt was all over the place...but guess these hotels got more coverage because there was a hostage situation here...I pity the Policemen and commandos who had the courage to face these people with such little training and equipment themselves...

Saadia said...

Genuine. And you are so right.

Teri said...

Blogs make the world a smaller place. Your words ring true. The media only shows the USA what the government wants us to see. Brave and informative, your post.

babla said...

Note... that there was some poignant coverage of the train station victims, but only as so far as they could sensationalize it. i.e. the 13 yr old boy who had not been told, days after the intial attack, that his parents and most of his extended family had been slain. For fear of his health etc... Regardless of the circumstances of this boy's plight, the fact remains that CNN (and i'm sure other cable news shows), chose this to be the single story to show w.r.t. to the rail station vs. the broader coverage of the true losses.
Babla