[Reader-list] Afra/Tafri

[Shivam]

My profound apologies for adding another potentially irrelevant mail
in your mailbox, and for cross-posting this from
http://www.shivamvij.com/2005/10/dilli-mein-afra-tafri-machi-hui-hain-dekhtay-rahiye-aaj-tak/#comments

Cheers,
S.

o o o o o




        Dilli mein afra tafri machi hui hain. Dekhtay rahiye Aaj Tak.



I was in an auto to Anand Vihar ISBT at around 6:30-ish when Aman
called up. "Vij where are you?" I told him I was travelling, on my way
to catching a bus to Lucknow.

"Be careful, there have been a series of bomb blasts in Delhi, one in
Paharganj."

Shit, I thought, Asim and Fahad, room neigbours both, were going by
train today. Paharganj is the hopeless medieval-looking market whose
unmanageable traffic has been responsible for making many a traveller
miss the train and stay longer in this angry city.

Before I could finish the conversation with Aman, Saattvic called up:
"Shivam could you confirm the news that there have been some bomb
blasts…"

I told the autowallah about it, who started muttering some
bhagwan-hi-maalik-hain stuff, and strangely, started driving at full
speed, as if to give vent to his anger about the blasts.

I was checking news on my mobile when mom called up from Lucknow.
"Dilli main afra tafri maji hui hain, tum kahan ho?" Yes, yes, I'm at
a safe place. But how do you convince her, she's been seeing Aaj Tak
which must have been giving the impression that all of Delhi is
running helter-skelter. I can imagine what the anchor must have been
like: "Dilli main afra tafri machi hui hain, dekhtay rahiye Aaj Tak!"
Followed by: "Dilli main aatank!…"

But Delhi is too huge for a few bombs, really.

Bombs go off in Delhi every now and then. The last time it was over a movie.

At Anand Vihar I met Gaurav and we were trying to figure out if we had
the luck to get a 'Delux' bus. Folks were already going bonkers with
the idea of my coming to Lucknow by bus. Apparently, no one I know has
heard of bus travel to Lucknow. "By bus? How long is the journey?"
Most importantly, "Is it safe?" Now it is only Uttaranchal where buses
turn topsy0turvy so often that I don't know why they ply at all. As it
turned out, the bus was safer than the train for which I would
probably have had gone through Paharganj.

In the midst of this an SMS from Dilip said, "On your Metro again,
going to Lohia hospital." I ignored the second part of the message,
too busy to understand the method of the Anand Vihar madness. At
places like these conductors shout destinations as though they were
selling vegetables, and in Delhi even vegetables are sold in a saner
manner - in something called Mother Dairy outlets. "Your Metro" in
Dilip's message was a reference to our meeting a few Sundays ago, when
I had told him how great the Metro was, how they fined people who
spat, how two men had refused to use the Metro because they didn't
want the policemen to 'touch' them for frisking at the entry gate.

Since the Delux wasn't forthcoming, Gaurav wanted to go eat lest we be
hungry on a bus as inconvenient as was ever made. We got on to a rick
and I realised Gaurav was not so much hungry as thirsty: a few sips of
vodka was the least he needed to gulp down the defeat of the
Marxist-Leninist AISA in the JNU students election. "Some new parties
came up shouting slogans of radicalisation, our votes were cut and SFI
(which is Marxist but not Leninist!) won." On the way the rickshaw
puller was not particularly careful about traffic rules, outraging a
traffic policeman enough to come and slap the guy. I felt as though he
had slapped the passengers as well. Over vodka and peanuts I discussed
violence with Gaurav. Gaurav's problem with the blasts seemed to be
more that they were "politically and strategically flawed" rather than
that they killed people. He had no problem with the policeman slapping
the rickshaw puller: "it's a sorting out process."

How can one ignore the sheer violence of violnce? The hard slap our
rickshawpuller got was very humiliating, he tried to brush it off by
laughingand murmuring some prafanities. For me the explosions that
killed a few dozen and the policeman's slap are the same thing: both
come from a worldview which sees violence as means to an end.

To which Gaurav said that the liberal position on violence was
ahistoric, that violence becomes justified and inevitable in some
circumstances.

Like?

Like the insurgency in Iraq, which is strategically aimed at state
authorities, American army, corporate interests…

I didn't know what to say. So we arranged food in a 'food court' in a
mall that is still partially under construction. "What if my comrades
see me in a food court!" Never mind, I said, hypocrisy was a JNU
trait.

As folks were calling up every now and then to ask me if I was safe
from the afra-tafri, and if it was safe to be in a bus to Lucknow
amidst the afra-tafri, I lied that I had cancelled the trip. I could
now enjoy my rajama-chawal.

Then Dilip called up and said he was with a man who had lost his
mother in the Paharganj explosions. If I could get the word out that
they were looking for Mrs Suman Jain, 58?

I called up Dhiraj, who asked me to sms him the info, and told me that
the injured were all taken to four hospitals: Lady Hardinge, Ram
Manohar Lohia, Kalawati and AIIMS.

I called up Dilip and told him so. He said they had already looked in
the first three. Now they were going to Safdarjung Hospital.

I told Dhiraj who asked me to tell Dilip to find the channel's
correspondent in Safdarjung.

At about midnight, the bus had reached Greater Noida when I messaged
Dilip: Let me know when his mom has been found.

Dilip messaged back: We have just identified the body in Lohia.

Dilip's involvement brought the tragedy so much closer. The Hindi
paper in Agra that I got early morning said the toll was over 60. To
think that any Delhite could have been part of that statistic is
chilling. I told Gaurav I could now understand how the dumb
Bush-voting Americans must have felt about 9/11, or why terorrism in
the cities makes people so angry. Smoke 'em out would quite be my
reaction as well.

"Just before the vodka what were you saying about violence?" asked Gaurav.

[Dilip D'Souza wrote about the incident in his column:
http://in.rediff.com/news/2005/oct/30dilip.htm ]