Here is an interesting piece
Thackeray and Dawood take on Mumbai.
Let’s take them on.
I am angry as hell. Can we do something about the two thugs who are
screwing with our city?
One, our very own Hindu Nazi, Bal Thackeray decides to put on a show of
strength by getting his ragtag Shiv Sainiks to burn down a few buses,
torch a few Muslims and shut shops in our city on Sunday. Acts of
carefully-planned violence supposedly in the name of "spontaneous
emotion"
over the defacement of some inconsequential statue of his wife in some
inconsequential part of town. Acts planned to impress the shopkeepers
who had increasingly stopped paying "protection money" to the Thackeray
family-run political party, the Shiv Sena - and to assert, somewhat
impotently and unconvincingly - that old man with senile mind and
rag-tag coterie still ruled Mumbai.
And what do we do? Nothing. We adjust our shopping schedules, our Sunday
outings with our families, and go back to our lives, ignoring the man
and his actions like one would shrug off an annoying but occasionally
persistent flea.
Phone call records now indicate that two days later , our other
home-grown thug, Dawood Ibrahim, now hiding in Pakistan behind the
pajamas of tinpot dictator Musharraf, got some Islamic militants to
plant 7 bombs in our local trains and kill more than 200 people. A
response not coincidentally timed to contradict Thackeray’s "I rule
Mumbai" with a louder "Nope dude, you don’t."
And what do we do? Not very much again - other than to bring out our
hearts and repair the damage as we best can. We crowd hospitals till
they say they have more blood than they need, we line the streets
offering food and water to people walking home, we invite strangers to
spend the night in our offices and homes till the public transport gets
back into action.
You know what - I’m tired of turning the other cheek to these two
jokers.
I’m sick of just doing what we Mumbaikars are supposed to do so well
-what our supposed "Mumbai Spirit" is all about - which is - in a word,
to not be affected, to do nothing, to go on with life, to accept this as
just another annoyance of living in Mumbai, like our small apartments,
our potholed roads and our real estate prices.
Yes - just getting on with our own lives is probably the best long-term
message we can give anybody. Just like we did after the 1993 riots -
another Dawood-Thackeray showdown. Just like we did after every single
idiot Shiv Sena rasta roko, after every single stupid bomb in our
temples and trains.
We showed that it didn’t turn us into quivering scaredy-pots, into
trembling sissies. We just dealt with it and went on.
The point is, this lesson of "do what you will, we’ll ignore you" would
work on a thinking thug who cared for what we thought. But these two
aren’t after terrorizing us. They’re doing the
"mine’s-bigger-than-yours" with each other, using our corpses as
measuring tapes. We’re not critical to either of them. We’re just
collateral damage.
I propose that we’re way too tolerant of these two small-time warlords.
And in the interest of solving these annoyances, like we’re finally
solving our roads and highways and flyover problems, I suggest we go
after these two.
Let’s take them out.
Let’s learn from the Americans and the Israelis. And let’s use tactics
that we perfected ourselves.
Yes, I know Dawood’s squirreled away in Pakistan. I posit that he’s far
easier to locate than an Osama Bin Laden in that country - being
somewhat identifiable by his attendant accessories of women, wine,
cellphones and Japanese sport-utility vehicles - habits a wiser Osama
does without. How difficult would it be to do one of those surgical
strikes - cruise missile anybody - and put him out?
I do think that asked politely - and especially if we promise to buy
some overpriced arms from them after the fact, both Israel and America
would volunteer some expertise in this regard. It would solve a lot of
issues, not the least the usage of drug money to fund weapons for
Kashmir militants, Musharraf’s kowtowing to the ISI, the Bollywood
film-funding problem and lots of other grouses many countries face. No
one would miss the man, other than the odd failed Bollywood starlet or
two.
Let’s do it.
Thackeray is a knottier problem. Laser-guided munitions wouldn’t be an
appropriate solution - and simply voting him out of power in the state
didn’t work either - the man now uses street-gang power in place of an
electoral mandate.
But we have a deadlier weapon - our tax sleuths. Remember, Al Capone was
brought down for income tax evasion. So was many an Indian political
career.
Go after the failed cartoonist - and his failed cartoonist son - and
find out where exactly the latter got the US$100 million to bid for land
in Lower Parel. Where did Papa get the money for his Japanese SUVs, for
his real estate holdings, his Italian shades, his club in the suburbs,
his Swiss watches?
Bring him down. On the slightest excuse. Go after him legally. With as
much firepower as we can muster. Be relentless. You’ll see that he’ll
run out of friends very soon.
It’ll be much more fun, much more rewarding - and much better PR, in
fact - than trying to bring down Amitabh Bachchan. That man has
legitimate sources of income. This man writes bad grammar in a failing
newspaper.
There’s so much I need to do - and I can’t take this crap any more.
Perhaps it’s the 21st century, perhaps I’m not the super-patient Indian
man I was brought up to be. I can’t take this waste of time, waste of
life, waste of emotion any more.
And I sense this under-swell in others around me. We’re not happy to
stand by and watch, like perhaps our parents were.
Let’s go after them.
When Thackeray and Dawood took on Mumbai now - as they did before -
Mumbai won.
And when they take us on again, we’ll win again, give or take a few
lives they don’t care about.
And we’ll win yet again. And again. And again.
But you know what - let’s not give them another chance to go after us.
Let’s go after them. Really. Shut them down once and for all.
Enough is enough.
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A concerned HINDUSTANI ..............