Thanksgiving...One Year Ago

Last year I was lucky enough to spend Thanksgiving in the motherland of the holiday, USA. I was in Denver, Colorado on a client assignment. To celebrate the long weekend, my colleagues and I decided to take a trip to Las Vegas. Being our first trip to the gambling capital of the world, it was highly anticipated by us.

We were to leave early morning on 27th November, a Thursday. The day before, we were at work, making final presentations and getting sign-offs from the client. The general mood across the team and in the office was of joyous celebration. We had managed to meet the project deadlines and deliver satisfying results to the client and were all set to celebrate the results of our hard work with a terrific weekend getaway.

Then I got a message from a friend back home in Bombay. His conversation stated that portions of the city's downtown were under siege by some terrorist outfit.

The date was November 26th, 2008. The siege he referred to was the terrorist attack on the metropolis that began at approximately 9:30 PM and lasted for a gut-wrenching sixty hours.

We immediately scoured the internet to obtain some sort of video footage of the attacks. News Channels were broadcasting the grotesque incident live via their web channels. What we saw, we could not believe. Glimpses of men dressed in casual attire wielding Ak-47s and hand grenades at the Taj Mahal hotel. The five-star hotel had been turned into a battle-ground.

Elsewhere other members of the terrorist group had taken siege of various locations across the southern tip of Bombay. Restaurants, hospitals, train stations, schools, these men had not shown any remorse of mercy in their choice of targets and victims. Their motive was plain and simple. Death to all!. All of it seemed surreal, almost unimaginable.

What seemed like an eternity was in fact 60 hours. Almost three days, the city was held captive on in its own turf by terrorists. The outcome? Over 148 civilians died, 14 police officers and 2 Commandos lost their lives, several were badly injured and the city that everyone thought was indestructible was brought to its knees.

Bombay has had its share of disasters, natural or otherwise. As a citizen of the bustling metropolis, I have witnessed most of them. The communal riots of 92, the tragic bomb blasts that ensued the year after, the deluge of 26/7 in 2005, the local train blasts in 2006. These are some of them many events that have been etched in my memory. But there was something different about the attacks on 26/11. Something that made the entire episode seem not only tragic but alarming.

Although I was not in the city, when the tragedy occurred, my family and friends were. My father and brother work at office complexes in the Nariman Point area, which is close to Colaba. My grandmother lives at Vile Parle, where a taxi cab exploded . Many of my friends live near the CST station area, where one terrorist was on a shooting rampage with his rifle. Thankfully none of them were harmed, this time.

Flash forward to one year later, today. A lot has happened since that fateful day. But the memory of the tragedy still haunts us. For most they are only images that we saw on the television, articles we read in the newspapers. But for those who were caught in the middle of the maelstrom, the day is a grim reminder of the tragedy that befell them and a date that will be forever etched in their memories.

And the media is not helping in easing the pain either. Barely a week before the first anniversary of the terrorist attack, electronic and print media have been capitalizing on the event. With "Special Reports", "Exclusive Footage" and purple prose editorials, the media moguls are leaving no stone unturned to cash in on this tragedy. Even a cellular network operator is riding the wave with its own "tribute" to the heroes who sacrificed their lives to end the tragedy.

Noble as their intentions may be, one can't help but wonder, if all of this is but another way to publicize their own brands under the guise of nobility. But hey, that's just the pessimist in me talking. Who knows? Perhaps we are witnessing a strong social sensibility among the corporates.

Another and a far more important question is this - Has justice been served? A year after the attacks, we have one terrorist under custody awaiting trial, The governments of India and Pakistan are playing ping-pong with dossiers, the "Super Powers" of the world have yet to take a firm stand and plenty of unanswered questions.

So what are we celebrating after one year? From what I can tell, we can celebrate this, the simple fact that we are here. that the city has bounced back and that you and I can celebrate this Thanksgiving without incident.

But wait, didn't we already do that after the bomb blasts of '93? And wasn't this the same attitude adopted by us in response to 11/6 local train bombings? Sensing a pattern?

It is nice to know that as a city we have repeatedly emerged from our darkest hours as victors. But after a certain point that should not all that we should aspire towards. Rising from the ashes like a phoenix is fine, but striking the enemy in the gut is better. We need our government to take decisive action not only against the terrorists themselves, but also against those who are guilty of supporting such terrorist outfits.

So people, let us celebrate Thanksgiving this year. But let us celebrate this Thanksgiving to honor and thank the souls who went beyond the call of duty to secure our freedom on this day, one year ago and even before that. Let us give thanks to the fact that you and I are still here to remember this day thanks to their actions.

But let us not just stop at giving thanks. Let this day remind us of something even more significant, that terrorism is very much an issue for all nations, developed or otherwise. We can no longer turn a blind eye towards the tyranny of a group of people and lead our lives in oblivion. Make no mistake, this is a war, one in which the enemy is prepared to strike innocent civilians like you and me.

Fighting this war on terror and winning it for our future generations will hopefully earn us our due thanks in the Thanksgivings to come.

Why Newspapers Will Become Dinosaurs!

Be it a city slicker or a small town simpleton, most of us receive our newspapers at our doorstep. Some young lad employed by the "newspaperwallah" cycles into your building compound or society or "gully" and hastily makes the rounds of all the neighborhood doors, smacking them with the requested daily. Now this young lad, bloke, simpleton, "chokra" obviously isn't living his dream by running around every morning at the crack of dawn.  But until he wins the lottery, this is his bread and butter.

But for how long? Economies rise, purchasing powers expand and standards of living improve across the populous. There will be a time when the ubiquitous "chokras" will be no more since they would have climbed up the socio-economic ladder and established themselves as bona-fide white collar employees. Who then will bring your daily dose of news at your doorstep? And if not delivered in the morning for your reading pleasure, where will you go to get that "reading material" for those early morning rituals? Think about it for a minute. How many of us are willing to go to the neighborhood newsstand just so that we can buy something which is already available to us for free (in a manner of speaking of course!) on a 24x7 basis.

Where is it available on a constant basis you ask? Well silly, through the electronic media of course! Yes that idiot box of yours has roughly about a a news channel in virtually every regional language of this country, the AIR (All India Radio), broadcasts news bulletin on a daily basis throughout various time slots in the day and the internet probably has a gazillion odd sites dedicated to reporting current affairs and breaking headlines. A new entrant in this list is the mobile phone. With GPRS, EDGE and 3G, a variety of news-related content is readily available for the average cell-phone user.

Television has been around for some decades now and we all have witnessed the power of moving images when it comes to news. How many cringed when they saw the towering landmarks of New York succumb to terrorist attacks and turn into dust? The war reports brought Kargil, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka to our living rooms. Watching Yuvraj Singh's six-sixes over and over on every sports channels was electric! There is no denying the fact that television has revolutionized the way we perceive news.

Now consider the web for instance. type in news on google and you'll get 26,000,000 results listing prominent names such as BBC, NDTV,CNN and also inane ones like Tundra, Sun and The Onion! But the fact remains that news sites are dime a dozen. Many sites focus on special segments of news, i.e. sport (http://www.cricinfo.com), weather (http://www.weather.com), finance (http://www.bloomberg.com), etc, offering a more in-depth and detailed analysis of the affairs.

Apart from the obvious contenders, the web also has it's share of amateur reporters and paparazzi. Whiz through the status updates of your friends on twitter, facebook or orkut and you're bound to come across some bit of  local and international (depending on the reach of your friend-circle) news. Sports fans will let you know which football club won the previous night with great regale or whether the pole position was claimed by champion Hamilton or underdog Sutil. Financial pundits will keep twitting about the next big bull-run or at least the best performing stocks for the day. Even this year's Central Government Election results were on facebook before they were in newsprint! The most compelling factor about the web as a source of news is its ability to be absolutely instantaneous! News from any part of the world is available at your fingertips (with web browsing phones that is a pretty literal statement!).

Now I know that most of you feel that all the technology in the world cannot replace "that" feel that a newspaper provides. Paradigm shifts are often met with such weak criticism. People said the same thing about digital watches when they were introduced in the analog era. But today, digital clocks are everywhere! Newspaper barons and conglomerates are aware that this shift is taking place slowly but surely. That is the reason why they have begun foraying into the digital media to capture the escaping demographic. Think of any major news daily and they are bound to have a presence on the web, mobile content and in  many cases even the television and radio!

Let's not forget, that a paperless medium is also beneficial to the environment. With seven trees being cut to make a sheet of paper, your gossip section alone is responsible for deforestation of small forests! So environmentalists would definitely be tooting for the online and other non-paper based media to ensure the survival of the environment.

Are you beginning to sense the next big wave? A few years (maybe 10, maybe 20, maybe more!) from now, newspapers will cease to be the de-facto source of your daily dose of current affairs. Coupled with factors such as a rising economy, abundance of content and reduction in charges, online and digital media will be the choice of millions across the nation and, of course, the world.

If you've been reading carefully (and I hope you have!), you're probably wondering why did I even mention the little tid-bit about the newspaper-boy. How does that fit into this piece about the phasing out of newspapers? Especially when other compelling factors have been presented simultaneously. Simple, because that is the one factor which will ultimately cause the shift in our country. History is witness to the laid back approach that most of our nation prides itself upon. Unless, the balance of things is not upset, when it comes to our convenience and comfort, we do not tend to take things seriously. In the absence of that "somebody", who does the work, we feel the pinch and it is only then that we wake up and smell the coffee! So i don't foresee any amount of technology, availability or resources causing our chai drinking and newspaper reading nation to evolve and explore new options. Don't get me wrong, this isn't a generalization but an observation of the attitudes of many old-timers. The younger generation is willing to indulge their senses, try different ideas and accept new paradigms. They will be leading this shift voluntarily; the others would be joining the band-wagon out of compulsion.

For the time being, your daily "akhbaar" is safe and you can indulge in your "garam chai and tez khabar" routine. But remember, "Nothing is permanent but change!”