Outside the morgue of Bhabha hospital two men embrace before wiping the tears from their faces. Inside lies the body of their friend and colleague, Tejas Shah, a 35-year-old salesperson whom they last saw boarding a train on the southern tip of Mumbai’s peninsula.
His friends spent Tuesday night looking at mangled corpses in the city’s mortuaries. Until they entered the morgue, Bhabha had looked like another futile stop on a grisly tour. ”You cannot see his face properly. It is a little crushed and there’s dried blood [on it]. Tejas’s arm is gone,” says Sreedhar Kulkarni. ”But it is him. He had a daughter. Who looks after her now?”
This tragic scene was repeated in every hospital in the city’s western suburbs. Standing in front of hospital boards displaying the dead and the nearly dead were old women in saris and burqas thrusting faded pictures of loved ones lost on Tuesday night. Inside the wards, friends and relatives sat on blood-soaked beds tending the injured.
In Sion hospital there were so many bodies that the ward staff simply left them outside under fly-studded sheets. In the emergency ward of Borivili hospital lay an unconscious boy, whom no one can name and no one has claimed. Doctors were too busy to notice.
Mumbai is a city where India comes to make dreams come true. The poor come to become rich. Others seek the sin of glamour. On Tuesday night, when seven bombs ripped through the city’s densely packed railway in 11 minutes, that dream became a nightmare.
The city did wake up to life on Wednesday. Train services on the western line, where the attacks took place, were restarted, though carriages were emptier than usual. The stock market rose 3%, perhaps because Mumbai has seen it all before. On a morning commuter service rushing through Mahim station, one of Tuesday’s crime scenes, 39-year-old engineer Ravinder Garyali said the city has been living with ”this problem for 20 years”.
”We had the bombs of 1993 and the riots. There are always dangers here. But life goes on.”
This need to resume a routine can be alarming. At King Edward Memorial hospital Gyan Thakur discharged himself despite pains in his chest and head. ”I lost my bag containing all my work details and 7 000 rupees. I need to get on with life.”
Not everyone got off so lightly. All that is left of Amjad Ansari’s right hand is a bloody stump wrapped in bandages. The 18-year-old bakery worker will never use it again. King Edward is treating about 100 other survivors.
In a country where rumour can trigger murderous reprisals, most people were careful in talking about the bombers. Almost all appeared aware that one of the bombers’ objectives was to provoke a backlash against the minority Muslim community. ”I think Indians have got wise to this and they know the agenda of terrorists to create disharmony in society. But no one has fallen for that trap yet,” said Javed Aktar, poet and Bollywood lyricist.
Muslims were reticent in interviews. Standing over the remains of a crushed skull in Mahim station, Mansour Ali Khan (25), who had rushed there and pulled survivors out of the wreckage, said people were staying at home. ”We want to wait and see what [the reaction] will be.”
It is difficult to underestimate how important Mumbai considers itself to be. Its shiny high-rise office and apartment blocks tower over slums and roadside shacks. Mumbai contributes more than a third of the country’s tax revenue and is home to Bollywood, India’s film industry. It is in the subcontinent’s commercial and cultural frontline. Some say its competitive ethos has kept the peace.
”I don’t believe it is a place where people want to be friends,” said Rahul Bose, a Bollywood actor who came to help out at Bhabha hospital. ”The glue in Mumbai is survival and competition.” — Â