My Take on Mumbai's resilience

So. Here's my take on this whole hullabaloo about Mumbai being reslient.

What the world calls resilience is what I call apathy. Cold indifference. A sheer disregard for what is happening around us.

The reason we get up and go to work the next day is because no one we care about has lost a limb or is fighting death in a hospital. Not because we're resilient.

There are a few Mumbaikars who will not go to work for a very long time. They're the ones who've lost someone close. Those who have been injured beyond repair. Those whose lives will never, ever be the same again.

Think about it. There are people fighitng for life in the ICUs of hospitals and why should the media call us, who aren't affected at all directly, resilient?

I'd rather the world call us resilient, when we get up and do something about our situation. Not because we manage to get to work normally the next day.

God, make us a people with a heart.

I think the least we can do is pray for those hurt. They are someone's family, you know. They could've been ours. Let's pray for them.

Let's also think of ways of making sure this doesn't happen again. If all I can do is vote for someone responsbile who will take security and safety matters seriously, that's what I'll do.

Let's not be apathetic but resilient, in the true sense of the word.

When did we lose it?

What on sweet earth has happened to us?

We use to be free. We used to dream of what we'd do. Big dreams, small dreams, weird ones, impossible ones, ridiculous ones. But we dreamt. We used to look at others' hopeless situations and make little plans in our heads about how we'd never be them. We used to hope we'd be so much more.

Our minds used to imagine a cornucopia of possibilities and we'd simultaneously try to make all of it happen. We lacked the know-how, but we had the passion. Our ambitions were unbelievably exciting, starkly different, innocently optimistic and often imprudently outlandish. But they were real. We felt them. We knew that we knew that we knew that we were made for something.

We laughed. Uncontrollably. Giggled at randomness. Let tomorrow take care of itself. Let bygones be bygones. We kept shorter accounts. Our pranks were juvenile, our thoughts were careless, our banter was immature and we were unashamedly inappropriate.

We had friends. Not "Facebook" friends. Real solid friends. People we could rely on to have our backs. Friends who'd were friends behind our backs, too. We'd make foolish plans together. Let's start our own company. No, let's all go backpacking and travel across the world. Let's make a documentary and enter it in a contest. Let's call ourselves something to be remembered by. Let's start an unusual trend. Let's do this. Let's do that. We wore our hearts on our sleeves. Heck! We wore sleeves too. One minute we were sipping chai, the next minute we were off somewhere else. A group of us would walk in a straight horizontal line blocking the entire footpath.

Of course, we were naïve. Raw and unaware of the schemes of this world.

No one told us that routine would annihilate our dreams. Kill them one at a time. Slowly but surely. We didn't know that the corporate systems would make us conform. Erase our individuality. Get rid of our uniqueness. Who knew that money would be such a big deal? That we'd be working for it and that we'd cheat on our ambitions for it? We were totally kept in the dark about how the monotony of our schedules would have a toll on all our relationships and all that will remain are the carcasses of old friendships reminding us that they were alive at one time.

Oh, them college days! Them carefree college days. What I'd not give to go back and be! Just be.

Please not to be ignoring this...

Okay. That's it. Enough is enough. Too much is too much.

I've decided to take on the extremely revered task of creating a unique dictionary. Although, this is something I'm doing because of the sheer lack of better things to do; mind it, this is NOT something to be taken lightly.

I'm fed up of yeveryone making fun of my brethers and sistairs from South India (especially my beloved tamil annas and mallu chechis) when they speak. After deep research, I can say that such fun-poking and joke-cracking has come from a place of towtale ignorance of our Yenglish speaking skills. So, here is ending it awl!

Below is a list of words that we use when we're trying to kemmunicate. They may sound like a foreign language to you—but, my dear ignorant friend, it is Yenglish that we are speaking.

Please feel free to refer to this when you don't understand words we speak or even when you want to learn a better way of saying them (our way). Also, please feel free to add to it other words you've heard us say.

And, yes! You're welcome.

WHAT WE SAY	WHAT WE ARE REALLY SAYING
aiyoo	Oh no
awl	all
ben	bun
benny rabbit	bunny rabbit
ellow	yellow
kemmunicate	communicate
kenfirm	confirm
louse	love
many	money
may-rid	married
moundin	mountain
no no	no
peblick	public
potarto bondas	batata wada
raitch	right
senny	sunny
singull	single
towtale	total
wokay	okay
yeconomy	economy
ye-mail	e-mail
Yenglish	English
yennyway	anyway
yes yes	yes
yeverbody	everybody
yeverything	everything
yexactly	exactly