The London blasts brought memories of Mumbai blasts. It is sad that no one has yet been brought to justice… And Dawood Ibrahim is hiding in Karachi and Dubai.
Remembering the Mumbai blasts
At the end of a bizarre day, an inevitable question: Will London wake up tomorrow as determined to get back to work as Mumbai did over 12 years ago?
As news flows in about a series of blasts in London buses, Indian minds cannot but go back to that March day in 1993, when busy Mumbai witnessed what writer Suketu Mehta describes in his book Maximum City: Bombay, Lost and Found as a catalytic event that, along with the communal riots thereafter, changed the course of life in the metro.
Those who were there will not forget the repeated shocks.
Mumbai woke up to a routine day on March 12, 1993 and it was only at 1.30 in the afternoon that the first tremors of terror were felt.
A car bomb exploded in the basement of the Mumbai Stock Exchange building.
Word spread fast that there was a bloodbath at the exchange.
Many thought it the result of a gang war or some such.
Rumours were rife, the city tense. Fifty people were killed, the 28-storey building that housed the BSE and buildings flanking it were damaged.
As Mumbai prepared to come to terms with the tragedy, another bomb ripped through the Air India building a half-hour.
The horror had just begun.
In the next 90 minutes, there were 11 more explosions all over the city.
Thirteen in all, most of them car bombs, some kept in two-wheelers, some in suitcases. People gaped as hotels, government offices, even a shopping complex were blown up in terrifying synchronicity.
Glass window panes were shattered in homes near where the bomb exploded as terror spread through the city.
There were frantic calls, exchange of notes. The whole country was by now sitting up and watching. At the end of the day over 250 people were dead.
Unofficial sources said the figure was higher, over 300. About 1,400 people were injured. Bombay was devastated. Any other city would have taken days to drag itself out of mourning. Not Mumbai, then Bombay. The very next day, it was business as usual.
A decade later, Mumbai’s nightmare came back to haunt. On August 24, 2003, bombs in taxis exploded at the Gateway of India and the busy Zaveri Bazaar, a target in 1993 too. Those blasts, initially believed to be four, left 52 dead.