Ten years ago tonight the bullets flew. Men and women and children were butchered by
a group of 10 men who came ashore at Mumbai to kill. And kill they did. Simultaneously. With utter coordination – coached by mobile
phone from a command centre in Pakistan.
Meticulously planned to wreak maximum horror.
The battle raged for 3 days before the guns became silent. And the odd seagull squawk mingled with the
crows cries and the rumbling of colossal maculate city of Mumbai started up
again.
When the blood was wiped off the floor of the cavernous
Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus railway station, when the stains on the plush
carpets of the Taj Mahal hotel were removed, when the wreckage of the Jewish
Chhabad house was set right the human toll became all too horribly clear. 166
lives snuffed out. 9 butchers
took their own lives / were eliminated by security forces. One was captured alive and later hanged.
We had been working for months to host a special talk with
the American author Philip Yancey. He and
his wife Janet were staying with dear friends of ours in Thane who founded and
run the Bethany Hospital. Philip and
Janet spent a day with our home-based HIV care programme, meeting people living
with HIV in their homes. The plan was
for them to go down to town in the evening and give a talk in a large
auditorium about the issues of pain and grief and grace.
Then the bullets started to fly.
We stayed in Thane.
And watched horrified as the tragedy took its horrible course over the
next 60 hours. A number of phone calls
and emails started coming in, asking whether Philip and Janet were in the
hotels being attacked in south Mumbai. We
were able to quickly assure the inquirers that they were safe. But so many others were not. How many guests and staff did not
Philip eventually shared meaningfully at a packed Church in
Thane – while the final endgame was being played out in South Mumbai. We bade him and Janet a very fond farewell a
few days later. Earlier this year we
sent out a prayer brief asking for people to pray for rain in our area of Bundelkhand.
We got a reply from Colorado – Janet saying
that she and Philip were praying for rain.
It rained – no drought this year.
And so tonight we are 10 years on. Would it be fair to say that the stain of
humanity has only deepened in this decade?
Mass shootings are almost normal now.
I say “Paris” and in your mind a terrible massacre takes place in a rock
concert. I say “Berlin” and the horrible
image of a large truck deliberately driven into a Christmas fair is conjured
up. I say “Las Vegas” and the image of a
lone shooter up in a hotel room raining down fire on a large country music
concert below. And in between school
shootings. Beheadings on the beach of
men in orange jumpers by the terrible IS swordsmen. And in the meantime lots of ugly
fillers. The odd knife attack here. A mini-van rammed into people there. A young man with an automatic weapon
unloading his hatred on campers in a Nordic land. Today an estimated 137 women around
the world died at the hands of relatives or partners. The most dangerous place for many women are their
own homes.
Have we become comfortably numb? Does nothing horrify anymore? Have the lines between gore in imagination
and the unimaginable become so blurry?
If we take a long picture perspective on human history, the
current barbarism just fits into a long, long pattern of brutality. The first brothers in history ended their
relationship with one dead in a field.
The first recorded human death in the Bible was a murder. Those
whose names History records as ‘great’ often earned their titles over the
bodies of many. Many a throne was won –
and maintained – by the sharpness of swords (and later the ever increasing
efficiency of gun-powder). If anything,
the post World War 2 world can only said to be blessed with many islands of relative
peace.
It’s been 10 years since the bullets flew in the neon-lit
darkness of a Mumbai night.
Tragedy can be a solemn teacher. Millennia ago a wise man called Moses wrote a
song in which he says “teach us to number our days, so that we may achieve a
heart of wisdom.” He had seen much of
life in all its rawness, and been transformed from a reckless adventurer (who had
blood on his own hands after killing a man as a 40 year old) to ‘the meekest
man on earth.’ Knowing the finiteness of
these days which we call life can help add meaning to them – and urgency.
I do not live in fear of bullets. My life has been too silver-spooned for
that. The few bullets that passed my way
were the stray shots exchanged by drug-lords that I heard as a student in New
Haven, the pop of a rifle by a drunk security man in Kampala, the few shots between
underground forces and the Indian army during a stint in Manipur. The bullets of Mumbai 10 years ago were heard
on TV, not by my ears while cowering under a bench.
No, my main problem is just the opposite of tragedy – it is
the slow erosion that a subliminal pursuit of leisure brings. The blunting of that which is true. The myriad worm holes where time evaporates
into while reading BBC news on the mobile for the 35th time in the
day. The silliness of staying up late
into the night skipping from one topic to another on social media. The bane of our age is banality. A drowning in endless pictures of self. A sea of narcissism.
It is such a gift to be alive. To be able to breathe. To be able to run and catch a train at a
station (which I just did earlier this evening – I am typing this on the top
berth of a train, rumbling through the cold darkness route to Delhi). What a blessing to be loved and to love. To nibble a bit of eternity. To have a fresh desire to say to my Lord Jesus:
“I want you as my portion. And I want you to be more and more central to who I
am.”
Thinking of the bullets is good, because we need to get that
jerk to bring us back to our senses. To
count and see what really matters. To remember the earnestness of my pre-40
self. And today to honestly look within
and see the rubbish that so easily accumulates – and ask the great advocate of
our souls to toss out all that so easily entangles.
The broad sweep of history will continue to swirl around
us. The names of the dead are worth
repeating by those still alive. The vast
future of eternity is just a few more years around the corner. As we inch closer to our Jubilee year, Sheba
and I realise that statistically we now have less than 10,000 days in the
bank. Sobering stuff – but also much,
much to rejoice in. Joy helps us to live
a life which is very much in the here and now – and at the same time also very
far-sighted into the vast depths of the future too. We bungle a lot, but are grateful for the
amazing grace we receive on this pilgrimage.
Bye-bye bitter bullets – shot in Mumbai 10 years ago. It’s painful to think back on those few days
of conflict, and on other maleficent days – swamps of life-less-well lived –
not as dramatic as bullet-whizzers but perhaps more deleterious. Numbering our days and gaining a heart of
wisdom can also help us say “Hello” to the here-and-now-doors opening to the
length and breath of life – hereafter!
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