The Day of Terrorism

So, something really scary happened to me.

I was coming home in the train. There were only four people in the compartment. I was nicely listening to Children of Bodom’s In Your Face, head-banging in my mind to the guitar solo, when I suddenly noticed a wind breaker hanging from the rack above me.

Now, I’m not somebody who gets alarmed easily, but a lone wind-breaker in a Mumbai local is enough cause for alarm, especially since 2006. Looking at that wind breaker made me break out in a sweat faster than I would have while wearing pencil heels.

I immediately called out to a guy, who was wearing a nice suit that looked obviously out-of-place in the train (even though it was the first class compartment) and told him about the wind-breaker. The other two commuters, another man wearing a white kurta and pyjama and a lady carrying vegetables in a basket, also heard me out eagerly.

The four of us chose the farthest place possible from the wind-breaker and were huddled together. I immediately called Western Railways (the number was put up in the compartment) and alerted the lady on the line about the wind breaker. She assured me that she would look into it.

When people feel they’re close to dying, they say that time slows down for them. I wish they weren’t right. Commuting from Bandra to Worli at 9 in the morning could have been faster than the train going from Borivali to Kandivali at 6 in the evening. I was sure that if I didn’t die in a bomb blast, I would surely die of a heart attack.

But, we did reach Kandivali station finally (the train master sure took his sweet time). The four of us rushed helter-skelter out of the compartment and ran to the over-bridge, ignoring the surprised looks from the other commuters.

Now, I don’t know what happened of the wind-breaker, except that it wasn’t a bomb (or we would’ve heard about it). But what I do know is that whether you’re a general hotshot at your workplace, a person of great simplicity, a housewife or a rock fan like me, a lone wind-breaker in a Mumbai local is enough cause for alarm for anyone, especially since 2006. Thank you so much, terrorists. Now we know why the rate of people suffering from heart attacks has increased.