Rational to Rationing in span of hours, Mumbai Riots

the trigger pulled by reflex invariably murders the reflect

Bricks were being carried to the terrace of 4-storey buildings … our colony had 17 of such buildings. Some knives, long iron rods too. The atmosphere was charged.

That day and many times later in life, i learnt how tools become weapons in wake or dawn of a crisis.

“Let them come! We would not get bogged down! We will show them!” was the feverish temperature of many. And it was an epidemic of fear, revenge, tribal-heroism.

Shops would open for a couple of hours and then remain shut. The supply chain was disrupted. And shops started selling stuff in small quantities.

Those days, I would reluctantly help my dad in a small grocery shop that he owned.

On this day, we opened our shop. And from nowhere, in matter of minutes, almost a couple of hundred people descended. It could well have qualified to be a flashmob of non-peaceful times.

Anyways, at first i got scared. I did not know whether these were “them” or “us” or “customers”. I got frozen.

While all of them would have been chaotically shouting the stuff they wanted to buy, but my visual had hijacked my audio. My Dad patted me on my back and asked me to fetch something. My body reached out and handed it over to him…and this process of “moving the body” must have sort of acted as “de-freeze”.

Scare wears off slowly especially if you are attending to 200+ people. Also because when people want to out-do the other, it results in chaos … sometimes soon or later, sometimes explicit or implicit.

Most of the sale-able stuff in our shop were over. And we were only left with selling sugar that day.

A tall and frail person walked up close to our shop with a rusted sword in his hands. His voice matched more to the sword than to his frame. With a rustic sound he said, “you will only sell 250 gms to one person”. My “nod” was ready much before he even spoke. And i served it.

Some people took sugar, gave money.

Some people took sugar, gave no money.

Some people took sugar, gave less money.

Some people took sugar, gave more money.

Some people ordered and left without taking sugar.

This continued for a couple of hours. Before we exhausted …both our ownselves and also the last of sugar we had.

I had heard somewhere that “bheed ki koi shaql nahin hoti” (mob has no face).

Its true! Mob has “phase” and no “face”. We get charged up into doing somethings. ‘Reflect” hands over the baton to “reflex” and actually leaves the race or becomes the “helpless” spectator. In absence of “vivek” (developing deep discretion), we succumb to rationing (of warring over scarcities) and make “reflect” as impracticed/impractical.

And at level of an indvidual, one has one’s own inner mob. When our overwhelming emotion hijacks our deliberation. Much like tools that become weapons, we have yet to sharpen the understanding of when to use them and how.