The spirit of Mumbai – an advertising gimmick

You know how you feel so good and so cool in a levis or a nike?
‘Just do it’ you tell yourself.

I think the spirit of Mumbai is just a similar meaningless factor cleverly created by someone working on those Mumbai tourism/festival type campaigns. It’s just the figment of a very good planner’s imagination.

We are resilient – we tell ourselves. After every attack Mumbai gets up, dusts the seat of its trousers and gets on with life.
Resilience, my foot. We just don’t care. We see no difference between a beggars sitting at the station and bloody bodies strewn across the roads.

“Oh your dad died in the Taj firing? Sorry dude. By the way where is the so-and-so file saved on your desktop?”
Our lives go on. We have to get our promotions and admissions, meet our targets and deadlines.

Terrorists are flooding in Kashmir everyday. No problem.
Bangladeshi infiltration in full swing. Arre mere ghar toh nahi aaye na.
Naxalites all over the bloody place. Well, I didn’t call them.
Somebody will come and clean the shit. Yeah right.

The firing is going on even as I type.
Top officers dead. Shraddhanjali de do.
Bodies coming out. Dekh lo, apna toh koi nahin mara na?

Politicians condemn the stuff on TV and go back to their dinners.
Defence heads are helpless because of the above-mentioned.

The Taj is burning up and people are dying.
But the presentation deadline remains unchanged, and the film will be shot nevertheless.

Because most of my executive colleagues never bother to vote.
We vote for people on reality shows and song-and-dace shows.
But we don’t elect our corporators and MPs.
A lot of my friends can’t because they’re away from their hometowns.
We can do our banking over the phone, across lands and seas.
But we can’t vote if we ain’t back home.

And those who can won’t.
Same old problem. Kisko vote karein?

I ain’t here to start a ‘Vote’ campaign.
I’m here to say why the F$%^ don’t we have candidates?
So many passionate people around but nobody wants to get their hands murky.

Aggie Dias turned around a place like JWT in less than a year.
Imagine what a man like could do for the country.
Senthil started a whole ‘yellow rippers’ group on facebook.
Think of how many groups that guy can lead.
‘Hemant Karkare’ fan club anyone?
Piyush put India on the global map. You think he can’t do anything beyond advertising?

And this is only the advertising fraternity I’m talking about.
Rashmi Bansal has the youth eating out of her hands.
Sidin Vadukut is as patriotic and passionate as he’s popular.
We are surrounded by leaders, passionate, intelligent and capable.
We have great minds all around us.
Can we please have someone who’d make us feel like voting?