Karan Johar's next blasted flick: Kabhi khushi, kabhi bum

First the terrorists killed and maimed Mumbai; dazed and fazed the rest.

First day, first blood over, the media told us they failed to either kill or hurt that indomitable Mumbai spirit (said in a thousand different ways, imagery, analyses reports (alias rotten poetry); more imagery, more analyses. And more nauseating poetry.

So far so good; only if you keep shut and overlook the oh-a-touch-hackneyed bit (come on, even stiff upped-lipped Brit broads went overboard after their London bombing; and loose upper-limbed tabs hurdled over even the overboard).

But now the media are on another spirited fatal spree — killing us softly with guile, dulling us softly.

The spirit has outlived its term, the imagery tugging at us from the depth of Mumbai’s bowels; the shoddy poetry has turned comatose, the rest of the mumbo-jumbo taking shape of media-injected reams of euthanasia.

So what, pray, is this spirit? Damned if we knew.

People on their way to work, undeterred, spirited reporters tell us with even more spirit from all corners of Mumbai. That’s the moral fibre, they insist.

Without taking anything away from the city and its citizens, that would be the case in all Indian cities — with or without blasts. Fatalistic to a fault, we Indians have turned stoicism into an art form, impassiveness our sixth sense.

With day-wagers forming the major part of our work force, absence from work means more than a cross and naught on the check-in register. It means a day’s pay gone; a helluva lot more than our enthusiastic, spirited reporters would bother to tell us.

Reason why there were more crowd in the second-class compartments of those same locals in which the telly reporters got bits and bytes from half-empty first-classes (if only the camera guys had zoomed out and given us a shot of the entire carriage…)

It may sound crass — tragedy has a way of dulling our senses, and that dullness increases proportionately with the toll — but it just might be all about class. Ergo, the empty first-classes; and the record number of private vehicles on roads the day after the blasts.

So what is that spirit? It’s the same as the one in you and me; and the same sepia-tinted one possessed by your father and mine. “We're the people — we go on”. As Steinbeck put it in Grapes of Wrath.

Don’t let the media bullshit you; the only extra spirit in Mumbai lie in its thousand-odd extra bars. The rest is media drivel to 'sell' stories.