the ordinary citizen of mumbai

and other cities are dead by the hundreds. many of those who died will never make it to a news page or a tv channel or anywhere else. why? because they are your quintessential common men, nameless, faceless and nondescript average indian you will see at any railway station, or public space. they don't have names like hemant karkare, ashok kamte et al. they don't bust terrorists like the brave sandeep unnikrishnan did. so they don't get a facebook group to their names. in all probability, they would have died a vain death in a senseless battle fought by mindless people for silly causes. their loss is just restricted to their families and near and dear. some, may not even have families. you wouldn't know, would you, if the railway station tramp who picks scraps of leftovers to sustain himself, had a family? even if you did, you wouldn't care. because his name doesn't appear on any five-star hotel register. no chef, or hotel employee would care to save his life and spirit him away to safety. there is no safety for men like him, or the thousands of others who fill the city with their impossible dreams, who dream of taking care of their families despite recurring hardships. many of those killed would have lost their only earning member. no politician, bless his wisdom, would want to visit his jhuggi-jhopdi to offer condolences. that, my dear friends, is reserved for the high and the mighty, and the americans and the british and the israelis. so, your common man, r k laxman's patented broadside on indians' common object of comtempt, would relinquish into obscurity. he would just become part of the beautiful science called statistics. in all probability, his death may not be in vain after all if it serves to round off the number of those who have died. doesn't 300 dead seem much better than 259, statistcallty speaking?