Heroes of 7/11

One of the management lessons goes as: “if you are wondering why a ‘useless person’ has got promoted, almost always it is due to his subordinates”.

World over front line people hog all the limelight while backroom boys are relegated into oblivion.

Something similar happened few days ago in Mumbai. When the entire city of Mumbai was in the grips of panic & shock, these were the people who worked relentlessly to ensure that normalcy restores before sun rises the next morning. In true sense they are “Heroes of 7/11”.

As we all know trains are the lifelines of the city. And on that fateful evening, all trains in the peak hours getting cancelled meant around 1.5 million people traveling on WR towards Borivli / Virar were stranded at different stations. They had to fall back upon alternate mode of transport. Now the question is how any city can offer an alternate transport medium in just an hour’s time to such a large number of people.

BEST, Mumbai’s local bus transport system, took up the gauntlet. Almost all the buses which were doing their last round of the day were put back on the road. Buses are machines. But what about drivers & conductors. They are human beings like you & me. As tired at the end of the day they were as anybody could be. These were the same drivers who had driven buses for whole of Tuesday. They turned into angels that night. BEST had its entire fleet on the road as soon as possible. This really proved to be boon for all those working in south end of the city, staying in northern suburb, and for whom cab was an unaffordable option.
A point not to be missed is that all regular buses were plying on Wednesday morning as well.

2nd hero was the Western Railway staff who ensured that normalcy is restored at the soonest. They had to clear debris, wheel away the affected rakes, correct the cabling, set right the station roofs and lot of other things. Since police had to collect 'suraag', they had very little time to do all of it. The pressure to put trains back on track before dawn was always there. And I must complement them to do all of it well in time. No wonder Mumbaikars could travel on the same tracks the very next morning.

While the above two were organized efforts to restore normalcy, there was an unorganized individual-driven effort that once again demonstrated the spirit of Mumbai. The spirit to help fellow citizens, the spirit to put the best foot forward in crisis, the spirit of “if it is to be, it’s up to me”. These were the people of Mumbai. Especially the ones in Dadar-Borivli stretch. I myself left office well past midnight and waded through residential lanes of Shivaji Park / Mahim, only to find people on road distributing water / biscuits to travelers. At every corner I found children, ladies & men, most of them in their night suits, offering something to eat & drink. They very well could have gone for a good night's sleep, but they stayed put to help us. But for them, the long journey back home could have been agonizing.

The very fact that there is somebody to help you in case of need makes one’s journey all the more comfortable & satisfying.