Puh-lease! Only designer disaster mangta hai

A dozen, mostly dirty, days have passed since Torrential Tuesday made Shanghai-wannabe, Manhattan-already Mumbai look like "some Bihaar, yaar".
But this superior city is not so easily clubbed with the karmically challenged. The have-gots can never be dumped on the same heap as the have-nots. So, despite the apparent similarity with chronically rain-sunk scenarios, even our calamity came with a designer label.
We didn't turn to some grimy Dilli babu for solutions.We chose only global role models, most often the 9/11 New York mayor. All our boardroom activists referred to him as 'Rudy', as if they routinely shared Philly-cheese bagels with him. These instant disaster-management experts could be divided into two categories: those who spelt 'Giuliani' correctly, and those who didn't. Citizen Jai was too busy wringing out his life to care, but when he did plug in to all this too-late hindsight, he asked, "Boss, yeh Jhuliani kaun hai? Koi Sindhi NRI hai, kya?"
Secondly, everything everywhere may be covered by murky waters, but what lies beneath is what separated the maximum city from the minimum-wage mofussil. The suspended matter of Mumbai's submersion was not the usual flotsam of underprivileged lives, but an entire production line of luxury cars: some 200 Mercedes Benzes, 20 BMWs, 20 Lexuses, 35 Skoda Superbs, 25 Toyota Camrys, and 1,000 Honda Accords.
Car save-a thus became a surreal feature of all rescue-rehab stories. The bill to repair and refurbish each of these sophisticated machines ranged between Rs 5 lakh for the Hondas and up to Rs 18 lakh for the Beamers (Kumar Birla's included). So the total cost of getting these cars back on the road could match the total cost of getting our sunken families back on their feet.
There's such a log-jam of these soaked-to-their-circuitry cars that the clever mechanic is today a more Wanted man than the municipal commissioner. It is rumoured that, to get their cars speedily out of the auto workshop, the super rich have to resort to the level of influence normally needed to get themselves out of the Enforcement Department or Narcotics Bureau.
Even our scapegoats are designer. Granted, Page Three People are guilty of a multitude of sins, from abominable arrogance to over-the-top implants. But, in this context, I see no logic in dragging them over the potholes, and slamming them for inaction as if they were the Chief Minister. Why should a celebrity editor write, "I detest Page Three People", as if their Rain Dance, Monsoon Mania or even Wet Look hair conditioner had brought on the torrents?
OK, their involvement with the tragedy may not go beyond SMS support, Bravo Brunches, or pairing up for the Flood Fancy Dress party at the Noah Arkade. But the real fault is ours. It may be difficult to picture the skimpy babe as a sinister Bhindranwale, but it's we who have pumped up the P3Ps to serve our own aspirational/ voyeuristic/sanctimonious/sales-boosting agenda, and now complain that they have turned into terroristas, storming into our entire mindspace. And being entirely mindless about the storm. The only way to destroy them is to make them
irrelevant.
HHH
Alec Smart said, "Crorepati is easy. But, Kaun Ban Sakta Bachchan?"