" The places I love lie in ruins. I am scared and very angry"

[babylonsister]

* Comment is free

The places I love lie in ruins. I am scared and very angry
A leading Bollywood actress demands to know how an army of terrorists could walk into her city


* Maninee Misra
* guardian.co.uk, Sunday November 30 2008 00.01 GMT
* The Observer, Sunday November 30 2008



My city of Mumbai has a reputation as a glittering, zestful, buzzing Mecca of the East, a cauldron of diverse cultures and nationalities. This tragedy has outraged every one of us living here. Some events in the life of a city, and country, change the future.

A group of brainwashed fanatics stormed into buildings that characterise the cosmopolitan nature of our city. It has left the whole of Mumbai paralysed and insecure. As I write, we don't know when we leave home in the morning whether we will return alive. What kind of existence is this?

There are images that will haunt us forever - mutilated bodies, bloody streets and lobbies, frantic relatives, splintered glass, billowing smoke and heart-wrenching cries punctuated by gunfire and grenade blasts.

With the fires raging at the Taj Mahal hotel, the eerie silence at the Oberoi and the deafening sound of shots from Nariman House - it seems as if we must be watching a Hollywood film. But this horror is real. The sister of one of my closest friends was attending a wedding at the Taj. She sent a text message to her husband at 6am on Thursday morning, after the first night of fighting. By 3pm that day, he had lost contact with her.

These places have been a part of my life in the seven-and-a-half years that I have lived here. I have taken my nine-year-old daughter to eat at the Leopold cafe where the gunmen first opened fire. The magnificent Taj is where I celebrated New Year's Eve with my husband three years ago. Its Wasabi restaurant, which has stunning views overlooking the Gateway of India, was where I was planning to throw him a surprise birthday party next week. The cosmopolitan heart of this city is destroyed and the hurt is going to go on for a long, long time.

more...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/30/mumbai-terror-attacks-india

[Cleita]

1. Sad that they are going through what we went through on 9-11.

If we had the Presidents we had elected in 2000, and 2004, I'm sure these militant terrorists would only be a memory today, but our bungler-in-chief never addressed this problem after 9-11 and instead raided another country for its oil, who no doubt will produce more militants terrorists in the future.

[IndyOp]

2. I hope it helps her a little to know that hearts around the world grieve with the people of India -

We must all work to change the factors that give rise to terrorism and develop a truly international police force to combat it.

Peace...

Gateway of India

[The Traveler]

3. The comments make interesting reading, also

A wide spectrum of views, ranging from the sympathetic to righteous. Many point out the poverty of Mumbai and environs, that only a privileged few get to enjoy the pleasures and places she so eloquently laments.

I feel for her, I really do ... and if I were to talk with her about it I would point out that the great tragedy of 9/11 was NOT the death of 3,000 Americans, but that America allowed that horrid event to fundamentally alter its nature. We began to act as some other nation, and not ourselves. Bad leadership prevailed ... instead of banding together in our sorrow and raising ourselves back up in defiance, we went shopping, defiled our finest legal and civil traditions, and invaded a nation that was not involved.

So, if you must learn from us, learn first from their mistakes. And if you would truly honor your dead, turn your attention to rebuild that which was beautiful ... but also, turn your attention to creating beauty among and for your myriad destitute and hopeless fellow citizens. Poverty remains the greatest killer, and despair and rage the terrorist's best recruitment agent.

Trav