[7/11 bomb attacks on Bombay's train network have killed more than 180 people and injured 714]
The other day, we were browsing in the Bahris Book Shop in Khan Market when one nervous looking lady entered through its glass door and cried that Bombay had been hit by serial bomb blasts.
We were not shocked, being quite used to such news, but still there was a rattling noise inside us. Mr. M. Singh, the learned shop assistant in the Bahris, shook his head and swayed his hands. One foreign diplomat (he looked like a foreign diplomat, that is) browsing in the fiction section looked down mournfully at the floor. A young boy, who was presenting his credit card at the time of this newsbreak, swiftly took out his mobile phone and hurriedly dialed a number. But soon after, he blurted that the phone lines to Bombay were busy and he was unable to reach his sister. He said, addressing us as if we were his close intimates, his sister lives in Mumbai and commutes on the local train – the target of the attacks. He appeared extremely panicky. One gentleman consoled him by commenting that there were 8 million people in Mumbai.
Meanwhile, another lady contributed her share to the general excitement by declaring that she has received a telephone message informing her that more than 100 people had been killed in the attacks.
We were upset and had no further desire to pursue our browsing. We simply made our payments for the book we had already chosen (Strange Times, My Dear - The PEN Anthology of Contemporary Iranian Literature), postponed our contemplation (to buy or not to buy) on Fouad Ajami’s new book (The Foreigner's Gift: The Americans, the Arabs, and the Iraqis in Iraq), and made our exit.
Our hearts were overwhelmed with outrage and there was something within that was weighing us down. But the outside world was showing all the pretensions of soul-warming normality: people standing by the foreign magazine stalls, young boys and girls – wearing outrageous clothes – walking hand in hand, serious-looking professionals busily typing on their laptops in the Barista coffee shop, the usual noise of horn-blaring at the parking lot.
Attempting to prevent the evening’s tragedy from affecting us too deeply, we tried to assure ourselves that it was okay, that such things happen, that people do die, that one can’t do anything, particularly when one was in Delhi and the blasts had happened in far-away Bombay.
Article comments
1 - Howard Dratch
In the midst of all the strife of today -- India, Iraq, Israel -- and the memories of recent terrorism inflicted on the civilized world; your report from real life stands out.
Choosing a book, watching a crowd, using the phone, being happy to arrive home without encountering violence brings the terror in terrorism into focus.
India, Israel, Great Britain, USA, Russia (and others) are the pillars of the civilization of the 21st c. The barbarians are at the gates carrying bombs and planning death. Strange Times, My Dear
2 - Mayank 'Austen' Singh
Thankyou Howard. Yours was a very beautiful comment. I mean it. Thanks again.