Updates

Dina Mehta's blog has a link to a list of the dead and injured. Also included are helpline numbers which many of you may find useful.

Shobhaa De speaks for all of us

For once, I agree wholeheartedly with the outspoken Shobhaa De. Her comments on NDTV tonight were spot on - an angry reflection of what all of us are feeling.

I left this comment on her blog:

Shobhaa,

Thank you for the statement you made tonight on NDTV. You echoed what so many of us feel - enough is enough. We're sick of dealing with inept politicians who show up only after the damage is done. Mumbai's 'resilience' (for want of a better word) is nothing but a fierce sense of denial, our belief that surely, someday, things will get better.

They're not going to. Time we realised that and did something about it.

A concerned Mumbaiwallah

Attacks on Mumbai

It's happened again.

It's 00.17 on 27 November as I write. CNN on Twitter tells me that the city is under seige again. A grenade apparently went off at CST and shooting was reported in Colaba. NDTV.com live tv shows that the Oberoi lobby is on fire and an 'encounter' is on at the Taj and Trident Hotel.

Trains on the central line have been stopped until further notice. 20 people have been reported dead at this time.

Another problem for the NHS

The latest developments in the terrorism case will make things so much harder for the non-British doctors in the UK.

Hospital doctors from the third world have not had it easy. Coping with the stringent rules, lack of jobs and years of 'training' (read 'free jobs') will now be compounded by suspicion and even more discrimination by employers (I think.)

Junior Indian doctors have already found that jobs are being offered to EU immigrants and they are, really, at the bottom of the list.

This whole new breed of medical terrorists (for want of a better phrase), most of whom happen to be Asian will just add to the discrimination. And at some level, I wouldn't blame them. After all, if your doctors let you down, who do you trust?

Let's hope that junior doctors and non-white hospital doctors in general do not suffer from a backlash.

Selfishly, perhaps it's a good thing that Mr.R is no longer in hospital medicine. We pray for those who are.

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Update

Oh Dear.

The first Indian national (also a doctor) is detained in Australia on his way back to India.

Terror at home. Almost.

The new developments over the past few hours has brought the whole terror business very close to home, literally.

It's a scary thought. These are things that always happen to people on the telly or in the newspaper. You don't think that it could be here, a little further than next door.

Heathrow stays calm under the chaos - extreme measures like no hand luggage and carrying essentials in plastic bags (they surely didn't get all those bags to the airports overnight!) make you wonder what's next. No liquids allowed; baby food can be taken on board but has to be tasted by a passenger before being allowed onboard. One can only imagine the scenario and try not to laugh, given the shocking circumstances.

BBC reports on a raid on a street not too far away. British born Pakistani's are the (usual?) suspects in all the three areas that raids have been carried out. I have nothing against people from Pakistan - whether they've come from there or have been born there. They have as much right to be here as I do. Just wish that they made the most of this opportunity to be in a foreign country that has more advantages, than disadvantages (in my view). Just wish that they made more of an effort to move out of their very close knit community and invite the rest of the us into their world. Living in determined isolation does not benefit anybody - least of all a community.

When you live in someone else's country, I believe that you owe that country something in return for its hospitality to you.

Baby Brother is in Bangalore at the moment on a Mum-Lon-Blr-Lon-Mum 8 day trip. Hopefully his flight to Heathrow tomorrow will take off without any problems. Fingers crossed.

Latest news : 71 airports affected. GWB makes a statement with his usual (for the lack of a better word) panache . He thanked Tony Blair and his officials for "busting this plot". Then he said that it showed "Islamic fascists... will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom".

More here : http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/08/10/us.security/index.html

11/7

While my city grieves for its sudden loss and tries to cope, I distract myself by putting together a magnetic poem on the fridge.

Wedged between the bin and the door, I slave to put some words together; Mr R goes off to sleep, probably bemused by my sudden determination to make poetry at this hour. It's almost midnight.

Almost five hours since I heard the news about the blasts and I still can't get over it. I dare not switch the TV on, knowing I'll be confronted by the same images on NDTV, Star News and Rajdeep Sardesai on CNN. I think about those I know, who are safe and those I'm not sure of. And I keep thinking ' I could have been on one of those trains' (Not likely at that early hour, but still...)

Star News keeps harping on the 11/7 coincidence - 7 blasts in 11 minutes (now we know there were eight...but never mind).

I hope that nobody from my ex-work place was hurt. And I feel overwhelmed at the sheer numbers that have died.

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From Shoefie's blog, here's a link to this fantastic online effort to help MW's. This is what I call 'making a difference'. You rock, guys.

http://Mumbaihelp.blogspot.com

One year on

It's just one of those days when you remember where you were when you heard the news.

I was at work. It was past 10.30 or so when my employer called up frantically. He was in London that morning (very rare) for a meeting with a top NHS official. He called to say that something had happened and he was having difficulty getting to the hospital where the appointment was and would we call them and let them know he was delayed.

We checked the internet and sketchy news about an explosion/short circuit was coming in. That explained the problems on the tube, we thought.

Ofcourse, as the day unfolded we knew just how wrong the early assumptions were.

Mr R found out when my sister sent him a text to find out if we were okay. That must have come as a surprise to him.

The rest of the day went by in a blur trying to contact friends in London to see if they were okay.

A year on, I'm watching the services on telly to commemorate the horror of that day.

Sir Ian Blair says that he 'knows' that there will be more attacks. It was just a question of whether we will be able to stop them.

The chief honcho of the Tube, when asked what was being done to prevent a repeat, said that the most powerful man in the world is in Iraq and even he can't predict when the next suicide bomber would come; the Metro is just a tube station.

True.

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THAT ASIDE
Are we going to have to go through suspicious looks for the next few weeks every time we go into London? Must remember to carry a handbag that doesn't look like a rucksack. From last years experience I know that people stay away from you on tubes, buses and give you a second glance if you are carrying a backpack (not even a rucksack).

With thousands of brown tourists on London's street, that's quite a few suspicious looks thrown around.

You feel like turning around and saying to these frightened faces "Not everybody is a terrorist, mate!"

England is an island in more ways than one. The West needs to wake up and acknowledge that there is a world out there beyond their corner of the planet.

I'm going to scream if I'm asked, one more time, the question 'How come you speak such good English?'

Maybe if the English had stayed at home instead of going around the world 'conquering' other people, we would have had to bother learning the language and ending up better than the natives at it.

Rant. Rave.Fume. Fret.

On a day of mourning, there's more grief and upset in the air than is visible.

A goodbye to July

What a month this has been.

So far, the twenty nine days that have gone by have seen bombs, the first suicide attacks on the UK, destruction of life and property, unprecedented rain in Mumbai, bombings in the Middle East, panic and mayhem around London as police chase anybody suspicious (read 'who looks Asian'), terrorists in our neighborhoods, tornadoes in unsuspecting places and as the Beeb informs me at this very moment, two bombs have just gone off on the motorway in Spain. Sigh.

Atleast the IRA has publicly put down arms. Wonder where all those guns will go now...

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The four suspects in last week's attempted bombing have been arrested. One in Birmingham, two in a Notting Hill raid this morning and one in Rome hiding with his brother. I just can't help marvel at how they traced these guys among millions. And so quickly too. Now if only they can do something similar for Dawood and all the Chota's floating around... Scotland Yard, any ideas?

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So, Mumbai's limping back to normal today. My first monsoon away from the city and I seem to be lucky to have escaped the harrowing days of rain and flooding. My sis, like so many of you, spent the night in the office. A fine tale to tell the grandchildren, but not funny when it actually happens. I shudder at the thought of what the city must look like now. Every year we have the annual flooding, but it has never been so bad. I hope you are all okay and reached home safely without any trouble. I hope the power is back completely and that the phone and internet lines are working fine. I hope you never see another day like that in your lifetime.

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Mr.R and I are off to London for the weekend tomorrow. He's keen on a full session of the Violins at the Prom tomorrow, so we have booked a B&B at Hyde Park - we can just walk back from the Albert Hall after the concert and fall asleep, instead of trudging back home running for the last train. I hope the weekend is incident-free. There are no guarantees these days. Pray for us.

Update on Monday! By then we should be safely in August and hope the madness is on decline. See you then and take care.

WHEN WHAT WE'VE FEARED COMES TRUE- II

Mr.R and I are fine. Thanks to all those who called, sent texts or emailed to ask about us.(For those of you who didn't bother, you're off my Christmas card mailing list! :)

But seriously, yesterday brought to mind how similar London and Mumbai really are. We've all seen our share of bombs on BEST buses, of packages left on trains and briefcases exploding on the street. Just thinking about it brings to mind several incidents on the local trains where panic was generated just by some smoke coming in or by trains halting every few minutes due to an electric problem. It's so easy to generate panic, really. But the scenes coming in from mobile phone cameras in London show a remarkable order and calmness in the evacuation from the tube tunnels. The disaster plan was in place and everybody knew what they have to do. You have to be prepared at all times and you need to have trained people to take over - not just people who look into cameras surreptiously (and even wave!) while pretending to control the panic.

Looking at Manmohan Singh standing behind Tony Blair as he gave his statement surrounded by world leaders at Gleneagles made me think that we could learn from the way the emergency plans, here in the UK, are in place for either natural, man-made or terrorist attacks, and how seriously they take their plans. Never mind that they couldn't stop it (you really can't, in a city of millions), what interests me is how the 'System' take over once something does happen. It's amazing and a system worth emulating.

Another eerie reminder is the fear of reprisals on the Muslim community. An all too familiar scene, backlash and mindless revenge immediately after such incidents usually have a political overtone in India, but here it may be right-wing extremists and local hoodlums who would take this opportunity to press their case for stopping the inclusion of non-white cultures into mainstream Britain. Fingers crossed to see what will happen in the coming days.

It's about 24 hours since the first explosions happened and Londoners are back in business, just like MW's after a similar day. Two great cities, each with different ways of reacting,planning or dealing with disasters, but ultimately, each with people who are resilient and determined not to let evil take over our lives.