This year, our Thanksgiving will be low-key and at home, and I will be thinking, on and off, of the Mumbai terrorist attacks that happened a year ago this weekend.
During "11/26," as it is known in India, hundreds of people were killed, wounded and terrorized at multiple sites across the vast and tangled metropolis of Mumbai. The attacks went on for days. A landmark hotel was occupied and burned. The head of the police force's terrorism unit was killed. Suspicions that the perpetrators were Lashkar-e-Taiba operatives were bandied about (and later confirmed).
The siege began at 9:15 p.m. local time Wednesday, November 26 -- Wednesday morning, for us -- and so my husband and I were glued to CNN for long stretches of the four-day holiday weekend. I'm pretty sure I detached myself first when I realized I had all the information I needed and wanted. In that respect, it resembled my reaction to 9/11 -- it is a horrifying event, but watching the same thing over and over serves no purpose.
We called my husband's parents, who live in far-south Tamil Nadu, because it seemed possible that the whole country was under threat. The only aberration they reported was heightened security measures. I e-mailed my cousin, who was staying at a school outside Bangalore with her family at the time. She said that they hadn't been aware of the attacks until someone from the outside world (her mother, I think) notified them.
HBO has come out with a documentary about the attacks that uses cell phone audio and suveillance footage to reconstruct the sequence of events. According to this review, "we're not left in awe of the precision and strategic cunning of the terrorists' plan as we were in the wake of 9/11. Instead, ... what's stunning is that such a haphazard attack could've resulted in such a staggering loss of human life."
Ugh. Despite my curiosity, I'm now struggling with the "to watch or not to watch" question for the same reason I quit watching the live coverage last year. Concentrating on making good food may be the better choice.
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Please do watch
ReplyDeleteIt will explain the radical islamist mentality
Excellent point; I've yet to learn about that, and it's something I'd like to attempt to understand.
ReplyDeleteBTW Coimbatore has a nest of radical islamists
ReplyDeleteIn 1997-98, they created a no-go zone a-la eurabia, set up sharia courts ( kangaroo courts ),
stabbed and killed traffic cops and then set off bomb blasts
Indian politicians tolerate this stuff in return for block votes
:-( Yeah, I've been seeing all the "in memory" posts on Indian blogs that I follow. My sister-in-law and family live in Bombay, so we were really worried about them - but they got on google chat quickly to let us know they were okay. Then I had the fun of trying to get in touch with my husband so he wouldn't worry - he was backpacking around Italy at the time, which made it tough.
ReplyDelete