Bombay.

VT Station, St. Xavier’s College & Metro, Cafe Mondegar & Leopold’s at Colaba, Taj Mahal at Gateway of India, Oberoi next to the Air India building at Nariman Point, etc. is usually there on the must-see places I would suggest a visitor to Bombay. My Bombay.

Today, the same landmarks are in the news for the wrong reasons. About 15 months before the recent attack I had blogged about the blasts in Hyderabad and the blasts in Bangalore. The events got replicated again and magnified in their gore but I have almost the same views even today.

Added pain, added insecurity, added unhappiness and added disappointment. This time an old school friend was taken hostage and I felt first hand the pain of sensing the danger and the anxiousness and the helplessness and then the tearful relief of knowing that somehow the friend managed to escape. It hurts and leaves me numb thinking searching for an answer and a solution that doesn’t seem to exist.

All the usual mindless activities that happen after a disaster have begun … the email forwards, the petitions, the photographs, the annoying politicians and Bollywood people, the trivia, the conspiracy theory, the official count of the dead, the actual estimates, the welfare amount for the families of the dead, etc. etc.

Don’t give me any of those. Give me peace.