What's going on? #5

I apologise for not having updated my blog in about two weeks. The last time you heard from me here, I was giving my own, unconventional brand of Thanksgiving. I wrote that post late Wednesday night, not realising the drama that was occuring at that very hour in Mumbai. I also didn't realise what was going to happen over the next three days in Chennai.

As most of you will have heard, read or seen at the time (unless you were incredibly engrossed in Thanksgiving turkey), a co-ordinated series of terrorist attacks took place in Mumbai between the 26th and 29th of November, 2008. Approximately 200 people (including nine of the ten terrorists) were killed, and many more injured.

While the nation (and possibly much of the world) watched with horror, one Indian city did not react with quite as much outrage. We in Chennai, and the areas to the south, had immediate issues of our own with Cyclonic Storm Nisha, which dumped record amounts of rainfall in a four day period. We had flooded streets, power outages and a general disruption of life in general. 204 deaths in Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka have been attributed to Nisha.

Happy Thanksgiving to us, I guess.

Now, two weeks on, life has returned almost to normal. The waters have receded; the roads are bad, but not as bad as I expected; there has been no appreciable increase in mosquito levels in my neighbourhood.

We have survived...and we will probably forget.

A friend asked me if there has been any great change in people's attitudes to one another in the wake of the terrorism (dubbed by some as "India's 9/11"), much like the US experienced in 2001. It's unlikely. For one thing, acts of terrorism are not new in some parts of India. Mumbaikars have experience this sort of thing on a regular basis since 1993. For another, there is no one single terrorist entity operating in India. While these attacks are being attributed to elements in Pakistan (like almost all of them are at first), some of them, like the 2006 Malegaon blasts, are perpetrated from disaffected domestic groups (similar to the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995).

Most of all, however, I think it's just impossible for cities of 12-20 million people to stop and mourn together for more than a few moments. There are too many hungry mouths to feed.

In July, I posted a summary of terrorist activity in India since 1993. Here is an update to that list:

• September 13, 2008 5 bomb blasts in Delhi markets, 21 killed, 110 injured

• September 27, 2008 2 bomb blasts in Delhi's Mehrauli flower market, 3 dead, 17 injured
• September 29, 2008 Maharashtra and Gujarat bomb blasts, 10 dead, 80 injured
• September 29, 2008 Bike blasts in Malegaon, 7 killed
• October 1, 2008 Agartala bombing, 4 killed, 100 injured
• October 21, 2008 Imphal bomb blast, 17 killed, 40 injured
• October 30, 2008 Assam bomb blast, 77 killed, 300 injured
• November 26, 2008 Coordinated attack in Mumbai, approximately 200 killed, 239 injured

I apologise for such a sobering post to start off the Christmas season, a season of peace and goodwill, but I felt it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge these significant events. I'll try to be more uplifting (and silly) in my future posts.