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September 2009 
Heartbreakers
Posted on Nov 29th, 2008
by 
Praveer
Praveer
Mumbai - Taj Hotel Gateway of India
This is the Gateway of India and behind it, the 106 year old Taj Hotel, in Mumbai, India's financial center. Not far from here are other hotels, a major train station, Chabad House - a Jewish Synagogue and outreach center, several hundred shops, restaurants, street food vendors and vegetable sellers, and a few hundred thousand Mumbai residents . On the 22nd of November, 10 trained, armed and relentless terrorists came by sea and butchered 195 people and injured over 300 people in just this area. They took no hostages and wanted nothing but the freedom to destroy. They raged rampant for 62 hours. I can't remember who it was, some loveless disciple of destruction who said "True power is one person being able to paralyze 100 people.' These 10, probably Al Qauida trained, held a country of a bilion in a thrall of terror.
Mumbai Soldier
15 Of our finest policemen went down in the attack. Familiar with low level combat with Mumbai's organized crime, they were unprepared for the ferocious assault.
Azam Amir Kasab
This is the only one of the 10 who was caught alive. In this shot, he's just strolling along after killing dozens of people, including the formidable chief of the Anti Terrorist Squad and is on his way to creating the next macabre theater of death. In another photgraph, you see him crouched, smiling confidently at the camera.
Pigeons
You can't see the tree in front of the Taj Hotel where these pigeons roost. For 62 hours there were bombs, AK47s firing, fires and probably the shrieks of people being murdered or screaming for help. Each time there was a disturbance, these pigeons flew up, circled the dome of the hotel and settled back in, hoping for a quiet roost. Their silent flight was eerie.
What haiku would Basho have been inspired to write?
26india3-600
This policeman has probably been on duty for many hours, lost colleagues, is in the grip of his own flight or fight mechanism. In one hand, he holds the old man's hand. In the other a baton, a remnant of colonial rule. In the terrorists' hands some of the world's most sophisticated armory. In the policeman's heart - humanity. In the Terrorists heart? I cannot even begin to fathom that region of darkness.
I argued with myself about whether I wanted the following piece from Rabindra Nath Tagore here. In the end, I am uncertain. And I remember that when you are uncertain, there is no doubt.
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up
into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason
has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action---
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
Rabindra Nath Tagore (1861 - 1941)
Nobel Laureate
Access: Public
Oh Praveer, it does indeed render so many of us almost speechless to imagine this happening. I am very sorry for all those who were hurt or killed in this terrible attack. The quote from Tagore is somehow appropriate, let my country awake. I would echo: let all of us awaken, all of the countries, all of us. Blessings, friend.
Thank you so much for posting this.
Praveer, our hearts are with you and your countrymen and women and you are in our prayers.
It is a grevious wound to us all. Thank you, Praveer, for your post. And the quote? You're right, no, wise; “…when you are uncertain, there is no doubt”
This posting, Praveer, was tender in the way only a wounded soul can be tender. It is a wound humankind shares with you tonight. May God bless you and keep you and give you peace. May God bless and keep us all.
A great tragedy for humankind. Very sad. Your photos - I am speechless looking at them. It is all so useless and cruel.
…deliver us from evil…
I'm glad you posted Rabindranath Tagore's poem, Praveer. It always brings tears to my eyes when I sing it [I learned it set to a tune in our convent school!]; but now, when I read it here, there is only…hope, from it.
Still, this is a personal experience for me, and I've blogged about it that way…
Dear Brother.
I sense your personal pain and am with you in collective misery. This entire horrific time of carnage and destruction at the hand of smug and crazed terrorists has had the world mourning.
I love also that you posted Tagore's poem. I teach Tagore in my World Lit Classes. My students learn that Tagore IS India, much like Gandhi, and wrote the country's national anthem. Tagore's words added to your own touched my heart.
I am with you and your fellow countrymen/women as I told Meenakshi earlier. You are dear friends of mine and my heart breaks for the deep wounding of your people.
Blessings to you always, Namaste.
Aley
I keep coming back to the image of the pigeons, ever optimistic or maybe just very patterned…but so caught in something outside their world. And as I look, I wonder, is that soldier still okay? How about the kind police officer leading an old person through that horrifying scene, caring about someone else before himself, did he get through this alright? The people working stands on the street, getting up that morning and thinking they were just going to work another day, what has happened to them and to their families? Even though I cry every single time I keep coming back and looking at them. Especially the pigeons though. It's always what I think about when I worry that we're destroying our world - not pigeons particularly, but that we'll destroy animals who don't have religions or politics or gas-sucking SUV's, and then I can move on to: and the people who just get up and sell produce and go home to their children and sweep their floors and love and laugh and only have silly little lives, not big important lives like being a terrorist who ruins everything or a company that makes money - real money! - for destroying us all…but I have to start with the pigeons. The rest is just too big for one bite.
I agree the picture with the pigeons is the one I keep looking at over and over. . the fire, the smoke, the red white and blue
The pigeons make an sign in the sky.
They keep coming back…..
and we keep coming back.
bows
Centria, Jeannie, Diamond Lil, Albert, Mamakat, Mimi, Meenakshi, and Aley - thank you all so much for being the humans that you are and for the values that you stand for, and being on this beautiful planet.
The country is back at work. The Leopold Cafe (estd. 1871), the first establishment to ripped by Mumbai's violence, worked nonstop over the weekend and opened its doors yesterday. (I was introduced to lobster thermidor there in my teens, an experience almost as good as my first time…)
As important, elections that are happening around the country, have not been hampered. Delhi went to the polls on Friday, during peak terrorist timings.
And citizens in the country are now demanding an unheard of level of accountability from elected members of government. This has left politicians in shock, probably the best outcome of the attacks.
One of the ideas floating around is that we stop paying taxes till we have sensible action plans and aggressive shifts in all spheres of life - agriculture, industry, education, etc. What would happen if millions of people stop paying taxes? I like the idea! News channels are literally interrogating high handed politicos and demanding answers. We have had 16 years of bombs and terror attacks in this country and people have had enough. There is a particularly assinine and high pitched news anchor that I loathe, but watch every now and again. He surprised everyone, but mostly himself, by losing it completely and saying with genuine feeling, “Speaking for myself, I am sick of reeling off the numbers of dead, year in and year out, and hearing promises from politicians that they never keep. I cannot keep silent anymore and demand action!”
Anyway, I have this gigantic need for comfort food for now and reading all about Jeanie's Thanksgiving Dinner hasn't made it any easier. All my addictions have reared their ugly heads. Olives, mayo, french fries, coffee, coke - I've been making non stop trips to the refrigerator and to the markets for some totally and completely unhygienic but unbelievably delicious street food all day!
Ah, the allure of comfort food. It has definitely set in here now that winter has come to the Northeast. I'm training myself to reach for hot tea first, which I usually only drink in the morning. My current favorites are Bengal Spice and Sugar Plum Fairy. Might I substitute a cyber-hug for a can of Coke, Praveer? It's got much less calories, at least as much sugar, and much more comfort.
There's something life-affirming about chowing down, isn't there? Eat more olives and watch out for the coffee, makes words tumble out madly at least for me.
Thanks for the comforting hug, much better than hi cal coke, DL, and Jeannie, you're right - no more coffee!
No more coffee???? No no no, I did not say those words. Just said, watch out. No, please, do not take away the coffee. No no no.
I had my fingers crossed when I said 'No more coffee'. And the coke. I lied. I'm so sorry. Forgive me?
LOL! I was a major TAB fiend for a long, long time. I drank it long after it went out of fashion. It was the only soda that kept saccharin after aspertame and nutrasweet took over the rest of the soda aisle. In college, I drank about a 6-pack a day. Several years ago I began to replace juice and soda with water, which is essentially the only thing I drink now, except milk in the morning. But I still remember that saccharin aftertaste and miss it. That, and shamefully, cigarettes. I smoked from the time I was 15 until the first day of the new millenium, when I finally quit for good. But eight years later, I still miss it sometimes. Not the way I felt or smelled or everything I owned smelled, but the act of it, the inhalation, the exhalation. Sick, but true …
DL, over the past 10 months, I must have put on 10 kilos, thanks to my insatiable appetite for sugary stuff. I've made a few forays into dropping the stuff, such as drinking black coffee or green tea, but comes an Indian festival and if you're someone like me, you cannot give up the inevitable sweets and deserts. And there are at least twenty ocasions during the year when sweets are de rigeur, aside from weddings, anniversaries and birthdays. Christmas is around the corner. That means some great cake and puddings are around the corner too! When I was younger, I used to be able to shed my poundage by spring, when jackets and sweaters are shed. But this is the first year that I've made no progress in losing it! Maybe it's time for me to start a diet? I think so. And get back to excercise too!
Like you, I started smoking when I was 15. My aunt who is among my best friends, sniffed and said “Dahling, (she grew up in times when they actually did day 'Dahling'), 'Must you smoke those dreadful things?' Today, when she's 86, she says the same thing. The only difference is that she's the one who hacks and coughs. And I still have no signs of any wierdness in my breathing apparatus. But unlike 40 odd years ago, today, I know almost no one else who does smoke, incuding my wife, Panda, who gave it up in 2002. So now, not only am I hounded from parks, hide cigarettes when I'm driving and I see a cop, or duck into staircase when I have long meeting in commercial buildings, but the frowns and hard glances that I get from Panda, have me smoking in unused corners of the apartment. What's worse is when visitors have the cheek to let me know that they'd prefer it if I could refrain from smoking - in my own home! These are terrible times. I may just have to quit!