Last week, I watched with horror the attacks in Mumbai. Half a world away, there were young men, turned killing machines, who embraced not in theory but in deed, the twin evils of death and destruction. Mayhem, carnage, death – how can these be laudable goals, anytime, anywhere?
They and their victims, strangers all, foreign to me not just by birth, but by life and life style. I am not a world traveler. I am not an Indian citizen. I am not of the Jewish faith. And yet …
A father and daughter, visiting India in search of spiritual truths were caught eating in a café and gunned down by terrorists. Their colleagues, who were wounded, survived by playing dead, as the gunmen moved on to other diners.
A prominent food critic of The Times of India was trapped in her suite at The Taj, frantically texting her husband as the siege progressed. Her last transmission, early Thursday morning said that the gunmen were in her bathroom, after that, silence. He would later find her body in a pile of lifeless corpses, deposited there by commandos after the final assault. She died of asphyxiation.
And the vision of a blood spattered little boy, saved by his nanny, after witnessing the murder of his parents. His cries for his mother as the small community that she and her husband served, held a memorial in their honor were too heartbreaking to bear.
I do not know all the stories, nor the names of all the victims who died by man made tragedy last week in Mumbai. But I am filled with sorrow at such a senseless loss.
Today I AM a world traveler. Today I AM an Indian citizen. Today I AM a Jew. And today I cannot write.
© 2 December 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder
