Reality hits
This morning I was hit with several flashbacks as I heard the newsreader announce a terror attack in Mumbai.
The Taj hotel in Mumbai near the Gateway of India where hostages were taken yesterday.
Please tell me it was a nightmare, and that the newsreader said something entirely different.
The same sensation struck me during the 7th July bombings in London a couple of years ago when, in my pre-caffeine state, I learnt about the London bombings via an e-mail.
Once, the news is slightly digested, the quest for news hits you. You want to soak up everything you can, and then once you’ve got the gist of it, you’ve had enough of the chaotic and repetitive news stories. Though, the instant the news hits you, most of all, you just want to know your friends are ok. Bearing in mind how the London bombings affected me, when suddenly friends from far fetched cornes of planet earth and friends whom I hadn’t heard from in ages, suddenly got in touch wanting to know how I was, made me reluctant to ask my friends in Mumbai how they were doing. I didn’t want them to feel the same surrealness as I experienced. However, most of all you want to know that they are ok.
- So far, we have no reports of Norwegians or Germans injured, says the newsreader.
Who really cares? Does it matter whether foreign nationals are affected? Naturally, but what I really care about is the native population. They have to stay where they are, and aren’t as fortunate as others – they can’t just get on the first place out of there. And why should they.
Most of all, I’m surprised by my reaction, and it just seems unreal that the places I felt safe in Mumbai, are amongst those places which were targeted. Juhu beach and the train station for instance.
It’s weird knowing that a couple of months ago I was there and everything seemed just fine and then – poof, the situation is changed. For a while. Then slowly, things return to normal. They have to. Otherwise, we’d let fear win, and then life becomes unbearable.
