I’m currently reading Vikram Chandra’s Sacred Games, set in modern day Mumbai.  It’s led me to research the geography of India, to see which state Mumbai is in and what languages they speak.  There’s a glossary at the back of the book to teach me words I do not understand. I feel the tensions between the birds of different feathers, lines drawn between people of different faiths and those from different states and countries. I would love to see a Mumbai version of the movie Crash. It is perhaps a more apt setting even than Los Angeles.

When I saw the first story on Yahoo!’s home page about the attacks, I was drawn immediately, connected in a way I never expected to be.  My heart doesn’t often bleed.  I usually see things through a logical eye that accepts that humans will wreak suffering upon each other out of hatred and insecurity, in the name of their god or their country.  Sad, but inevitable.  Yet I still imagined myself there, since the literary word had already brought me to this land a half a world away.

So, even though there is violence and suffering the world over, tonight my warm wishes go out to the city of Mumbai, in the state of Maharashtra, in the land of India. May the waters of the Arabian Sea bring comfort and healing.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 30th, 2008 at 8:39 pm and is filed under India, sweetness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.