Stop trying

Its Day 3 of the terror attack on Bombay and once the dust settles, as it inevitably must I will focus on composing some of the many thoughts flitting across my mind. For now, only one thing is clear in all this: they will never learn. Let me explain. Time and again Bombay has been battered, attacked and targeted. This current ongoing attack has definitely changed the game. Terror experts globally now will be scratching their chins and learning the rules of the new game. What is clear is this time, Blackberry phones were used and tremendous planning went into visiting death on Bombay.

Which brings me to the point I want to make. It isn't new or enlightening though: this is Bombay.

No matter the amount of planning and master plotting these misguided souls keep doing to visit death on people in this city, they still aren't intelligent enough to understand this simple reality: this is Bombay.

I learned this in the 1 year I lived there. But I grasped this fact a few days into first visiting this city as a kid: something is different here folks. Floods, rain, riots, bombs and now people going about with automatic weapons on streets: local trains run on time. People go to work. People continue to do what they do best in this city: try to make a better life for themselves. Because after all is said and done, isn't that the basic tenet of our existence?

And Bombay does it better than anyone else. Yes this time the blow is severe and Bombay has been left gasping, but make no mistake, soon trains will be packed again, South Bombay buzzing, the Zodiac Grill full, Bollywood releasing a slew of movies and I'll again be enjoying the sunset over Marine Drive from the lobby of the Oberoi: this is Bombay.

Liberty for all?

As the game changing terror attacks are ongoing in Bombay, Vijay sent me an excerpt, ironically enough from George W Bush's acceptance speech before his 2nd term. Now if only America truly walked the talk and the World community followed and if pigs could fly... but here it is:

We have seen our vulnerability - and we have seen its deepest source. For as long as whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny - prone to ideologies that feed hatred and excuse murder - violence will gather, and multiply in destructive power, and cross the most defended borders, and raise a mortal threat. There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment, and expose the pretensions of tyrants, and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant, and that is the force of human freedom.

We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.