Living in a terrorist target

Having spent a lot of time in New York, you would think you'd get used to living a city considered a prime terrorist target..if there is getting used to something like that.

I had a very disquieting moment last night returning from work when I realized that today was the 1 year anniversary of the horrendous "26/11" (Nov 11, India style date) attacks here in South Bombay, walking distance from our office. Stuff was starting to make sense, my car was stopped and checked. The morning was eerie: uptown half of Marine Drive (think Mumbai's answer to Chicago's Lakeshore drive) was shutdown for a City Law enforcement show of force (think Mumbai's answer to a Soviet military rally). Traffic was re-routed everywhere to shutoff narrow/smaller streets. Good thing I decided to leave for work early!





The issue is that all this security is basically optics. Nothing has changed. All the people that were at fault during the debacle are all back in power. You can call it strong resilience or easy forgiveness on part of Mumbaikers, but the extraordinary apathy is shocking. Forget that Mumbai may or may not be prepared to stop a new type of attack, I doubt the city would do things differently if the exact same thing happened again.

I'm thinking twice about trekking crosstown for a Thanksgiving dinner tonight!