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Can a Broken Heart Make Room to Give Thanks?
I had planned to write something lighthearted, just to take a break from the serious and hard-hitting journalism to which you have no doubt become accustomed on this page. I wanted to ring in the holiday season, even though the Christmas trees and lights seem to have been up in stores since the end of August.
The trouble is that I don’t feel festive or lighthearted; I am broken-hearted by the attacks that wracked Mumbai, India last month. Ten trained terrorists held one of the world’s most densely populated cities of 18 million souls hostage for days. This is bustling Mumbai (once known as Bombay), the financial capital of India, home of Bollywood movies and its glitterati, home to the affluent living a posh lifestyle, while the huddled masses try to eek out a living. All these commingle in the traffic, congestion, historic buildings, and all the hustle and construction that a booming economy ushers in. As many others surely did, we watched in stunned horror for days as the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower burned. We heard gunshots halfway around the world. This was the beginning of our Thanksgiving week here.
Most of my husband’s family lives in Mumbai, and most of them work “in town,” as they say. We started making phone calls at 4:30 AM, which was 3 PM the same day for them in India. (You add 10.5 hours to get local Indian time – don’t ask me about the half hour.)
My husband’s eldest niece works for an international firm. In addition to being a business savvy young lady, she is a gifted artist and an award-winning pianist. She is to be married in July and had a chillingly narrow escape. She was at the Taj Mahal Palace hotel for dinner with colleagues and clients the very night of the siege. Since she had a flight scheduled the next day, Rowena decided to forgo the dinner and leave after cocktails. (Dinner there is late by our standards, usually 9 PM or later; what we consider suppertime is time for tea and snacks.) I am so grateful that she chose to leave for whatever reason, because an hour later, the mayhem began. Then I feel selfish for my gratitude. What about the 172 people who were killed and the nearly 300 who were wounded?
Another niece left the Colaba region in downtown Mumbai using the main Chhatrapati Shivaji train station (what was known as Victoria Terminus) that she uses daily. Fiona caught the 8:45 PM train, within an hour of the shootings there. The images that she saw on TV stunned her, because it happened on the very platform that she had used to make her way safely home. Again, I was relieved to know that Fiona was safe. She is astoundingly intelligent and sweet, and has the most electric smile. Another niece, Sharon, who has an exuberant spirit, and has triumphed through two bouts with cancer, escaped harm in another part of town that was hit. She had just finished taking an exam in preparation for a master’s program.
Later that week, I stumbled across one of those tiny photo albums we have from our trip to Bombay in 1990. (That’s what it was officially called then.) We are standing with my mother-in-law at the Gateway of India, with the Arabian Sea to our backs. Another pang: my mother-in-law, who was 85, just passed away yesterday. My eldest, now a freshman at Johns Hopkins University, is a chunky, diapered baby. I am a slim 24-year-old with ludicrously large eyeglasses. Across from us is the Taj Mahal Palace hotel, where we enjoyed lunch later that day. Now, that 105-year old building is a shambles.
Later that week, as I clicked through photos of the carnage on the Web, I was aghast at the sight of blood pooled along the railway station with people’s belongings strewn all around. They too had been on their way somewhere. In the aftermath of the bloodshed, there is sorrow, bitterness, anger, fear, and suspicion. Some call for vengeance while others call for peace. Beyond the violent and tragic loss of life, there is damage and widespread destruction. Beyond all this looms the question that hangs over every heinous act: why?
We live in a schizophrenic world of beauty and grandeur and love and human kindness pockmarked by evil and calamity and chaos. Is there not enough natural destruction by way of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, earthquakes, fires, famine, disease, and the like? Some of these consume tens of thousands of lives at one stroke.
Again, I feel a pang of guilt. Did I wonder at the lack of local coverage when Cyclone Nargis hit Burma’s Irawaddy Delta in early May and consumed 130,000 lives? Later that month, when nearly 90,000 people died or were missing in the earthquake in China’s Sichuan Province, did I frantically search the Web for pictures? Did I complete the column that I had begun writing then?
We have manmade problems like pollution enmity between man and his neighbor, political instability, war, poverty, and disease. Why do some feel the need to artificially inject more chaos and destruction?
All too often, there is news of a bombing here and there, and we watch for a while before losing interest. Soon after, we turn away – bored by the incessant coverage of the same-old, same-old. When will there be something new? It is called the “news” of course, so why do they keep playing the same old stuff for us? When is the next scandal and which celebrity is getting married (again) or arrested? Does it disturb you as it does me when the coverage sounds like this? “Two Americans and one Canadian were among the 300 people killed.” Do we care about the other 297?
Half a world away, their lives, their hopes, their dreams, their struggles and their squabbles – all of it, is condensed and related to us in a number. I hope we never lose our humanity and forget that behind each number there was a life, a soul, a beating heart, and a warm, breathing body. Behind each number there was a person with goals and dreams, schedules to keep, bills to pay, children to dress, school work to do, a new toy to play with, just like you and me and all of us in our community.
When we lived in California and visited Yosemite National Park or Lake Tahoe, I was always stunned by the breathtaking grandeur and majesty of it all. Even on any trip to any zoo, I am amazed by the variety of the creatures and how cleverly they are designed. I am left in awe of the Creator and the immensity and enormity of His creation. We can barely comprehend the complexity or the inner workings and inter-relatedness of all that exists.
Every day we are given is a privilege and a gift. I realize that amidst the 6,700,000,000+ people on our planet now, I am barely a speck. On the radar of human history, our life spans, our “now,” is but a blip. Yet, how fortunate we are to have had the chance to live, and breathe, and to experience the beauty of this world.
Please pray with me that there will be peace in that region as the investigations unfold. And in the meantime, don’t forget to love, to laugh, and to give thanks in this season and in each day you are given.
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