I wrote this the 2nd day of the Bombay terrorist attack. I had to re-evaluate what the world looked like so I had to write from the personal perspective. P. Sainath told us to explore the multiple realities and this is only one reality of one part of the world:
When I heard that Café Leopold was targeted my first thought was of Thompson. My last day in Mumbai I spent at Leopold’s by myself watching locals and tourists bargain and pass through Colaba Causeway. With such a genuine smile, I remember the last thing he said to me, “I will remember you every time you come back because I know you will.” I laughed because I think he saw in my eyes that I was already plotting for the next time I would be back. Thompson would shamelessly flirt, but I would try to brush it off as good service. In his black slacks, white buttoned down long sleeved, always a gold tie, and always a soft smile, it's hard to not want befriend him. I am praying for his safety because he is there six nights a week and I am praying that night of the attack was the night he had off.
Then I thought of the waiters in the red polo uniforms, and the black marble floors and the blue checkered table cloths, and the bouncer at the bar and his head nod and excited smile, and the smoky bar and the “towers”, and the foreigners who were hoping to feel the Bombay buzz and probably have read Shantaram, and Razu who always waited for us every night outside and let us smoke in his cab while he had the blue interior lights and played "I love my India" for Katherine and I in the empty streets. Katherine and I were always laughing, most especially at Leopold's. Something that India brought me was Katherine and insane amounts of laughter with her and years to come I'm sure.
I remember the Metro Adlab Theater because it reminded me of an opera theater. The first day in Mumbai I watched a movie on my own there: Mission Istanbul. I watched a total of 3 movies in that theater while I was there. It was two blocks away from our hotel. I remember one of the girls on the trip being so worried about some raised voices she said, "I don't want to be bombed, I'm serious." and I was the one who reassured her that everything would be ok.
I'll never forget the Oberoi Hotel mostly because I had a feminine moment while we were shopping with Sonora and her mom. I remember wearing my long hot pink, bohemian skirt and twirling on the marble floor in the air conditioned hall ways.
It's painful every time I refresh the page to see updates and pictures of the attacks. For a city that has enraptured me and taught me so much it breaks my heart to see that it is being terrorized.
The Taj Mahal Palace, a hotel built because an Indian man was refused entry from the most premier hotels at the time, is burning as I type this and I can think of is the day I walked along the water to marvel at a building so exquisite and how the foreigners who stay there are trapped inside a building that was meant to be a safe place for them. With the Gateway of India right across, I couldn't imagine a more perfect place to have it. Under the circumstance that the Taj was built and what the Gateway represent, they are the epitome of the thriving nation India has become and continue to be.
While Mumbai is being attacked and has been startled there is a spirit that lives under the skin of all Mumbaikers and that spirit cannot be properly explained through words. What lives within them can only be felt through the musky scent of their air, their smile and forehead wrinkles, the sweat from their brows, the vibrant colors of the women's saris, the silence in their midnights streets and the neverending honking from the bumblebee taxis and so much more. It is in their mortality that they continue to thrive and they will pick themselves up from these acts of terror.
I ask for your prayers for this and all acts of terror to end. Let peace prevail.
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