On the morning when I supposed to fly back to India (after dropping wife in Chicago), I received a troubling email from a colleague. He wrote an email to the office stating that there may be bomb blasts occurring in Mumbai and that everyone should avoid one of the bomb locations near my office. This was followed by several more emails by individuals further detailing the locations and starting our company wide safety procedures to ensure everyone and their family was accounted for and safe.
I woke up my wife and we started texting and emailing our family and friends in Mumbai. Fortunately, everyone that we knew was safe. I then had to decide whether to return to India. I went back and forth but ultimately decided to return for a few reasons:
· I was going straight to Delhi and would not be in Mumbai for at least a few days
· My hotel and project location in Delhi were in popular parts of the city
· If not going back now, when would it be safe? The threat would always be there.
During that morning and early afternoon, we constantly turned on CNN (which only had a 30 second segment) and searched for updates on various news websites. This was of course the biggest story in India and there were constant updates throughout the day. That afternoon, I boarded my flight to go back to Delhi.
What happened next was quite surprising. I landed in Delhi late the next day (given time difference). While there was still a lot of news coverage, there were no mentions of office or school closings. The city and country were back moving that very next morning. With the exception of another one or two office emails mentioning that everyone was safe, it appeared that this was a completely normal day. I was amazed. Over the next few days, there were no mentions of the bombing in any conversations. Everything seemed normal. Unfortunately, India has been a frequent target of terrorism and perhaps because of that, people have built up resilience to these events.
Some writers and politicians mentioned that these events were inevitable in a city like Mumbai with very high population density. For example, one politician said that India did the best it could, that there was no prior intelligence and that the country can only stop 99% of terrorist attempts. This acceptance of terrorism surprised me since it was so different from the US response and mentality (entering Afghanistan, hunting Bin Laden, etc.). If you accept this (even if it is true that you cannot completely stop terrorism in places like Mumbai), you have already set-up for failure since the goal is not complete eradication?
I've gone back and forth on whether the response from Mumbaikers and India's government reflects resilience or acceptance to some degree. Perhaps it's a bit of both …
[Unfortunately, after the writing of this post, New Delhi was the victim of another terrorist attack]
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