Because unity in diversity, strength in numbers, and anything similarly hopeful will do

I'm wearing black today.

Just because I overheard a stranger's dinner-time conversation at a restaurant last night: 'Show your solidarity with Mumbai. Everyone wear black tomorrow.' It's the only way I can.

It's a bleak Monday morning in Ahmedabad - rainy, chilly, and grey - just the kind that wraps your soul and takes it one notch lower. What do we believe in anymore? Or who? Is this the kind of world we want to bring our children into - or are children who are raised into sane adults the need of the hour. Tales of terror on the tv, over the phone, over international calls, over drinks, at the basin as Nino asks me, 'Ma, what's a terrorist?' What is safe anymore?

I wait for routine to salvage this part pain-part numbness state, deadlines are most welcome today. I've already said so much in my brain, that it refuses to take the shape of sentences any more. Let someone else say it for me today:

'In sympathy with those whose pain so hurts my own heart but whose tears I cannot touch, whose wounds I cannot heal, and whose grief I cannot relieve.'
A 'Pakistani Mumbaikar' mourns the city he loved here:
http://pakistaniat.com/2008/11/28/mumbaikar-mumbai-terror-pakistani-view/

'So I’m booking flights to Mumbai. I’m going to go get a beer at the Leopold, stroll over to the Taj for samosas at the Sea Lounge, and watch a Bollywood movie at the Metro. Stimulus doesn't have to be just economic.'
Suketu Mehta talks about why India's megalopolis is plundered, again and again and again:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/29/opinion/29mehta.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=why%20they%20hate%20mumbai%20New%20york%20times&st=cse

And because a city can sometimes be a memory so intimate, you are embarrassed that you stumbled upon it.
' And I’d smile smugly knowing that piece of gorgeousness was born and bred mine. ' Orange Jammies talks about her home here:
http://wisdomwearsneonpyjamas.wordpress.com/2008/11/29/of-home-heart-and-horror/