I was out last evening and it was pretty late when I was catching up on my tweets when I saw a post about blasts in Mumbai. After that, there was no sleep for a couple of hours as I was following the reports coming in from different folks.

It’s been numbing to say the least. Every time something like this happens I am seized by different reactions – sadness, anger, frustration, and helplessness to various degrees. And I am sure that must be the case with a majority of people. To be so vulnerable to attacks in the spate of a year is extremely scary a situation. Imagine how powerless our Intelligence must be to not have a CLUE about the blasts / attacks coming to any of the cities this year.

I hope all of you readers/bloggers from Mumbai are safe and sound. I’ve already called the few people I know there and everyone is shell shocked and depressed.

I am lost for words. Really.

Meanwhile, the folks in Mumbai have revived the help line blog so do follow this for information:
http://mumbaihelp.blogspot.com

And I’ve been following Twitter for most of my updates, so if you folks are on Twitter, then you’re already probably getting many of them. You can follow the Mumbai related tweets here.

Vinu has put up a whole load of pictures. He’s been out and about for a while capturing on camera what’s happening around. And Arun Shanbag too ventured out for a bit. but says that his big bazooka lens will probably get him into trouble. He’s posted his first hand accounts here.

There’s a news article here which quotes about people flocking to social networking sites for information – quite true I think. Since I don’t have television, I’ve been following the news mainly online and through Twitter. A CNN article reports how the social media reacted to Mumbai.

Some reactions from world leaders. Need our Indian leaders to now stand up and talk tough. And act tough.

MJ Akbar writes here: “India is a tough nation. No one should have illusions about that. It has fought off Muslim terrorists in Kashmir, Sikh terrorists in Punjab, Christian terrorists in Nagaland, and Hindu terrorists in Assam and across the country (there is a Maoist insurrection in a broad swathe of states in the centre of India). India has learnt that you cannot blame the whole community for the sins of a few. But under ineffectual governance, particularly in the last three years, a tough country is in danger of degenerating into a soft state. Instead of being the international leader in the worldwide war against terrorism, India is sinking into the despair of a continual victim.”

An Independent article quotes the UK Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, describing the killings as an “attack on all of us”. That it is, definitely.

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