I wasn’t born in Bangalore. I don’t live there now. But ever since I was a child, it’s been the seat of my family.
I’ve smelled the jasmine and diesel in the air. I’ve seen the elections of civic-minded criminals, and heard the hurly-burly cry of Commercial Street for years. In short, I claim Bangalore as my own.
Eight explosions erupted across my city like weeping lesions yesterday.
According to all the news sources I can tap, the prime suspects in this matter are either the members of a banned student organization, the Students Islamic Movement of India, or the militant organization, Lashkar-e-Toiba. I don’t know enough about the nature or history of either group to even offer an opinion. And honestly, I can’t say that I care who eventually will claim the credit for all of this. Whoever it was, they’re no different than any other breed of savage.
Every time I go to Bangalore, I visit the Church of the Infant Jesus. It’s near the center of the city, a shy palace of stone and stained marble. Shall I tell you why it’s wonderful? Because, despite the name, it’s a shrine for every person of any faith. Hindus, Muslims, and Christians all come to sit quietly, everyone together and entirely on their own. The statue is covered with garlands, and often the feet are bathed with milk. Paisa clink in the collection box as people whisper and concentrate in six different languages. I’ve been there, and I’ve seen the harmony that can exist a religiously disparate city. I wish I could show you. You’d understand why I want to believe these attacks are aberrations, statistical freaks, and not simply the other end of the spectrum.
Only one of the explosions was anywhere near my family. The explosions were relatively low-yield, from what I gather. While some were injured, few – blessedly – have been confirmed dead. From all of this, I know, intellectually, that everything is fine. But I also instinctively know just how bad things can be. I’m awfully good at imagining the worst. I think that many of us know how dread can murmur quietly in the background of the day.
I’m in Atlanta, hearing about all of this in very much a piecemeal and removed fashion; it is at once both an interesting and awful position to be in. I’m tempted for just a moment to say that it’s even a unique position, but the unfortunate state of the world dictates otherwise. No, I’m simply joining the thousands of others that have been left wondering if an attack hundreds of miles away is really that far away at all.
In a strange way, this nascent, irrational worry is similar to the one that accompanied my first HIV test. It was a routine test, and work-related. Considering my own fairly average history, I was absolutely sure that I wouldn’t have a positive test. Almost certainly nothing to worry about, but I worried anyway. It takes a far more or far less logical mind than mine to simply put away the worst-case scenario; I’m not sure which.
“Was it any of my loved ones?” That’s the completely understandable and utterly selfish question of the moment. I’m compelled to ask it, of course, but I’m not terribly proud to. After all, shouldn’t I be concerned about every potential victim? Probably I should, and I am to some degree.
After all, terror is morally indefensible. It’s violence precipitated against the innocent for the sake of what boils down to a particular point of view; it’s intellectually horrifying. Dressing it up as guerilla warfare is little more than a matter of semantics and ideology. I believe that we as a species have the ability and even the duty to rise above rude instinct and reflexive violence. If Man is decent, then civilians are off-limits. It really is that simple.
But shall I tell you something? The truth is – and I feel that this is a very human way to be – that all of those innocents are abstract concepts to me. I can spout as much rhetoric on their behalf as I like, but in the end, I am only involved on a philosophical and intellectual level. I believe everything I just said above. But my own family, the people I know and am close to, those are the possibilities I feel. Their importance has heft and substance. I know, in the end, that any given person is just as important as anyone else. I accept that as moral. But in this particular and personal case, I just don’t care. I don’t know how to reconcile it. I doubt very much that I’m alone in saying that high-minded philosophies and beliefs fall by the wayside when family comes into play.
These acts of terror were reprehensible. And, as always, one hopes it was somebody else who was hurt.
I’m so sorry.