Location: Bangalore, India
Today there was at least one bombing in the part of Bangalore where I am staying. Reports say that 10-13 people were injured/killed from an IED that was attached to a motorcycle near the ruling political party's office. There may have been a second bombing in a marketplace, also in this part of town (the West of Bangalore) that hasn't yet hit the news.
When I was living in Hyderabad in 2007 there were two sets of bombings, one at the major historical mosque in the center of the old city, the Mecca Masjid, and the other at popular cafes. At that time the city went under bandh, or curfew, because of the civil unrest that would follow. At this moment, it is unclear if the bombings have stopped in Bangalore.
I learned of the news a few hours after the bombing by word of mouth. I was going to do some last minute shopping before my flight leaves tonight, and one of my gracious Indian hosts showed up to take me to the mall. He wasn't overly worried about the bombing and said it happens frequently in India and that with some basic precautions we could stay safe.
We picked up his cousin and her daughter on our way to the mall. His cousin mentioned that she had heard that there had been a second bombing in a marketplace in the same neighborhood (through which we were driving) a few hours after the first. We continued on our route to the mall in the economic center of Bangalore, where a World Trade Center, Sheraton and mall are based. As images of the Mumbai attacks flooded my mind (in which bombs were followed by militants taking the famous Taj Mahal hotel hostage and killing a total of 164 people), my friends pleaded with me that we were in no danger.
This for me highlighted what is possibly the biggest cultural difference between the US and India that I've ever encountered. In the US, three people were killed in the Boston Marathon attack and that is still all the news can talk about. Undoubtedly new security measures will be put into place and an entire industry will emerge to support our efforts to not let an exact attack like this happen again. Every day millions of people give up their shampoo and walk barefoot through airport security because of our well-intentioned efforts to prevent a disaster from happening, yet do we really think they'll do exactly the same thing again? They just might try, which is why we do this.
In India, doing such a thing is totally impossible. All major hotels and malls already have security where they check bags, customers have to walk through metal detectors, and cars are searched with mirrors. Yet, every few months there are more bombings. The bombings typically happen where there is not that level of security (Taj Mahal hotel being a major exception), but if someone really wanted to do something, no one is really going to be able to stop them. Every moment of every day the streets are jam-packed with cars, motorcycles, rickshaws, animals and people and it would be absolutely impossible to manage security in such an environment without all people giving up a huge amount of freedom. This is true in India and in the US, from Boston to Bangalore.
At the end of the day you have to do what you can to protect yourself while still being able to live your life and just hope that if something happens, it doesn't happen to you. And, similarly, being killed or injured in a traffic accident is far, far more likely to happen in both India and the US than being killed in a terrorist attack. Yet, those terrorist attacks are SCARY!
So, given all these similarities between India and the US, what I have learned today is that the line of "protecting yourself while still being able to live you life" is drawn in a different place between America and India - and it's not just my perspective. We give up more freedom every time an attack happens in the US in our effort to protect ourselves, and sometimes that is necessary and useful. But, what we have to be careful about is still being able to live our lives.
Today I didn't do my shopping, much to the disappointment of my Indian friends, who I'm sure saw that line in a different place. Yet, in my assessment of the situation, there were two bombings in my neighborhood within a few hours and we were going to the economic center of the city, also in that neighborhood, where there is a world trade center. Had I told Americans that I nonchalantly went straight into that world trade center to go about my business I'm quite sure they would have judged me to be a masochistic daredevil. Yet, leaving that place for the refuge of my oasis hotel with stronger security seemed like a hugely paranoid waste to my Indian hosts. We just draw that line about protecting ourselves and going about our daily lives in a different place.
I'm quite sure that the stats are on their side and not mine - I'm falling into a classic pattern of overemphasizing potential negatives due to their emotional poignancy. Did the fact that the building was called the World Trade Center have an impact on my perception - absolutely. Like many Americans, I have a deep ingrained memory of the moment when the idea that the first plane flying into the towers twelve years ago was just a terrible accident was shattered by the second plane hitting - eliminating in one moment a deep, yet untrue belief that nothing like that could happen to us. That is a belief that has never existed here in India, and in many ways there is more freedom because of it. There also may be more bombings. It's hard to tell. But in a country of 1.2 billion people, still their chances of being killed by a bomb are close to nil. In America our chances of being killed in a bomb are far less than being shot accidentally with a gun. Yet our opinions about policies to prevent these two issues differ drastically.
Where is the line drawn between reasonably protecting yourself and living your life?
I don't know exactly where that line should be, but I do know that we need to be conscious of maintaining our ability to live our lives, because if we give up more freedom to protect ourselves, it's only a matter of time until the cure is worse than the disease.
In the meantime, though, I'm pretty OK with having retreated to my oasis - thus demonstrating the deep divide between the logical and emotional that permeates our society's approach to this unpleasant issue.
Today there was at least one bombing in the part of Bangalore where I am staying. Reports say that 10-13 people were injured/killed from an IED that was attached to a motorcycle near the ruling political party's office. There may have been a second bombing in a marketplace, also in this part of town (the West of Bangalore) that hasn't yet hit the news.
When I was living in Hyderabad in 2007 there were two sets of bombings, one at the major historical mosque in the center of the old city, the Mecca Masjid, and the other at popular cafes. At that time the city went under bandh, or curfew, because of the civil unrest that would follow. At this moment, it is unclear if the bombings have stopped in Bangalore.
I learned of the news a few hours after the bombing by word of mouth. I was going to do some last minute shopping before my flight leaves tonight, and one of my gracious Indian hosts showed up to take me to the mall. He wasn't overly worried about the bombing and said it happens frequently in India and that with some basic precautions we could stay safe.
We picked up his cousin and her daughter on our way to the mall. His cousin mentioned that she had heard that there had been a second bombing in a marketplace in the same neighborhood (through which we were driving) a few hours after the first. We continued on our route to the mall in the economic center of Bangalore, where a World Trade Center, Sheraton and mall are based. As images of the Mumbai attacks flooded my mind (in which bombs were followed by militants taking the famous Taj Mahal hotel hostage and killing a total of 164 people), my friends pleaded with me that we were in no danger.
This for me highlighted what is possibly the biggest cultural difference between the US and India that I've ever encountered. In the US, three people were killed in the Boston Marathon attack and that is still all the news can talk about. Undoubtedly new security measures will be put into place and an entire industry will emerge to support our efforts to not let an exact attack like this happen again. Every day millions of people give up their shampoo and walk barefoot through airport security because of our well-intentioned efforts to prevent a disaster from happening, yet do we really think they'll do exactly the same thing again? They just might try, which is why we do this.
In India, doing such a thing is totally impossible. All major hotels and malls already have security where they check bags, customers have to walk through metal detectors, and cars are searched with mirrors. Yet, every few months there are more bombings. The bombings typically happen where there is not that level of security (Taj Mahal hotel being a major exception), but if someone really wanted to do something, no one is really going to be able to stop them. Every moment of every day the streets are jam-packed with cars, motorcycles, rickshaws, animals and people and it would be absolutely impossible to manage security in such an environment without all people giving up a huge amount of freedom. This is true in India and in the US, from Boston to Bangalore.
At the end of the day you have to do what you can to protect yourself while still being able to live your life and just hope that if something happens, it doesn't happen to you. And, similarly, being killed or injured in a traffic accident is far, far more likely to happen in both India and the US than being killed in a terrorist attack. Yet, those terrorist attacks are SCARY!
So, given all these similarities between India and the US, what I have learned today is that the line of "protecting yourself while still being able to live you life" is drawn in a different place between America and India - and it's not just my perspective. We give up more freedom every time an attack happens in the US in our effort to protect ourselves, and sometimes that is necessary and useful. But, what we have to be careful about is still being able to live our lives.
Today I didn't do my shopping, much to the disappointment of my Indian friends, who I'm sure saw that line in a different place. Yet, in my assessment of the situation, there were two bombings in my neighborhood within a few hours and we were going to the economic center of the city, also in that neighborhood, where there is a world trade center. Had I told Americans that I nonchalantly went straight into that world trade center to go about my business I'm quite sure they would have judged me to be a masochistic daredevil. Yet, leaving that place for the refuge of my oasis hotel with stronger security seemed like a hugely paranoid waste to my Indian hosts. We just draw that line about protecting ourselves and going about our daily lives in a different place.
I'm quite sure that the stats are on their side and not mine - I'm falling into a classic pattern of overemphasizing potential negatives due to their emotional poignancy. Did the fact that the building was called the World Trade Center have an impact on my perception - absolutely. Like many Americans, I have a deep ingrained memory of the moment when the idea that the first plane flying into the towers twelve years ago was just a terrible accident was shattered by the second plane hitting - eliminating in one moment a deep, yet untrue belief that nothing like that could happen to us. That is a belief that has never existed here in India, and in many ways there is more freedom because of it. There also may be more bombings. It's hard to tell. But in a country of 1.2 billion people, still their chances of being killed by a bomb are close to nil. In America our chances of being killed in a bomb are far less than being shot accidentally with a gun. Yet our opinions about policies to prevent these two issues differ drastically.
Where is the line drawn between reasonably protecting yourself and living your life?
I don't know exactly where that line should be, but I do know that we need to be conscious of maintaining our ability to live our lives, because if we give up more freedom to protect ourselves, it's only a matter of time until the cure is worse than the disease.
In the meantime, though, I'm pretty OK with having retreated to my oasis - thus demonstrating the deep divide between the logical and emotional that permeates our society's approach to this unpleasant issue.
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