I've got the events in Mumbai on in the background. The caption says "Warzone Mumbai" so the newsmen are evidently having a ball. The Indian SAS seem to enjoy swaggering about in their Robocop uniforms as much as the young men with the machine guns relished wandering around in their best Versace tee shirts slaughtering indiscriminately. The pundits are out in force speculating excitedly about why the "terrorists" or "militants" or "Islamists" did it.
Strikes me that the quicker you try to look for their motives the quicker you forget that this is murder of the most depraved sort. They didn't much care who they killed. They just wanted an impressive number.
Yes, its a depressing mess. I have stayed at the Taj myself on many occasions. It's one of the few hotels in the world that I actually look forward to going to, whether for pleasure or business. It was also the scene of my single greatest moment when I walked into their cafe for breakfast at 6am one morning having just arrived in Mumbai on an overnight bus from Goa to find that the only other guests were Sir Gary Sobers, Viv Richards and Brian Lara shoorting the breeze over a cup of tea. Stopped in my tracks and made to feel 6 years old again. Marvellous. ...Never again, I suspect.
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