Thursday, December 04, 2008


I clipped this photo off of CNN yesterday, apparently an anti-Pakistan demonstration quite recently in Mumbai.

Look at this man’s rage. I understand it, but given the current realities it is also worrisome. Because it reminds me of some of the feelings I felt and saw right after 9/11, and I remember well the hate-driven crimes, hundreds of them, in the atrocities’ wake because of that very real, explicable rage.

These truly are frightful, horrid times to live in, to see the kind of barbarity we were all witness to, directly or not, last week.

“We are very angry. We saw blood and mayhem for three days. I heard the gunfire all night. The fear has now turned into rage. Anger is a good thing; it shakes us out of our indifference and inaction. We stand up and demand answers from our leaders.

“The collective anger of a population is a powerful force. But as a young and outraged citizen of India, I am afraid of the direction our anger is taking. When all fingers point toward Pakistan, I am filled with a sense of dread. It is chilling to hear two nuclear powers use the language of war.”

— from a letter to the editor of the New York Times, written Nov. 30 and published Dec. 2, by Devika Narayan

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