Bombay had 37.1 inches of rain on Tuesday, a national record. It’s led to lots of problems, including some deaths (as of this writing, 200 people in Bombay, 400+ people in the state of Maharashtra), as well as huge property damage.

Despite power outages, the Bombay bloggers have been whirring away. Dilip D’Souza, for instance, has been busy, with a column on Rediff and a series of posts on his blog. Amit Varma has a great piece called “Streets Like Rivers”, and a great number of links up here. Sonia Faleiro has an account of getting stuck at the airport, spending the night in the lobby of a hotel, and of the strange, almost inexplicable helpfulness of strangers in a catastrophe. Uma, of IndianWriting, has these pictures, and these links. Also see Gaurav Sabnis, here and here.

But the most interesting accounts of the flooding by far are not by bloggers (though I love the bloggers), but the first-person accounts that have been showing up on Rediff. Below the fold is an account that I found to be particularly moving, warts and all. Continue reading →

It’s becoming a sickeningly familiar story; a young man who seems at home in the “western world” ends up fundamentally altered. This. This is what terrifies me. Someone who had the same $70k/year programming job which so many people whom we all know do, someone who was a Yankees fan, incredibly, someone whose own mother escaped one of the towers before it fell…is someone who hates us. When a man can sympathize, nay, enthusiastically support and participate in a movement that almost killed his own mother…we’re fcuked.

From today’s WaPo:

It is safe to assume that most people would not react to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in quite the same way as Mohammed Junaid Babar. After all, the longtime resident of Queens, N.Y., told a Canadian television network that his own mother had been one of the survivors — barely escaping from the ninth floor of one of the towers before it collapsed.

Yet, Babar said in that same interview from Pakistan in the fall of 2001, his “loyalty is to the Muslims, not the Americans.”

“I will kill every American that I see in Afghanistan, and while I am in Pakistan, if I see them in Pakistan, I will kill every American soldier I can in Pakistan,” he said during the interview with ITN Five News.

Abhi wrote an SM post about Babar almost a year ago, after the erstwhile New Yorker attended a “terrorist summit” in Pakistan:

from Queens in New York City came Mohammed Junaid Babar, a Pakistani American who arrived with cash, sleeping bags, ponchos, waterproof socks and other supplies for the mountain-bound jihadis.

The “boy scout” of Al Qaeda also brough along night-vision goggles, helpfully enough. In that SM post, Abhi mentioned that Babar was wanted in connection with a “future terrorist attack”. As of two weeks ago, that future is here. This naturalized U.S. Citizen turned Jihadi joined al Qaeda just so he could battle U.S. soldiers…and civilians in Britain. Such bravery.

At least the Son-of-a…woman who is apparently expendable is useful:

Now in U.S. custody after pleading guilty to terrorism charges last year, Babar has proved invaluable to U.S. and British investigators probing this month’s attacks on the London transit system, numerous officials said. He has identified at least one of the suicide bombers, Mohammed Sidique Khan, through photographs and has provided other details that may be helpful in unraveling the plot, according to law enforcement and intelligence sources.

Continue reading →

‘Cooperate, or we’ll throw you in a hole so deep that no one will even remember your name.’ Inspired by the Soviet gulags, variations of that line are a staple of trite Hollywood screenplays.

Unfortunately, it also happened in real life. A villager from Assam was just released after spending 54 years imprisoned (thanks, Kool). He’s been held for almost as long as India’s been independent.

Seventy-seven year old Machang [Machal] Lalung was arrested in 1951 from his native village of Silsang… Police said that Mr Lalung… was booked for “causing grievous hurt”…. police said there were no evidence to support the allegation, so within a year of his arrest, he was transferred to a psychiatric institution [for schizophrenia]. “It seems the police just forgot about him thereafter,” says Assamese human rights activist Sanjay Borbora…

In 1967, the authorities at the institution certified Mr Lalung as “fully fit” and said that they intended to release him. But instead of being freed, police transferred him to another jail… Last year, local human rights activists brought Machang’s case to the attention of the National Human Rights Commission, which took up the case immediately and sought his release. [Link]

… the court papers wrongly mention the name as “Machang”… he had been languishing at Tezpur Mental Hospital… Machal, however, doesn’t remember what his crime was. “They say I hit someone,” he said… [Link]

The Medical Superintendent has stated that he has not been on any psychotropic medicine for several years and is free of any signs of mental illness. [Link]

I wonder whether someone will teach Lalang the words ‘compensation’ and ‘lawsuit.’ He could buy himself some chamak-chamak, ’cause that’s the way he rolls. Imagine the adjustments this Kumbhakarna has to make after being so long away from the world: audiotapes, nuclear power, PCs, video games, the Internet, the moonshot, space stations, cloning, the Berlin Wall, disco, the Indian wars with Pakistan and China, ‘India Shining,’ Zeenat, Shabana, Amitabh and Aishwarya. But no — at his age, it’s all about the water and the loo.

“I don’t like the kutcha toilet or people having to draw water from wells…”

Continue reading →

Fear and paranoia continue to sweep the land. I suppose if you have nothing to hide it’s not a big deal though. The New York Daily News reports (thanks for the tip Brian):

New York was fear city yesterday as heavily armed police swarmed a double-decker bus packed with tourists in Times Square…

In a dramatic sign of the city’s edginess since the London transit bombings, cops evacuated buildings, shut midtown streets and forced about 60 terrified tourists to march off the double-decker bus, with their hands up, in the heart of Broadway.

Cops in riot gear handcuffed a group of apparently harmless South Asian-looking men with British accents after a jittery tour bus worker reported they seemed suspicious.

The men were forced to kneel on the sidewalk, with their hands bound behind their backs, between 50th and 51st Sts. in front of the Winter Garden theater on a sunny summer Sunday with the city packed with tourists.

Here is a checklist I have been working on for myself. Life runs more efficiently when you use checklists for everything I have found:

1) Don’t sweat
2) Don’t carry a large bag
3) Conceal any accent of any kind
4) Read a newspaper (someone about to blow himself up probably wouldn’t be reading the news)
5) Do not pack your lunch in a plastic container

The five men in yesterday’s incident quickly were freed after cops determined they were tourists – not terrorists.

“We just want to clear our heads of the whole thing,” one of the men told the Daily News. “We were humiliated enough.”

“We just want to go,” added another.

“I was definitely frightened from the beginning,” said the driver, Mohammed Stout, 43, of the Bronx. “That’s human nature.”

Buried within a BBC article about the Police naming two suspects in last ThursdayÂ’s bombing in London was a tidbit that caught my attention…but first, the news:

Officers are looking for Yasin Hassan Omar, 24, and Muktar Said Ibrahim, 27. Ibrahim is being linked to a house in north London, which is being raided…

Two more people have been arrested, taking the total number held to five.

Now exactly what did I find so fascinating? This:

“All five of these bombs had been placed inside dark colored rucksacks or sports bags. All of them were made using the same type of plastic food storage container. These were manufactured in India, and are exported through one company into this country and then sold in approximately 100 outlets across the United Kingdom.“

“The type we are interested in is this six and a quarter liter-sized container with a white plastic lid,” he said. “It has a label describing it as a ‘Delta 6250 with Lid,’ and also has another colored label with the description ‘Family Containers, Delta, Superior Quality.’ Please note that we are only interested in the white lid variety. They are also produced in other colors.”

Who keeps the labels on those things? I peel them off. Anyway, of course, now authorities are appealing to shop owners who remember selling several containers all at once…which sounded logical to me at first…until I remembered that my own saintly Mother never buys these things one at a time. 🙂

All you Aunties out there (as well as those of you who merely shop like them)…quit acting so suspicious. 😉 Continue reading →