Mumbai Attacks: Watching the terror unfold on internet

I have been glued to the internet watching the mumbai attacks since yesterday. I learned about it around 1 pm US eastern time from a friend on yahoo messenger. She was outraged. I opened the NDTV live and watched in shock the burning TAJ. For about an hour, I just sat watching transfixed. I couldn’t believe, how could such an event happen in the middle of a busy city like Mumbai.

My first reaction, to know how my family and friends were. Some of my family stays very closeby to where the incident was taking place. I prayed and gathered enough courage to call them. Thankfully they are all fine.

I was hoping that it will all be over soon. But the night turned into day and day turned into night again and the terror still continues. Sitting in my room watching the live coverage of attack and reading live updates on twitter, I feel helpless. My thoughts turning into my head, and several questions emerging..why and how could something like this happen and the world watches. We are just watching and reading and listening while the terrorists are taking innocent lives…..we can speculate and we can reason….but when will this end…when 9/11 happened, we thought this was the big thing, and now we must get ready to fight terror, since then we had the Iraq war but the terrorist attacks continued – we saw the bombings in London, Delhi, and elsewhere and now Mumbai terror attacks…what are we going to do – prepare to fight another one like this….

We are getting reports from all over internet – from news media through live TV, from social media through twitter, first hand accounts from bloggers, we are so well-connected as the world, technology has brought us together like never before. I read anger, angst, pain all kinds of emotions from viewers from all over the world. The world watches in horror about what is happening in Mumbai, and tomorrow it can happen anywhere..we are connected but we are not safe. Somewhere we have gone wrong, somewhere we have failed…till yesterday, it was hijackings which made news and we were horrified with such incidents and today we are hit at right in the middle of a city, where we would think we are safest….

My thoughts and prayers are with all those who are dead or injured, who have lost their loved ones…or are awaiting them…may God (if there is one) create a miracle for everyone involved. May this event makes the world work towards peaceful solutions…