Bombs over Bangalore

We returned to Bangalore at around 6 AM on Friday, July 25 after a fantastic three week holiday in the US (see previous post). One of my main priorities upon our return was the collection of our two kitties from our friends JP and Yasmine since I missed them so much and wanted to get them home as soon as possible. We ended up leaving our house at 12 PM to head to their place and as usual, what we thought would be a quick trip there and back ended up instead leading to long visit with them since we always get talking and get wrapped up in conversation and then eating, having tea, etc (not that I am complaining, I love hanging out with these two, they are so fun and interesting it is easy to lose track of time). While we were talking their phone rang and JP answered it to find on the end of the line a friend who had been frantically trying to reach them for the past few hours to no avail. While we were chatting and having a nice afternoon, nine low-intensity bombs had been detonated at seven different sites in Bangalore (all of them quite far from where both we and JP and Yasmine live) resulting in two deaths, twenty injuries and a good deal of panic. Phone networks were immediately jammed resulting in greater panic as loved ones could not be contacted. Even my colleagues were worried as they knew that Eric and I were going to be out and about to pick up the girls but they were not able to reach me either. To its credit, Bangalore reacted much better to this tragedy that I would have expected, I feared that the panic would result in riots and violence, traffic snarls (worse than the already horrible Bangalore traffic) and mayhem. We waited a while after learning of the blasts before venturing out to go home and I was happy to find everything was normal (this is, of course, a relative term). The next day another bomb was found at Forum Mall, the biggest mall in Bangalore (I think) which is just about on the other side of the world from where we live. Sadly, sixteen more bombs were detonated on Saturday in Ahmedabad (a city in the West of India) where so far 49 people have died and nearly 200 are left injured. As far as I know, no one has claimed responsibility for the Bangalore bombing and police have few, if any, leads. Several Indian TV channels have said they had received an e-mail from a terror outfit called Indian Mujahideen claiming responsibility for the bombings in Ahmedabad; however, Islamic militant group Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami has also claimed to be responsible for the attacks. I don't really have much of a commentary on these events, it is just frustrating to see such senseless violence which results in nothing but an opportunity for the politicians to pander and stoke the fires that already burn too brightly.