Lost In Transit

i finally reached here yesterday. i had so many things i wanted to write about in detail.like the fact that the flight took a different route this time so i saw the Palm Jumeirah from the air at night. or the fact that after 22 years of flying Air India they did not give the bread roll and butter packet with the meal, something that's never happened before, something that i always looked forward to, my one indulgence of eating the whole packet of butter with the bread, even if i left the rest of the food.

When we were flying over Mumbai and i said goodbye to the twinkly city lights i could not even imagine the horrors that were occurring at that very moment down below. there was an unusually high level of checking going on at the airport yesterday. they were checking our passports and boarding passes at multiple points. they even re-introduced the plastic ziplock bag to keep all our liquids like perfume and lip gloss in. usually when I'm traveling with mum i carry the hand bag and she handles the travel documents. Usually when we show them to a guard for those periodic checks in between i tend to walk ahead a couple of steps. this time all of them stopped me right there and insisted i stay put till they finish their check. This when i look exactly like my mum. Another first. They've even re-introduced metal cutlery in the flight after so many years of plastic.

In hindsight all the sudden checking and the airport swarming with officials and all the brand new protocol was strange considering the fact that the terrorist attacks across Mumbai started later on. Our flight was delayed by half an hour but that was nothing new, and nothing was said about what was going on outside. its only when we landed a couple of hours later and spoke to Dad that we got the news.

These sort of attacks in Mumbai are unprecedented and frightening. We've been constantly following the news since last night. There are curfews in certain areas and the whole thing is still not over, even after over 19 hours.

I pray for the safety of the people still trapped inside the hotels, and also of the police who've lost a lot of their men, and i hope everyone i know back home is safe. i cant even imagine the state of all those people who've lost family or friends in this.