I Am Okay

Most of you probably know by now that I am okay. In case you didn't, I am okay.

My group and I were outside of the city when the bombs went off, but only by the grace of God. We were on an overnighter that was supposed to have taken place the previous week, but it was postponed because we had flooding here last week. (I realize I didn't write about the floods. We were stuck inside for pretty much 2 1/2 days, but on the way home from work when the floods started, I had to wade in knee-deep water in the streets of Bombay, which are grody to the max. THEN these horrible boys SPLASHED me and then I fell TWICE.) Anyway if it hadn't been for the floods, we'd have had our overnight last week and would have thus been in the city this week. And a couple of my friends get on and off at some of the rail stations that were hit and would have been traveling around the time the bombs hit. Since I work in the south part of the city, I wouldn't really have been in harm's way; the trains don't run as far south as I work and all of the blasts were in stations in northern Bombay anyway.

I honestly don't know too much about the blasts because we couldn't get a lot of news where we were (a sort of socialist farming and manufacturing enterprise a couple hours outside the city) and we've been back only a couple of hours. We've just been calling our families and emailing and haven't had time to plant ourselves in front of the TV and get all the info. But I do know this: I am SICK of people bombing people. People just trying to go home from work on the train. For Pete's sake. I know that these issues are complicated. I know that life is not Star Wars and that there is much more to this than black and white, good and evil. I know that poverty and oppression and exploitation breed things that I can't fully understand. But heavens.

In the words of my lovely lovely late voice teacher Rachel, What CAN you do? I guess part of reason I'm studying international affairs is to try to answer such a question, but I feel like all my studies have done is make me feel that these problems are insurmountable because they are caused by so many variables, hidden or obvious. ACK.