Mumbai

Two young guys, maybe twenty, running through Shalimar Estate with rifles. Empty street, just them. One of them points his gun at a shop: There’s a lot of alcohol here. The other: Yeah, so what? I don’t have a problem with alcohol. They keep running toward the hospital where they’d be shooting people within the hour.

I watched more CNN in those days than I had since 9/11. Couldn’t look away. The attacks were so cold, so systematic, so completely without mercy. It wasn’t random in the sense of indiscriminate—it was targeted. Targeted by skin color, by nationality, by whoever happened to be in the wrong place. Witnesses said the attackers were barely adults. Kids killing people. Just kids.

I understand a lot of different things. I can follow people into spaces I’d never go. But there’s a line you don’t come back from. When innocent people are dying, when children are being murdered, understanding becomes useless. It shuts off. It just stops.

Fuck those terrorists.