Flying into Mumbai: March 1993

I finally got on a plane from Singapore to Mumbai. It was a sunny March day and I looked out and teared up as India showed up under the plane. The man sitting next to me started talking to me. He wanted to talk about the bomb blasts and I quietly listened. He railed against the terrorists and the said that someone from a neighboring building had been killed. I asked him where he lived and he told me. I knew he was talking about my dad.

"Going back to visit your parents?", he asked.
I didn't know what to say. I smiled.
"Where do you live? When is the last time you came back to India?"

I told him that I was the son of the neighbor who had been killed.

"WHAT?", he almost shouted out. He apologized and offered condolences. The conversation soon died after that and I looked out the airplane window.

When I landed, a police officer was waiting to see me at the gate. He escorted me back past immigration and customs and before I knew it, I was on the streets.

Mumbai may have lost several hundred people to bomb blasts a few days ago but it was up and humming. Sticky and dirty and crowded and humming. No one could have guess that 7 huge bombs had gone off from south to north not too long ago.

The cab took me home - after 3 years of not seeing my dad, I was coming home to see him dead.