Mumbai

I have two comments on the Mumbai terrorist attacks:

1) To some extent, this validates one of my theories about travel in the developing world. The hotels attacked were the Taj and the Oberoi, not the low to mid range places I favor. If you are going to target Westerners, you target them in places where there are Westerners.

2) The news stories (and the State Department travel advisory) both talk a lot about the terrorists having targeting Americans (and Britons). But I only saw very little that mentioned the attack on the Chabad center. (The Washington Post did report this, but still went short of saying that the terrorists were also targeting Jews.) The State Department talked about hotels, a railroad station, a restaurant, a hospital "and other places." As an American Jew who has gone to many synagogues in unlikely places in the world (e.g. Shabbat in Nairobi), this seems like important information to me.

By the way, Mumbai is home to one of two significant Jewish populations in India (along with Cochin, in the south), though most of the Bene Israel have emigrated to Israel. And there are a lot of Israeli tourists in Israel. I even remember seeing store / restaurant signs in Hebrew on the commercial area in Agra outside the Taj Mahal.

Slumdog Millionaire

I did go to work today - well, actually to the corporate mothership, versus my government office. There were only a few people around, of course. Mostly, I cleared out some old email and worked on drafting a paper that isn't due for a couple of weeks. I write reports by spending a lot of time thinking before writing anything, so it doesn't look like I've done much work. But I have the gist of what I need to include. That's about as productive as I could have hoped for.

I left early and went into the city to see a movie. I had intended to see "Milk" but it was sold out, so I went to "Slumdog Millionaire." (Which I also wanted to see. "Milk" was my first choice because it's playing only at the E Street Cinema, while "Slumdog Millionaire" is at several theatres now, including the Cinema Arts in Fairfax.)

I hadn't quite thought through the emotional impact of seeing this movie right after the Mumbai attacks. There are several early scenes involving sectarian violence which would have been hard enough to deal with even without the current events. I had been under the vague impression (mostly from the trailer) that the movie was a comedy, which it isn't. There are some funny moments, but it's drama of the strongest kind. It wasn't always easy to watch, but I thought it was superbly well done. Dev Patel was very appealing as Jamal, the poor eighteen year old whose appearance on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" has hints of destiny.

I also want to mention the soundtrack. It was remarkably effective in setting the scene. India is a complex place and the music evoked both the wonderfulness and horribleness there.