Gibburt

In early October, I and two good friends visited India for a couple of weeks. It was a remarkable journey through a remarkable country. As one would expect, the trip was not without its share of smaller and larger practical and personal difficulties. Moreover, seeing the poverty of India’s most unfortunate with our own eyes was sobering, to say the least. But the opportunity to visit some of the most beautiful places on this planet and all the wonderful people we met on the way made everything worthwhile. For myself this holiday certainly turned out to be an experience I will always cherish.

The last stop on our trip was Mumbai. We visited the old British colonial quarters, Churchgate and Colaba. We saw the famous Victoria Terminus, the grand Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Museum, the Gateway of India. We watched a Bollywood film in one of the local cinemas. We walked right past the Taj Mahal Hotel that was one of the main scenes of the current shootings.

Do I feel disturbed? Agitated? Sad? Angry? To be perfectly honest: no. I just feel numb.

I remember how I heard about the 9/11 attacks like it was yesterday. I was in Gothenburg. School had just finished for the day and I was waiting for a tram with some of my classmates. One of them got a call on his mobile phone. He started laughing and said something like: “What? Are you serious?” Still smiling and giggling, he told us: “Apparently, all of Manhattan is on fire.” When I came home, I turned on the TV to find out what was really going on and became mesmerised with shock. It was around 10 pm, I think, when I finally stopped watching, only when I was certain that nothing new would transpire anymore that day.

Four years later, during the 7/7 attacks on London, I was away in Germany or Sweden, I don’t remember which. When I returned, exactly one week later, everything already seemed back to normal. Only a few tube lines and stations remained closed, and even that’s not so unusual in London. I remember feeling a strangely intangible uneasiness for a few days that I even tried to capture in one of my crude poems.

Now it seems there’s nothing left to feel or to say. Terror has become banal, a cliche. Like the new romcom flick that nobody gives a damn about. More than 100 people have been killed today where I walked just a few weeks ago. And I’m only surprised at my own indifference.

Filed under: Politics by Ralf Damaschke | Social tagging: terror