London Blasts - a perspective

This started off as a brief email to try and put into words what happened here and to let everyone know that I am safe, but turned out to be a self retrospecting mail - read it if you want to...

Yesterday was exciting as it was scary, exciting as for me it’s the nearest I have been to something and scary - cos you think in retrospect and think carefully and realize that it could have been you.

For the record in the London blasts - there were 4 bomb blasts - 1 bus and 3 trains. 37 killed and 300 odd injured - at time of writing. The atmosphere was electric after the news spread - loads of emails and calls from people checking in to see if all was well - problems were increased as mobile networks crashed - and then some phone companies were only routing emergency calls, so confusion reigned supreme. 

I stay in a place called Bromley in zone 5, about 30 minutes from central London - for those who don't know - London is divided into Zones with 1 being the center - where all the blasts happened and the outskirts being 5 and 6. London Zone 1 also has something called a congestion charge - which means that if you want to go into city in your car - you need to pay buckets of money - which is good as it eases traffic and makes money for the council. More importantly - this means that the public transport system has to be good, and believe me it is. The underground tubes are amazing and can get you to distances easily, fast and cheap.

The only downside is that if something happens, the city almost quite literally comes to a grinding halt. So that's what happened yesterday, 3 explosions on the tube, meant that the tube was shut down completely and 1 on a bus, means all buses were evacuated to be checked. So this is what caused the major confusion, literally thousands of people, suddenly stranded and nowhere to go and no means to go.

The mobile phones were all jammed up and if you think back, it’s a bit like New Years - when the whole bloody world is on the phone and just can’t get through. Some mobile phone company fired up and started allowing only emergency calls. Anyway, soon the phones started working and everybody called everybody and all the people we knew were safe.

The way this city is geared up is good; the BBC was updating every few minutes and was on the radio, all the while providing reports. There was even one channel or people to call to and pass messages and ask people to call them if they were missing or lost or whatever. The emergency forces were out in force and it was amazing that there was no mass hysteria or major panic of any sort or at least from what I heard.

The timing of this blast also was very intriguing -London has so many things happening all at once over here - like winning the 2012 bid, the live8 concert, the G8 summit, and then this. I must say it’s been a LONG week for Londoners, one that many will look back in time and still vividly remember the details. People think about it and say we were lucky, that we weren’t there and more so cos it could have caused loads more damage than it actually did.

And then at the end of the day, what does it all boil down to - some stupid crazy people, who kill others in the name of religion? why? What purpose does it serve; I don't think any religion advocates the killing of innocents. This is terrorism, to force people into fear and panic, and in most cases, as recent incidents have shown, all it does is improve the resilience of people, to stand up to terrorism and threat and fight back, in ways that are considered just and right. Who decides what is right and wrong though - is the experience of so many generations of different varieties of people who have learned the hard way and want to improve the world to make it a better place for one and for all.

Similarly, from a personal perspective, it just goes to show how unpredictable life can be, think about it - what if this happened to you, what if you were there, think of the ones who died - who probably had so much to do or wanted to do, and now they can’t. May their souls rest in peace. But learn from this, that life is as unpredictable as anything can be and that's when you realize that one needs to seize the moment and live as good a life as one can, be happy, smile and consider yourself lucky that each morning, you have woken up to see a brand new day, and experience life to its fullest, all the time.

"Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday." - John Wayne

God bless you all