Jaipur

The Pink City in Shock

Editor's Note: This story was emailed to Orato.com by a friend and businessman who splits his time between Vancouver, Canada and Jaipur, India. He was in Jaipur when eight bombs tore through the city's cultural and religious center on Tuesday; here are his thoughts and observations.

The general consensus of people here is, 'Why Jaipur?' Everyone is in shock. Most reports say 70-80 people are confirmed dead, but that number is expected to rise. I read that the hospitals were so overburdened that they started taking people directly to burial sites instead of to hospitals. Seeing the pictures today was shocking. A film crew could never make a set that horrific. It became very real when I saw the images; a picture is worth a thousand words. Around 90 per cent of all the shops were closed today, from what I could see. The streets were as quiet as they can be in a city like this. Other parts of the city are on high alert and police presence is higher than normal. In some communities in the city, there are curfews. In terms of a positive, there were big lineups for people wanting to give blood. Many people in our office wanted to do so as well. Lineups were outside in 45 degree heat. This was definitely not a local dispute or retaliation. There are many people of different religions that co-exist peacefully in the Pink City around the blast areas; each of the sites were in strategic parts of the Pink City spread through out all parts within the walls. They were bombs with timers, attached to bicycles and cycle rickshaws and they all went off within a span of 12 minutes. Way too much precision and logistics went into this - Indians, especially Rajasthani's, are not organized nor do they have the resources to pull this off. It was well orchestrated. The police and some government officials are pointing the fingers at Pakistani terrorist groups without actually saying so. There is a long clash between the Muslims of Pakistan and the Hindu's of India over Kashmir. India is also in a boom and Pakistan's economy isn't doing anything. There have been previous attempts by people from Pakistan to slow down India's economic success. I don't know the difference between patriotism and nationalism, but whatever it is, Indians are extremes in both. I have never met a people that love their country so much. If you talk smack about anything to do with India, they will defend Mother India. They don't like to hear negative things said about it, so it's really hard for people to accept that this happened, and that it will likely happen again in a different city next time. It's very much the same kind of feeling we all had after the '94 Stanley Cup riots in Vancouver: that isn't suppose to happen in Vancouver. Same kind of thing in Jaipur, but to the 100th degree. They feel it's a major black eye. What were the people trying to achieve? The victims were mostly poor people, less educated. It doesn't make sense in terms of achieving something. Most of the victims were laborers who were sole providers for their families - now those families are in big trouble. The police will never figure this out; they don't have any real leads. They have arrested a few people, but nothing substantial. And even if they knew who did it, India would just point the finger and blame. This is a very big problem in India and the government isn't really doing anything about it. The country doesn't take a stance and protect it. This is part of the problem.

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