LONDON: Tanuja Shah has been glued to the BBC watching the Mumbai terror attacks for the last two days. She can’t understand why the authorities are taking so long to resolve the situation.
“For the last two nights we go to bed thinking that when we wake up it will all be over, but it is not. What is wrong with the Indian police why can’t they deal with this quickly,” asks the young mother of two, angrily.
The NRI population of Britain is rivetted by the events unfolding thousands of miles away, but in a land which is close to their heart. “My parents left India many years ago and though I have little family left there, I still identify myself as an Indian and an attack on Mumbai to me is like an attack on London,” said Samina Desai with tears in her eyes.
The phone lines between London and Mumbai were jammed on Wednesday when the news of the siege was first put out by the TV channels. People with family and friends in Mumbai were desperate to find out if their loved ones were safe. The concern is still there but it is slowly turning to anger at the authorities for not being able to deal with the situation quickly and allowing the ordeal to continue for so long.
“All my friends – Indian and English – have been ringing up expressing their concern and sorrow at what is happening in Mumbai. They know how it feels because we lived through our own 9/11 in July 2005 when the London transport system was targeted by extremists,” said Prakash Singh, a software engineer working for an American firm in London. But Indian origin Muslims are also worried about their families back home being the target of a backlash against the war on Mumbai.
