Gunmen take over the city of Mumbai…fire engulfs the iconic 100 year old Taj… explosions at the Oberoi…people trapped in hotels forced to jump from the windows… a numbing stand- off with the terrorists… gunmen shoot indiscriminately in the crowded VT train station…dead bodies and grieving relatives.

All these terrible images flash in the mind’s eye because we’ve seen them so often. For Indians across the Diaspora, the chilling images played time and again on their television sets, stories flashed across the Internet and incessant phone calls to loved ones in Mumbai. The news played out frame by frame on Twitter, with videos and images on Youtube and Flicker. Technology has caused distances to melt away and made disaster touchable, personal and vivid.
Four years later, the lone surviving terrorist has been hanged. Is there closure? It is a day of high alert and added security. It is also a day of sadness, memories.

For all those who sat horrified and heavy-hearted as the terrorist drama unfolded on television, watching firsthand the destruction of the iconic Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai, there is good news: you just can’t keep a good hotel down. The Taj is resilient – no doubt about it. This Independence Day, the 100 year old hotel is back in business with a beautifully restored wing.

There it stood in all its bright yellow glory, an icon of style, right in the Smithsonian’s Cooper Hewitt Museum of Design on Fifth Avenue! Yes, the Tata Nano is causing a buzz in Manhattan as museum goers circle it and peer at its many features, its cute shape and its various assets. There was a rope around it and no one was allowed to touch it, giving it even more of a celebrity status.

I’m always amazed by the passion India evokes in those who visit her. I’ve met people in New York elevators and on the streets whose eyes light up when they hear you are from India. All of them have love stories to relate, wonderful anecdotes about what the country means to them. In the wake of the Mumbai terror attacks, people everywhere have expressed their solidarity with the city and the country, showing their caring in many different ways.