Yet

We're told that one of these hotels is an icon of the city of Mumbai. That's absolutely true. It's an icon of the easy, obscene injustice that ordinary Indians endure every day. On a day when the newspapers were full of moving obituaries by beautiful people about the hotel rooms they had stayed in, the gourmet restaurants they loved (ironically one was called Kandahar), and the staff who served them, a small box on the top left-hand corner in the inner pages of a national newspaper (sponsored by a pizza company, I think) said, "Hungry, kya?" ("Hungry eh?"). It, then, with the best of intentions I'm sure, informed its readers that, on the international hunger index, India ranked below Sudan and Somalia.

But of course this isn't that war. That one's still being fought in the Dalit bastis (settlements) of our villages; on the banks of the Narmada and the Koel Karo rivers; in the rubber estate in Chengara; in the villages of Nandigram, Singur, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa, Lalgarh in West Bengal; and the slums and shantytowns of our gigantic cities.

That war isn't on TV. Yet.

So maybe, like everyone else, we should deal with the one that is.

Um excelente artigo de Arundhati Roy, publicado no Asia Times, sobre os atentados terroristas de Mumbai, o terrorismo em geral e sobre a importância que tem pôr as situações em contexto - sim, mesmo o terrorismo. Desde que conheci Roy ao ano passado, quando li sobre o combate de tribos indianas aos projectos de barragens megalómanas, que a tenho como referência intelectual. Poucas pessoas escrevem tão bem sobre o mundo como ela. Sobre a Índia, que eu conheça, mais nenhuma - mas ainda não li os retratos devastadores do Naipul.

A fotografia é dedicada ao meu excelso amigo Luís Pedro. Podes pô-la ao lado da da Zadie Smith no teu panteão.