My Thanksgiving break didn't start out this way. It started promisingly: My parents drove down from Toronto to pick me up, and I was free to respond to severe sleep deprivation by stretching out on the backseat and sinking into a nice comatose state. When my cell phone rang, I asked my father to answer it for me out of exhaustion.
It was my friend from high school, calling to ask if everyone in my family was safe (read: alive) back at home.
The remainder of the eight-hour ride home passed in relative silence. We alternated between straining to catch every word of the BBC newscast and switching it off when the tears started. I sat there tortured by persistent mental images of the people that I loved being faced with the barrel of a gun. And during the next few days, I cried a lot without even really knowing what I was most tormented by: the ringing sound of gunshots that, each time, left us wondering whether one more life had been lost - and whose? The teary, choked-up voice of a man I didn't even know telling a reporter that terrorists had murdered his son? The sight of shaken, fearful, frantic people waiting outside the hotels to identify the bodies that were brought out - along with a perverse, distant pride in the fact that almost nothing can disperse a Bombay crowd? Or perhaps, the chilling and agonizing proof that human beings can deliberately plan and execute such slaughter?
But one of the things that hurt me the most was the distance. It may sound melodramatic, but I hated being so far away from my home when it was under such vicious attack. I hated that instead of being in Bombay, witnessing the destruction with my own eyes and being a part of a collective sentiment of anguish and grief, I was staring at an unclear television screen, watching CNN in a crowded McDonald's rest stop somewhere in upstate New York. I suppose that it's part of the decision that we make as Indian students studying abroad to get an education at a place like Princeton. We take advantage of the resources, the teaching, the classes, the exposure ... but we have to deal with the extra heartbreak of feeling like we have no right to be safe and sound thousands of miles away while the city that we love is systematically brutalized.
But friends at Princeton reached across other distances to contact me. I expected Indians all around the world to share the tragedy with me, and they did. One of the most touching responses that I witnessed was the many Facebook statuses that defiantly proclaimed, "Bombay Meri Jaan": the title of a popular song that means, "Bombay my Beloved." But it didn't stop there. My roommates from New Jersey called to check if my family was OK. My Chinese friend from Malaysia posted on my Facebook wall saying that he hoped the attacks would end soon. Perhaps more movingly, my Pakistani friends e-mailed to see how I was doing. And, of course, the New Yorkers understood all too well what I was going through.
It is this kind of unity that infuriates terrorists. Terrorists were checking passports specifically to identify British and American civilians to take as hostages or to kill. Should we let them win by willingly dividing ourselves by nationality and by religion? By immediately lashing out against the entire Islamic religious community? Terrorists work to create divisions and fragmentations; they exult in our accusations against each other; they revel in our internal fighting that prevents us from presenting a united front against them. Two Australians dead; Six Americans; 177 Indians. It doesn't matter. What matters is that 195 people are now dead.
I hope that as a result of this tragedy, people will realize how important it is for us to come together to combat this dangerous extremism, to defend and protect one another from a common enemy. And I will keep hoping for it because the sight of the Taj Hotel - the place where I went to celebrate getting into Princeton - burning, the phone call that told my mother that our neighbor had been shot dead in the middle of his dinner, the frightened silence and the unnerving emptiness of the roads of "the city that never sleeps" - these would be all the more heartbreaking if nothing good came out of them.
Camille Framroze is a freshman from Bombay, India. She can be reached at framroze@princeton.edu.
Read More
Why can’t lecturers win the President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching?
Jerry ZhuLet’s acknowledge those who make “boutique teaching” possible, those who work tirelessly to make our rigorous curricula more accessible, and those who dedicate their time to advising and guiding us through all the challenges we face at this University. Lecturers should be eligible for the President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching.
Let’s acknowledge those who make “boutique teaching” possible, those who work tirelessly to make our rigorous curricula more accessible, and those who dedicate their time to advising and guiding us through all the challenges we face at this University. Lecturers should be eligible for the President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching.
Princeton’s administration of justice is Trumpian
Frances BroganThe disparity between the University’s approach to Giberson and its approach to pro-Palestinian protestors reflects a concerning trend of appeasing an increasingly emboldened right rather than resisting the threat it poses to academic freedom and the wellbeing of Princeton students.
Secular Opening Exercises? Don’t throw out the baby with the bath water
Frank StrasburgerThe secular makes no room for the spiritual. What Opening Exercises are meant to convey is the spirit of the institution so that it may be kept alive from generation to generation.
The secular makes no room for the spiritual. What Opening Exercises are meant to convey is the spirit of the institution so that it may be kept alive from generation to generation.
