Dear Mom(s)

Dear Mom(s),

We are safe and sound, don't worry. That said, the men with the guns say that if they do not receive the money by Jan 5th we may find ourselves in a more desperate position.

Ha, ha. Just joking. All the men with guns we have met -- including the ones in the sandbag machine gun turret outside the Chennai Central Train Station -- have been very nice and helpful. As a fellow passenger said, "They are the good guys."

Which is to say, they aren't targeting us.

All that aside, we read in the morning paper that there were riots in Kolkata yesterday over the new 2-stroke auto ban. And Victorie tells me that the strikes in Siliguri/Darjeeling have indeed turned violent, as we were warned. Not that any of this would have affected us (except to possibly delay travel). Nov. 26th aside, all the internal violence and strife has been just that -- internal. And, including Nov. 26th, it has all remained safely on our heels. People remain incredibly welcoming and happy to see us wherever we go.

Suspicion: it only seems dangerous because it's (a) foreign and (b) reported. Compare this with the homocide rate in the US and I think you'll find India to be much safer. Even with a cranky, corrupt, unstable, nuclear-armed neighbor.

Another interested tidbit from the newspaper this morning regarding Nov 26th. A man staying at a guru's compound near one of the attacked hotels had apparently stepped out into the street when the commotion broke out that night. He looked up and saw a man on a balcony.

"What are you doing up there?" he called out. "Come down!"

The man turned with his automatic weapon and said something sinister -- "Come closer, mister," or something to that effect. Seeing the weapon the guru-man high tailed it out of there as a grenade exploded where he had been standing. The police later had him identify the body when the terrorist was killed.

Guru-man's thoughts on the matter: "Now I know what is meant when they say, 'you will not die until it is your time to die.'"

In the meantime we do our best with the time we have. (And keeping an ear to the ground helps too.)