Where do the children play?

Every thing's as usual. I'm sitting in office freezing and cursing the AC vent, as usual. The Killers are crooning through my headphones as I tap away at my keyboard, very much as usual. When the day is done, I will feel the usual gladness as I shut down my laptop. I will feel my ears popping as I go down 41 floors in the elevator, as usual. I will walk past swanky shoe and dress shops all advertising christmas sales, on my way to the MRT, quite as usual. I will stare blankly at my reflection on the platform doors at the station waiting for the train and then I will fight my way into the train and nod to the music on my headphones as I head on home- All very very usual. My life is going on as usual and nothing seems different. 

Yet something is. Different. I can feel it.

I can feel it every time I call home- In the insecurity in my mom's voice, in everything she tells me and even more in everything that she doesn't. I feel it every time google desktop pops up a news article on Bombay, that it thinks I may be interested in, and it always tells repeatedly of the carnage that happened. I feel it in the way voices become solemn and thoughtful anytime friendly conversation veers towards the B-word. There is something different and in a wrong way. Different about Bombay, different about me.

There is so much I should want to say, so much I should want to shout out, but I can't. Some part of me has stopped feeling, stopped caring. I look at the whole thing with a shrug. I have given up- on Bombay, on India, on any othr part of this world. I am giving up on ever feeling secure anywhere again. I am doing what Bombay-ites have been so praised for doing. I am walking on. And I'm not proud of it.