maximum city, maximum heart

Some moving accounts of and reactions to the Mumbai train bombings, the first of which made me sort of emotional reading on the subway this morning. Subways are not made for emotion.

On India's indomitable spirit: India's Indestructible Heart.

Dilip D'Souza's beautiful, heartbreaking words on the aftermath at Salon

The first-class compartment in the middle of the train looks like someone buckled down to work on it with a blunt can opener. It's just twisted metal now, but I flinch on merely looking at it. Suketu Mehta wrote once, famously, of hands unfurling like petals from a packed Bombay train compartment, reaching out to whisk just that one more commuter onboard. From this train stopped and dark in Mahim, the metal of the train itself unfurls like grotesque petals.

I see no hands.

and also at Salon, New Yorker Manish Vij writes about why he loves riding the Mumbai trains.

(salon links via sepiamutiny)