While most students spent Thanksgiving break eating turkey and pumpkin pie, a small group of students from the Mumbai, India, area spent the break in front of their TVs and computers, praying their loved ones at home were OK after a terrorist attack engulfed the city.
    The attacks lasted from Nov. 26-28 for 60 hours and were centered around two luxury hotels, one of the busiest railway stations in India and other landmarks in an affluent section of Mumbai, a city that boasts Bollywood - India's Hollywood - and the largest financial institutions in India. One student described the city, which has close to 17 million people and also is formerly known as Bombay, as a combination of New York and Los Angeles.
    As of Tuesday, the death toll after the coordinated attacks reached close to 200 people, including tourists from all over the world. So far, the signs point to a group of militants trained in Pakistan as the attackers, but the Pakistani government has pledged to offer assistance in India's investigation into who is responsible.

Student perspectives
    Four of the more than 200 Indian students in the Indian Student Association at K-State are from Mumbai.
    A few of those who died in Mumbai went to school with Pinakin Sukhtankar, graduate student in biochemistry. Sukhtankar, who grew up about 10 minutes from where the attacks were centered, said he frequented the two hotels - the Taj Mahal Hotel and the Oberoi-Trident Hotel - often.
    "I have not really been able to make personal contact with the families of the friends I've lost or of [my former doctor], but I'm sure there is a lot of anger in the city right now," Sukhtankar said. "... This is not the first time we have had a terrorist attack in Bombay."
    Sheelu Verghese, doctoral student in chemistry, said her father works at the Oberoi-Trident Hotel and was scheduled to work that night, but he decided to leave work early. Many of the people he worked with were killed in the attacks.
    "For three days, I was really not well," Verghese said. "And then finally, my dad said everything was back to normal, and he was going back to work. But still, there was kind of a fear in me, and I was telling him, ‘Please, don't go to work. Quit the job and sit at home.' But he said, ‘No, you can't do that.'"
    Another student from Mumbai, Shweta Gopalakrishnan, graduate student in biochemistry, said she had a German class near where the attacks took place and went to the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus to take the subway home. The attacks took place there at the exact time she used to travel the subway.
    Gopalakrishnan and Verghese are roommates and planned to go shopping and celebrate the break, but after the attacks, Gopalakrishnan said she halted the plans.
    "The only thing I could do [was] pray for the safety of my family and friends and anybody else back in Mumbai and in India in general," Gopalakrishnan said.
    Rohit Kamat, doctoral student in biochemistry, said he at first thought nothing of the attacks since they have become so common in Mumbai, but after watching some of the news, he became outraged.
    "I know that this is a never-ending phenomenon, but still, how many more attacks does the government want so that it finally says, ‘Please stop now. We will protect you'?" Kamat said.

What does it mean for India?
    Surya Kallumadi, graduate student in computer science, said the attacks were meant to destroy the ideals of democracy in India.
    "Basically they wanted to attack the values we stand for — attack things like democracy and pluralism," said Kallumadi, who is from India but not Mumbai.
    India is the only functioning democracy in south Asia and is located between two nuclear powers — China and Pakistan.
    The frustration with the string of attacks on Mumbai and the country's inability to end terrorism is enough to worry Kamat.
    "People are tired of this; they are absolutely frustrated with it," Kamat said. "I just hope that a dictatorship doesn't set in because of this, because people are just tired of this."
    Sukhtankar was less worried and said most Indians know that democracy is the best option.
    "In a country with 26 official languages and so many different people, democracy is the only thing that can keep the country together, and it will," he said.
    Kallumadi also had hope for the future of Indian democracy and said India "will grow a political will to stop these terrorist attacks and also force Pakistan to give up terrorism."
    But Sukhtankar said India needs to worry about fixing its own problems before pressuring Pakistan.
    "The first thing we need to do is mop up our own house, clean our own establishment and then go and start pointing fingers at others," he said.
    Sukhtankar said the biggest problem within India is the different sets of regulations for different groups of people based on religion — specifically Muslims — and on class status within the caste system.
    He said democracy is still young — it has been in place in India for about 60 years — and the country faces a large disparity in wealth as well as other social issues, but he said it needs more time for a majority of people to accept the system.