India is a very safe place when compared to our home in the USA. Your risk of getting killed in a car accident is very low (speed limit in Delhi is about 30 MPH, but you never get going that fast), there's very little violent crime and these shooting sprees we hear about are unheard of.
No matter where you are, it is possible to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.
So if you are thinking of coming, don't worry. You'll be fine.
On to the story:
On our way to a marriage in South India last weekend we had a stopover in Hydrabad. As often happens, there were lots of delays.
The plane was an hour late. A friend of a church member was supposed to meet us there, but it took a while for him to show up. Then once he came, we had to arrange for a car, but we had to bargain forever and finally the car took an hour to show up. It was well over 100 degrees and by the time we actually got in the car we were not thinking our vacation was going very well.
In the little guide of the city that we picked up the "must see" place to go, the very symbol of Hydrabad is a spot called the Charminar.
So once we piled in the car and got going, we told the driver we wanted to go there. He stopped the car, put on the hand brake, turned around and looking right at us said, "No no. We cannot go to the Charminar."
"Why?"
"There was a bombing."
"A bombing? When did that happen?", we asked, thinking it must have been a few days back.
"About twenty minutes ago."
Extremists had set off a bomb that killed twelve people and injured 40. In the riots that followed five more were shot by the police and many more were hurt. One of the other members who was on his way to our wedding was hit by a thrown rock.
We were suprisingly calm about the whole thing (especially given how rare these kinds of things are here) and just went to some places around the train station.
It took us until the next day for our close call to really sink in. If everything would have gone "right", the plane on time, our car on time, the person meeting us being prompt, we would have been at the Charminar when the bomb went off and who knows what would have happened.
Needless to say, we feel very blessed.
There are many possible morals to this story, but here's the one that we walked away with:
Among the blessings we count are the things that have gone wrong. The alternatives to the bad things that happen to us could be much worse...
1 comment:
Wow, Merinda, what a scary story. Very glad that things kept going "wrong" for you guys.
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