Our hearts and thoughts go out to the victims of the horrible events that transpired in Mumbai, India over the holiday weekend. We really don’t know what to say. Such a terrible tragedy and we should all pray that it does not escalate into an even greater conflict of war between India and Pakistan.
Coincidentally, yoga titan Bikram Choudhury was in India last week, holding one of his events at (new business partner) JW Marriott, when the terrorists struck. With major, especially Western, hotels being targeted Bikram and guests were instructed to evacuate and ended up crashing at the home of generous Bappi Lahiri, famed Bollywood music director. Later we found out the JW Marriott was cited as the location of a terrorist shootout, which makes the escape that much more poignant. And one of the guests? The Terminator! Well Roland Kickinger the Austrian hulk who plays T-800 in the new Terminator Salvation movie coming out in 2009.
Bikram recounts the event:
“Half an hour into the event and we got the news that Mumbai has been attacked by terrorists. Gulshan informed me about this news. We also got to know that big hotels in Mumbai were prime targets. We had to cut short our event and we packed up. We were told to leave JW immediately but when we left, we heard that there was a blast in front of Sahara Star, where we were lodged. So we couldn’t go back to our hotel either.
Where could we have gone? Bappi Lahiri came to our rescue and took us to his place. But strangely Roland was all cool. When we were panicking and did not sleep at all, he (Roland) managed to get a good night’s sleep.”
Of course! He’s the Terminator! But even he hopped a plane out of there.
“We could not risk keeping him and other foreigners in the city after we heard that the terrorists were asking people who were from US and UK and then shooting them dead. There were also reports that some terrorists were at large in the city,” said Bikram.
With all our clowning around we’re glad Bikram and his guests are safe. But we expected the Don to, you know, take care of his people.
Too Much for the Terminator [DNA India]
links: Map of terrorist attacks Nov 26, 2008
