On the evening of 2o September, a Saturday, the Marriot Hotel in Islamabad was blasted. A gaping crater, more than 30 feet deep, was created by a bomb of unimaginable power. The fallen bodies, the building's burning façade, will be etched into the minds of Southasians for a very long time. It will also act as a reminder of the unending – or, rather, escalating – miseries of Pakistan.
On the morning of 21 September, I found myself calling up the Marriot's website. I decided to try to book a room at a hotel that I knew was no more, together with the lives that were taken by the blast. The site asked me to choose the country and city, and then briefly responded, "The hotel in this location is unavailable on your dates. Try changing your travel dates." I did that but, of course, the response was the same.
It is always tragically disconcerting when an individual dies, with the e-mails remaining in the inbox, the addresses ready for use, the website or blog living on until someone acts to switch it off. We are living in times of such flux, and the revolution in electronic communication is still so relatively new, that it is only recently that this trend of departures has begun to hit me, for one.
In an earlier era, I had been reluctant to strike out names of the deceased from my tattered old address book. And so, today, these names remain long, long after the relations, friends, respected elders and others have passed on. The same, I find, is beginning to happen with e-mail messages and e-addresses.