Mumbai on the minds of Indians in region

For Indians living in the Philadelphia area, the attacks on Mumbai landmarks are much more than confusing chaos in a far-off land.

Since Wednesday, many Indians here have been trying urgently to reach family and friends inside India, monitoring Indian-news Web sites, and praying for signs of life from loved ones, usually as text messages or e-mail because the overburdened telephone systems in Mumbai have crashed.

For Munish Narula, 37, who was born in New Delhi and came to the United States for college in 1992, broadcast images of the carnage at two Mumbai hotels, two hospitals, a Jewish community center, and the city's main railway station stirred deep concern for his classmates at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania who returned to the city of 18 million to work in its thriving financial sector.

"At first I couldn't get through to anyone," said Narula, owner of Tiffin, an Indian restaurant on West Girard Avenue in Northern Liberties. "Thankfully, there was SMS," he said of the texts that eventually reassured him that his friends and several cousins in Mumbai were safe.

For Narula, who stayed at the Marriott Hotel near the World Trade Center in New York on the morning of the 9/11 attacks, this latest spasm of violence stirs flashbacks.

"Every time something like this happens anywhere in the world, it hits too close to home," he said.

Tom Chennat, who came here from Kerala State in southern India more than three decades ago, lives in Exton and has been active in local Indian organizations. Of about 2.5 million Asian Indians living in the United States as citizens or permanent legal residents, he said, about 55,000 live in Southeastern Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey.

"They are mostly concentrated in technology, health care, and many small businesses," he said, and while they hail from all over India, in a crisis, as "in this case, we are all Mumbains."

Philadelphia real estate developer Gagan Lakhmna, 37, was born in New Delhi, moved to America in 1993, and received a master's degree in finance and marketing from Drexel University. His company, CREI - Creating Real Estate Innovations - has developed medium-rise apartment buildings in Old City and other parts of Philadelphia.

His cousin Monica Lakhmna works in management in Mumbai for the corporation that owns the Taj Mahal hotel, one of the luxury hotels that gunmen attacked using automatic rifles and hand grenades. She lives just three minutes from the seaside hotel.

While Lakhmna keeps an eye on Web sites and newscasts, he said, "my basic information is coming from my parents in Chandigarh," about 150 miles north of New Delhi. His parents managed to get through to his cousin, he said, and relayed word to him that she is fine.

"I think it's an overstatement to call it the '9/11 of India,' " Lakhmna said, "but the government of India needs to beef up security and rely more on intelligence" ahead of problems, "rather than SWAT teams" after attacks.

"India is isolated in terms of being the largest democracy and surrounded on one side with the hotbed of mujaheddin action" on its border with Pakistan. "This is an attempt to destabilize the country," he said.

Samachar.com, one of the Web sites that Indian immigrants are monitoring closely, reported yesterday, under the standing headline "Mumbai Mayhem," that locations attacked by the gunmen were preferred hangouts of foreign tourists.

Witnesses said that gunmen wearing backpacks tossed grenades into crowded venues, then used AK-47s to mow down anyone who moved.