The Mumbai nightmare is over. Or is it just beginning, as we grapple with the full extent of loss? In the coming days, the abstract horror of the spectacle we just witnessed will gave way to individual, heartbreaking stories. Terrorism has the curious effect of binding us, bringing us together in our collective trauma. Mumbai reflects India’s aspirations back to itself, in a magnifying mirror. And this time again, it revealed what common citizens are capable of. Even as our politicians were parsing and calculating for electoral effect, the rough gallantry of ordinary Indians offered a parallel story. When Hemant Karkare’s widow softly refused monetary recompense from Narendra Modi, she returned the attention to its rightful holders. The NSG commandos who put their lives on the line, conducted a superb operation, and dismissed a TV reporter’s gratitude with a brusque, almost embarrassed, “it was our duty”; the city police and firefighters who battled the unknown for days; the heroism of hotel staff who put others first; the crowds who gathered in silent solidarity with strangers — they stepped out of their ordinariness.

They were from all over the country, from far-apart backgrounds, who found themselves together in the furrow of destruction. And in that moment, they acted out of their best selves. The images of this tragedy are hard to forget — the policeman giving water to a bloodied child, the nanny who saved the two-year old son of the Jewish couple in Chabad House, the families thronging outside — we relate to them,

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