Like many people around the world, I was glued to the TV last week watching the Mumbai terror attacks. My family was ready to eat Thanksgiving dinner and we delayed for about 15-20 minutes as we sat in silence watching the BBC reports from the Oberoi, Taj Majal hotel and other attacked areas in Mumbai.

I have never been in India, though I still have chills go through my body as I think about the attacks.

I had a strange suspicion that S., one of my three local friends with family in Mumbai, had lost a family member or close friend. Today, my hunch was confirmed. In fact some members of my friend’s extended family were murdered at the Oberoi last week.

What makes this even more bizarre and eerie is that I was supposed to go to Mumbai seven years ago for S’s wedding, but I got an email from her a few hours before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States that her wedding was canceled.

Though I lived in New York several years after 9.11, I never met anyone who told me about a friend or relative killed in the attacks. But of the three people I know from Mumbai, one was touched. And so was I.