The secret of dealing with tragedy, it could well be argued, is to learn from it. That sounds great as platitudes go, but as travelers how can we learn from seemingly random aents such as yesterday's attacks on the Mumbai (Bombay) metropolitan rail network?
The first thing to learn is that it's probably a good idea to keep our heads and stay calm. It's useful, at times like this, to remember that Asia doesn't have the monopoly on random acts of violence: this week also witnessed a British man randomly killed while walking around the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
It's also very useful to remember that, terrifying though terrorist attacks by their nature are, our individual chances of being caught up in one, still less killed or serious wounded, are very small. Much less, for example, than being involved in a car accident. But we're all at least a little scared of terrorists while virtually none of us live our lives in mortal fear of automobiles. Looked at coldly, this is completely irrational: it makes far more sense to spend the time we take worrying about terrorism worrying about Our safety on the highways. But we don't - why?
If you're looking for a good book to take on vacation this summer, you could do a lot worse than the bestselling Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. It answers this question about rational and irrational fears and a lot of others besides - it's a short, immensely enjoyable and funny read that brings the tools of economics to bear on everyday life.
Anyway, Levitt and Dubner's answer to the "why we worry about terrorism but not about driving our cars" conundrum is a simple one: it's all about control. They point out that when we get behind the wheels of our cars we feel that because we (or someone close to us, if we are the passenger) are in control we have to less to fear, despite the frighteningly high rate of road deaths in the western world. On the other hand, terrorist bombs are something we cannot control - they are an objective danger we can do nothing about. If you're a traveler who likes going to unstable parts of the world, Freakonomics is an essential read.