God give us strength

10:30PM: Most of my colleagues in the US were out for Christmas and New Year and consequently my teleconference wound up at 10:30PM, a good 1.5 hours ahead of schedule. I was reflecting on this sudden piece of good luck and preparing for a quick drive home as the first calls started coming in.
...Where are you...how are things there...take care of yourself...is tata institute nearby?...
Quick trip to Google News revealed that there has been a shootout in the IISc at 7:30PM in the evening on the attendees of an international conference. A Professor Puri has been killed and Profs Vijay Chandru and Venkatesh, amongst others, were being operated upon.
A quick call to a colleague, who's an IISc alumnus, revealed that Prof Chandru is a highly respected faculty in the Computer Science and Automation department. This
Later at home Star News showed that Prof Puri had gone to attend an international conference on Operations research. Googling again revealed the conference website <http://www.mgmt.iisc.ernet.in/~orsibc/> and schedule <http://www.mgmt.iisc.ernet.in/~orsibc/icoraid-schedule.pdf>. After a look at the schedule for today - 28th Dec, it seems the Prof's were going for their dinner after the invited talks by Dr's Sarin, Sohoni and Rao would have ended.
Star News also mentioned that Prof Puri was a retired faculty of the Mathematics department at IIT Delhi.
As questions float on why would a group of academics attending an OR conference be targeted, the fact remains that we need to strengthen ourselves against terror and never, never compromise by swapping prisoners or negotiate with terror groups.
Star News says that the relatives of Prof Puri are coming to Bangalore early in the morning. I pray that they find the strength to cope with this crisis. As also the others fighting for their lives in the hospital.