What could one buy with $1 billion? Maybe a few dozen cars, a mansion, a beach house, a professional sports team like the Warriors (which recently sold for $450 million) and the luxury of early retirement. Or how about a 27-story house complete with 600 servants?

Ask sophomore Neal Siganporia what happened over the summer, and he’ll tell you about his experience riding through a traffic jam on an elephant. You might think he’s bluffing, but Siganporia was one of several Saratoga High students who took advantage of exciting and educational travel opportunities this summer.

My mom and grandmother flank me; my sister is half sitting, half lying down on top of us. We sit squeezed into two back seats of a car half the size of a normal sedan breathing the same sweltering, humid, stuffy pollution blowing through the open windows. The driver and my grandfather in front have the same leg space as we do: none.

The car swerves around a buffalo being milked, hits a pothole, stopping in the middle of the intersection barely missing a horse carriage, pedestrians, and cycle rickshaws crossing in front of us. Everyone bounces up an inch, bumps into the roof, and lands back into the dog pile. The deafening cacophony of honks around us only grows louder. No one is wearing seatbelts, but everything we are doing is legal. Well… welcome to India.

The recent Mumbai bombings have brought long-harbored feelings of animosity between India and Pakistan back into the spotlight, compounding the fear of another clash between the two nuclear powers.

The attack, which occurred on Nov. 26, consisted of Islamic terrorists bombing and raiding several different locations around the city, killing, according to the New York Times, nearly 200 individuals, wounding roughly 300 and taking a number of hostages. The attack was performed with devastating efficiency and spanned nearly two days until Indian authorities managed to regain control of Mumbai. The testimony of captive Azam Amir Oasab confirmed conjecture that the attackers were trained by a Pakistani militant group originally formed by Pakistan’s spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, to fight Indian influence in the Kashmir region.

The mere fact that such a large-scale act of terrorism was successfully carried out on Indian soil and unable to be stopped, or at least inhibited, by the Pakistani government is unconscionable. But Pakistan’s refusal to hand over suspected members of the Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorist organization allegedly responsible for the attack when the country itself claims to have detained at least 15 members of the organization reeks of ulterior motives on the part of Pakistan.