A Mumbai Massacre survivor solves the mystery around the number 33, transcends bitterness and starts The Peace Dragon Organization 

by Kwami Nyamidie

When she was sixteen, Linda Ragsdale had a dream. She didn’t remember the whole dream but the number 33 stuck in her mind. Linda knew it was a significant number. She interpreted it to mean that she might die the year she turned 33 or before. 

Linda set out to live a full and rich life on a fast track.  Although an American, Linda was born in Mexico. Her father worked there for a chemical company. When the family moved to Chicago, Linda studied Art and landed a job with a large music distributing company.

She later moved to Burbank, California. She worked in the merchandise department designing products for a video company. After few years in corporate life, Linda left and started her own company. Along the way, she got married and had three children. Linda enjoyed life and watched her 33rd birthday come – and go.  The significance of the number faded for her.

In fall 2008, Linda told her children that she planned to go on a meditation retreat in Mumbai, India. This was the first time Linda would be away from her husband and children during Thanksgiving. The entire family was happy for Linda, except Nik, her oldest child.

“Mom, I know you really want to see the world,” Nik, then 20, told his mother.  “I know that you really want to do this.  But there’s something wrong with this.”

Linda didn’t feel afraid. Her excitement overpowered any other thoughts. Linda, a former Girls’ Scout Leader, and Naomi Scherr, the 13-year-old girl who came with her father, Alan Scherr, for the same retreat, took several of the afternoons to visit paper stores, paint fingernails and chat.  Linda’s youngest daughter was the same age as Naomi.

They made plans for what they were going to do together on the Friday after Thanksgiving: break their somersault pool record and paint Mendhi designs on their feet. Naomi asked Linda, an illustrator of children books, to teach her how to draw dragons.  On the Tuesday night before Thanksgiving, Nik, had a nightmare. Nik saw his mother coming home in a wheelchair. 

“Please call me. I had a really weird nightmare.   I need to speak to you when you receive this,” a worried son wrote her mother in an e-mail message. And he added in capital letters: “PLEASE COME HOME SAFELY.”

Nik sent his email two hours before ten terrorists attacked several strategic locations in India’s commercial capital on Wednesday, November 26.

Two gunmen raided the Tiffin restaurant and killed Naomi and her father Alan.  The Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus, Leopold Café, the Taj Mahal, Oberoi Trident, and Nariman House, all magnets for Western tourists, were attacked. About 200 people were massacred. More than three hundred people were wounded. Linda was one of the survivors with a two and a half foot machine gun bullet path down her back.

Linda’s husband, Ben, had been informed about his wife’s condition. He was waiting for Diane Garrison, his sister-in-law, to come help him tell the children.  But the media got in touch with the boys before their father told them. 

Linda woke up in an intensive care room in a hospital in India. She was surrounded by loving nurses and doctors who saved her life. It was there the mystery of the number 33 was finally solved. “When I woke up in the hospital in India, my room number was 33,” Linda said. 

Linda came back home safely in a wheelchair, just as Nik saw.  A long healing process began. Writing poetry helped Linda heal. One of the poems Linda wrote was titled “My India.” In it, she described her love for India, for its people, culture, and history. No tinge of bitterness is expressed in this angelic poem.

In November of 2010, Linda Ragsdale and Kia Scherr, Naomi’s mother and president of the One Life Alliance, were among the friends and survivors of the Mumbai massacre meeting in Mumbai to celebrate the second year anniversary of the infamous event. They wish to inspire response to the peace initiatives they’ve started to honor the deaths of their loved ones and the pain of the surviving victims.

To keep her promise to teach Naomi how to draw dragons, Linda has started The Peace Dragon organization. As the arts helped her heal, she hopes the arts can do the same for our future generations.  In India, the first student art exchange will take place, where five hundred students from each country will meet one another through an exchange of their dragon art.

Linda is actively appearing in schools all over America to join her in bringing peace to the world. She is inviting students and adults to understand our fiery and peaceful dragon natures, but to learn how to choose love and peace as the first answer to conflict.

Kia Scherr and Master Charles Cannon have launched the India arm of the One Life Alliance at the Oberoi Trident Hotel in Mumbai. The mission of the One Alliance “is to inspire and encourage the conversation about oneness and the sacredness of life. It's not about what you can do; it's about who you can be.”

At Room 33 where Linda Ragsdale’s life was saved, she found her name had been changed, and translated, meant “one who casts light.”  Mumbai has given Linda a mission: To bring the Light to the world. Linda invites you to be a light bearer with her.

The Peace Dragon Project: www.thepeacedragon.com/
The official website of Linda Ragsdale: www.lindaragsdale.com/
One Life Alliance www.onelifealliance.org/

Kwami E Nyamidie is a spiritual director and author of Ready for your love and other poems. He can be reached at 206-407-8980 or at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it