‘Don’t want folks back home to worry, but can’t lie either’

Bhubaneswar: Night after night, Odia families in Bahrain are learning a new routine: keep phones charged, track alerts and scan the sky for the next flash.

The West Asia turmoil, fuelled by the Israel-Iran war, pushed fear into ordinary apartments where Odia people built lives around steady jobs and remittances. Now, as Iranian missiles fall in and around Bahrain, the sense of safety is missing.


For Santanu Panigrahi, 50, an Odia professional working in Bahrain, the danger stopped being a headline the moment the sky outside his window erupted. A missile strike hit a UAE naval airbase near his neighbourhood, close enough for him to see the explosions. “From my window, I watched the blasts light up the sky. The sound was so loud it felt like it hit the building,” Panigrahi said.

The local govt’s advisory to work from home offered little comfort. Offices may have shifted online but the anxiety stayed physical: the thud of distant impacts, the wail of sirens, the sudden hush that follows a strike as people check messages and count family members. “You try to act normal but every few minutes, you’re listening. We were asked by the govt to download an application that helps us get an alert sound before missile strikes,” he said.

On the day the bombardment felt relentless, Panigrahi opened his home to others. A friend’s family, living even closer to the targeted base, arrived shaken and carrying only essentials. “They were scared to stay there. So they came to stay at my place,” he said.

Across Bahrain, Odia workers speak softly about contingency plans: which room has fewer windows, which route avoids sensitive sites, how to reach the Indian embassy if networks fail. Parents keep children indoors; roommates sleep in shifts; some avoid evening errands altogether. The fear is not only of a direct hit but of being trapped in a conflict they cannot influence.

For many, the hardest part is the uncertainty. “You keep thinking about your family back in Odisha,” Panigrahi said. “You don’t want them to worry but you also don’t want to lie.”Get the latest lifestyle updates on Times of India, along with Holi wishes, messages and quotes !