BreathlessAnt's Blog

After my first gut reaction… of calling up home (in a the north western suburb of Mumbai) to find out if my near and dear ones were home and/or accounted for, I remained glued to the TV over the next several hours… the shock, the horror, the fear, the pain, the tears - deep emotions came pouring out as I followed the developing story - spell bound… shock and fear pumping adrenaline into my system, keeping me up all night… this couldn’t be happening to my Mumbai… the daring shootouts… the blood and the gore … the dead and the injured…. the attacks were so well orchestrated… so many known and oft visited landmarks had been tartetted… VT station packed with humans at all times of the day and night… Leopold cafe - full of foreign tourists… the Taj palace hotel - much loved by foreigners and top businessmen… the Oberoi - another well frequented star hotel… even ordinary places like Cama hospital… news also of  bomb blasts in two cabs - at Vile Parle and at Masjid Bandar�… this modus operandi that did not fit in with the rest… it was difficult to even imagine that an attack of this magnitude could take place with such impunity in Mumbai!

During the course of that long night, we heard of the massacre of passengers at the VT concourse - poor wage earners waiting to leave for their home towns… of how three of our top cops wearing ‘bullet proof’  vests and helmets were mowed down… how were they snared and killed so easily?… of their vehicle being hijacked and used to shoot at people on the streets near Metro cinema… and… the moving visuals of the iconic old Taj palace hotel on fire… the dishoused pigeons fluttering about the dome, and weirdly enough trying to get back inside, into the fire… the relentless ratatat of fire power… intermittent loud blasts of hand grenades… unimaginable - a documentary film about a massacre in Beirut or the Gaza strip? … hey, this couldn’t be happening in amchi Mumbai… another stray thought - surely it wasn’t a bollywood ’shooting’ this time but a real attack happening in real time… beamed live into our homes… across the city.. the country… the world truly a global village now… frantic calls from relatives in the USA… an early morning tribal pow wow with close friends… keeping track of events and friends… each one of us shocked out of our very skins!

An important educational event was to take place at my centre in the following week… and there were scores of last minute things to do… planning, preparation, implementation… I couldn’t afford to sit at home - a mute audience to the mayhem over which I had no control… So I left for my office, a 10 min drive away, fully expecting to be the only person reporting to work in my department… but soon ALL the staff buses trundled in… and surprisingly they brought in a ’slightly less than normal’ load of humans - all shell shocked… dark rings around some eyes .. most, like me, had stayed up before the telly the previous night… others had slept through the night without learning about what was happening… until they got the morning newspapers… everyone carried these papers with their strident headlines with them to work… yet all had reported for work - the quintessential Mumbaikars whose credo is ‘whatever happens, life must go on and we must continue to work’!

During the day, we discussed the shocking happenings in muted voices as we worked - there were no TVs at work… but thank god for the Internet and intermittent calls from and to family - keeping track of the situation and each other…  around mid-day we heard of yet more shooting at VT station and everyone panicked - later we were told that it had just been a rumour… everyone let out a great big hoooshhhh of relief and thankfulness on hearing that the Military had been called in… all of us worked like robots even as our brains had gone into over drive… a welcome announcement came at 3.30 pm on the public address system at our centre… the staff buses would leave at 4 pm so that everyone could reach home safely, in daylight -  we rushed to wind up tasks in hand and headed back to the bosom of family and the safety of home!

We spent the next night too before the telly -  more details were now available about the attacks… I remember the shock and grief we all felt at the loss of brave young Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan’s life (yes, all of Mumbai grieved for him)… and of so many others… including many trainee chefs at the Taj… how could anyone explain such needless deaths away… Kismet?… over the next several hours came more updates… about the overpowering and killing of some terrorists… the freeing of the Oberoi… news that the Taj had been ‘cleansed’… followed by a quick rebuttal - a lone terrorist was still holed up there and was fighting back�…. disturbing scenes of recurring blasts and fires at the Taj… everyone was dazed at the extent of damage to this heritage structure so synonymous with Mumbai… the focus shifted later to Nariman House… a place very few people had even heard of before this… news about a young Rabbi and his family held hostage within… about the escape of a young child and his caretaker from the building… at day break, came shots of a helicopter hovering over this bastion… and descending to lower down black clad, masked commandos… more gunfire, blasts… talk of an end soon to this non-ending mayhem… while a life and death battle raged on inside!

Friday too was spent at the office, working mechanically-  several jobs got done and our list of ‘things to do’ got smaller, as we inched closer to our event… we also received updates from colleagues… Asst Sub Inspector Tukaram Omble of the Mumbai Police turned out to be a close acquaintance of Pandurang Padale from our workshop… the discussion that day centred around the sheer bravery of this cop who grasped the barrel of the AK47 pointed at him and hung on to it even after his body was riddled with bullets… it was this act that led to the capture of the sole surviving terrorist Kasab… we were all so proud of the bravery displayed by our Mumbai police (much reviled until this attack) in facing the terror attack… despite being so woefully ill prepared and absolutely no match for the ‘armed to their teeth’ terrorists… through their sheer bravery, they had regained their lost honour!

Everyone was shocked at how the details about the rescue operation by the commandos must surely also be seen by the terrorists inside on their TV sets… just as we could see it all happening before our eyes… there were genuine concerns about the possibility of escaped terrorists wandering about freely in Mumbai in police cars hijacked by them… about danger from the scores of locals who must have provided ground support and/or information…. for the second day in a row, our office closed at 4 pm and the buses took the staff back home… thankfully, being a Friday, it was also time for me to head out of Navi Mumbai back to my home in Mumbai… while I saw increased police presence on the streets as my car entered Mumbai, I didn’t encounter road blocks… nor did I see cars heading out of Mumbai being stopped or searched.

We were all ensconced before the telly that night and the next day and night - all the way through that weekend… the seemingly mad logic behind the attacks was clear now… as the method behind this sheer madness got slowly unravelled… the newspapers were full of information about the attack…. gory photographs of the mayhem�… stories about the martyrs… the survivors… added to all this was insider information about the plot… from the captured terrorist Kasab who was now singing… about the rubber dinghy…. the fishing boat Kuber.. the mother ship… once unfamiliar acronyms - ATS… NSG… MARCOs… everyone and their cat and dog knew these now… the situation had been brought under control… very sadly, all the hostages had been shot dead by their captors… systematically and in cold blood… those in Nariman House had been very systematically and sadistically tortured prior to death…  the news channels were still spewing out sound bytes… much respected news reporters were behaving like a crazed paparazzi�.. asking grieving relatives to speak about their feelings… one pointed to the glass shards littering the floor of the Taj as she screamed ‘look, there’s glass everywhere’!

We were all experiencing a surfeit of information.. sensory overload even through all this, what had brought some measure of self respect to us�…healing balm to our psyche… were the stories of the courage and coolness shown by the public address announcer and cops at VT station, the staff at the Taj, the firemen, countless Policemen and Commandos within the Armed Forces… tears ran down our faces unashamedly as we saw the ’straight from the heart’ adulation that the departing commandos got from south Mumbai residents - the politicians had been wise in staying underground - aside from the fact that they had no role to play, the ground swell of ire at their corrupt (mis) administration was so strong… had they been around, they would probably have been lynched… I wish Mr. Advani and Mr. Modi too had had the decency and sense to have stayed away from Mumbai… this was no time to make political mileage of a human tragedy… all major events in the city were cancelled… giving everyone enough time to grieve… even those of us who had not lost family or friends in this attack grieved… for those of our brethren who had.

In the week that has followed, most people seem to have retreated within their shell… life seems to have returned to normal - at the surface… just as we had continued to work through the days of the attack, we reported to our office and worked for our event… a full week after the Mumbai attack, this event passed off smoothly and soberly… one of the participating colleges had lost three of their hotel management students who had been working as trainees at the Taj… the faculty of this college sent us a very dignified apology for backing out of the event… having read about it in the papers, we understood… after all, their loss was our loss too!

But life goes on… the focus has now shifted… healing is the need of the hour… people’s groups have reached out to ordinary citizens.. asking them to participate in candlelight marches at the Gateway and at other places in Mumbai… in memory of those who have lost their lives… such gatherings have also been held across the country.. and elsewhere across the world… editorials, analyses, op-eds, blogs, e-mails, links, signature campaigns, petitions… many of us have thrown ourselves into reading, writing, commenting, reacting, responding to many of these.. there is a ground swell of people expressing their feelings, thoughts, hopes… that such acts of terrorism will not be allowed to happen again… that there will be greater alertness to prevent such acts and greater preparedness to react swiftly and firmly, if and when they recur… we all live in the hope that all of this will bring about a change in the attitude of the general public, administrators and implementers - the need of the hour is some affirmative action that will ensure that history will not repeat itself!

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