On Saturday, I woke up to news of the terrorist attacks in Paris. Several gunmen, I read, had indiscriminately killed at least 127 people at several locations across the city. One of the venues, the Bataclan theatre where an American band was playing to a large audience, had been sprayed with gunfire and the survivors held hostage for hours.
Reading about the Paris attacks jolted me back in time seven years ago, to contemplate the unsettling similarities with the Mumbai attacks of November 26, 2008. Then too, multiple sites had been targeted simultaneously, including the Chhatrapati Shivaji railway terminus and the Oberoi hotel. But the site I was most familiar with was the Taj Mahal hotel. Just like the storming of the Bataclan theatre in Paris, terrorists entered the Taj with the sole intent of killing its occupants.
That evening, I’d taken my mother with me to the hotel to attend a schoolmate’s wedding reception. I had been uncharacteristically ahead of schedule, entering the lobby around 15 minutes before the terrorists barged in. My hankering for a cocktail led me on upstairs to the banquet bar just as the staff were setting up. As the next few minutes wore on and a few guests populated the hall, the sound of what could plausibly be firecrackers made everyone curious ‒ until the shattering of glass panels right above the bar left no room for speculation. It was live ammunition and there were gunmen outside the door.
Suddenly, we were potential targets. We responded by sheltering under flimsy tables before the brave and diligent hotel staff escorted us to the Chambers, a members-only floor in the hotel’s newer wing.
The awful truth
In the initial hours, I couldn’t quite bring myself to terms with how I’d landed myself in this predicament. It just didn’t seem conceivable that I could become one of those statistics people would read about the next day’s newspapers. Yet, that seemed entirely plausible as gunmen roamed through the hotel, scoping it out for more victims.
It got even more real when an attempted evacuation led by some members of the staff went tragically wrong. Just as the first wave of guests exited the Chambers, a wall of gunfire dispersed us. The blast of bullets rang loud in my ears as I stood in the corridor, frozen and disbelieving. When I saw Taj staffers lead my mother into one of the small meeting rooms, I instinctively followed. Others with us lifted a maintenance manager, Rajan Kamble, into the relative safety of the room. He had been in shot in the stomach, shielding guests as he tried to get them out.
The Mangishkars, parents of my friends and both doctors, did the best they could to stop Kamble’s bleeding out while we watched in the dark silence, lights and mobile phones switched off so as to conceal our position. Kamble was sprawled out on a sofa, biting his left hand to keep from screaming while blood slowly seeped out from his belly. My mother sat on a chair facing the door. She looked like she was praying. I began to think we weren’t going to make it.
As time seemed to drag on endlessly, there was gunfire again, right outside the door. That’s when I was most afraid, waiting for my turn to become be counted among the toll. A rumour leaked into the room through a text message that the Maharashtra chief minister had called off the operation because all survivors had been thought to be rescued.
Waiting for death
I felt that the only way I could cope with the situation was to abandon hope and bring myself to terms with the reality of imminent death. I decided to calm myself before the inevitable. In hindsight, this deliberate decimation of hope was the most painful passage of time I endured in the dozen hours I was in the Taj. For five hours, I was gripped by a desperate sadness.
Dawn broke, but the morning didn’t feel like like a new beginning. It meant nothing more than an infusion of light through ornately chiselled cement fencing. The situation only changed decisively when heavy knocks on the doors accompanied by voices claiming to be commandos and staff members made us all believe in the second chance. It had been 12 hours.
Exiting the room after Kamble has been evacuated on a stretcher, I saw the corridor flooded heel-deep in spent bullets and air thick with gunpowder that made tear up, even if emotion didn’t. One of the commandos took it upon himself to clear the glass shard riddled path for my mother who had lost her shoes in the chaos and refused to take mine because she said she hated them.
But our renewed sense of security was beaten back badly on the landing when gunfire from above sent the policemen escorting us scrambling for cover. However, we were held together by the Taj staff, who formed a human chain around us, shielding us from bullets and the urge to stampede.
Coming home
A pointless hour at the Azad Maidan police station and a lucky taxi ride later, I was home. (The police refused to provide transport to the survivors, let alone having doctors or counsellors on hand to attend to survivors). The phone calls didn’t cease for a day. The several voices ranged between concern, relief and voyeuristic curiosity.
On Saturday morning, as I tried ‒ and failed ‒ to absorb the horror of the Paris attacks, my foggy memory jogged lose one nugget.
That morning on November 27, 2008, when I recharged my phone and browsed through my messages, there was one text from an acquaintance who wrote that he read my quotes in the Times of India and was glad I was alive. I had spoken to journalists the night before, but when he sent the text at around 8 am the next day, when I was still in the Chambers room, certain that I wouldn’t make it.
That one text drove home the terrifying notion of the long drawn terrorist attack propelled by ceaseless news broadcasts and social media streaming. That this new template, field-tested in Mumbai, allowed terrorists to effortlessly dominate the media and forced the world to witness the fate of those trapped in these protracted attacks. This, the terrorists presumably believe, bleeds deeper into international consciousness than a single suicidal explosion could ever do.
Many more people were killed by the bomb Islamic State claims to have planted on a Russian airliner that crashed minutes after leaving an Egyptian resort on November 2 than in Paris on Friday night. But we will all remember Mumbai 2008, Westgate 2013, Tunisia and Paris 2015.
I fear that I will revisit my experience of surviving the Mumbai attack more often, on more such bloody dawns.
Reading about the Paris attacks jolted me back in time seven years ago, to contemplate the unsettling similarities with the Mumbai attacks of November 26, 2008. Then too, multiple sites had been targeted simultaneously, including the Chhatrapati Shivaji railway terminus and the Oberoi hotel. But the site I was most familiar with was the Taj Mahal hotel. Just like the storming of the Bataclan theatre in Paris, terrorists entered the Taj with the sole intent of killing its occupants.
That evening, I’d taken my mother with me to the hotel to attend a schoolmate’s wedding reception. I had been uncharacteristically ahead of schedule, entering the lobby around 15 minutes before the terrorists barged in. My hankering for a cocktail led me on upstairs to the banquet bar just as the staff were setting up. As the next few minutes wore on and a few guests populated the hall, the sound of what could plausibly be firecrackers made everyone curious ‒ until the shattering of glass panels right above the bar left no room for speculation. It was live ammunition and there were gunmen outside the door.
Suddenly, we were potential targets. We responded by sheltering under flimsy tables before the brave and diligent hotel staff escorted us to the Chambers, a members-only floor in the hotel’s newer wing.
The awful truth
In the initial hours, I couldn’t quite bring myself to terms with how I’d landed myself in this predicament. It just didn’t seem conceivable that I could become one of those statistics people would read about the next day’s newspapers. Yet, that seemed entirely plausible as gunmen roamed through the hotel, scoping it out for more victims.
It got even more real when an attempted evacuation led by some members of the staff went tragically wrong. Just as the first wave of guests exited the Chambers, a wall of gunfire dispersed us. The blast of bullets rang loud in my ears as I stood in the corridor, frozen and disbelieving. When I saw Taj staffers lead my mother into one of the small meeting rooms, I instinctively followed. Others with us lifted a maintenance manager, Rajan Kamble, into the relative safety of the room. He had been in shot in the stomach, shielding guests as he tried to get them out.
The Mangishkars, parents of my friends and both doctors, did the best they could to stop Kamble’s bleeding out while we watched in the dark silence, lights and mobile phones switched off so as to conceal our position. Kamble was sprawled out on a sofa, biting his left hand to keep from screaming while blood slowly seeped out from his belly. My mother sat on a chair facing the door. She looked like she was praying. I began to think we weren’t going to make it.
As time seemed to drag on endlessly, there was gunfire again, right outside the door. That’s when I was most afraid, waiting for my turn to become be counted among the toll. A rumour leaked into the room through a text message that the Maharashtra chief minister had called off the operation because all survivors had been thought to be rescued.
Waiting for death
I felt that the only way I could cope with the situation was to abandon hope and bring myself to terms with the reality of imminent death. I decided to calm myself before the inevitable. In hindsight, this deliberate decimation of hope was the most painful passage of time I endured in the dozen hours I was in the Taj. For five hours, I was gripped by a desperate sadness.
Dawn broke, but the morning didn’t feel like like a new beginning. It meant nothing more than an infusion of light through ornately chiselled cement fencing. The situation only changed decisively when heavy knocks on the doors accompanied by voices claiming to be commandos and staff members made us all believe in the second chance. It had been 12 hours.
Exiting the room after Kamble has been evacuated on a stretcher, I saw the corridor flooded heel-deep in spent bullets and air thick with gunpowder that made tear up, even if emotion didn’t. One of the commandos took it upon himself to clear the glass shard riddled path for my mother who had lost her shoes in the chaos and refused to take mine because she said she hated them.
But our renewed sense of security was beaten back badly on the landing when gunfire from above sent the policemen escorting us scrambling for cover. However, we were held together by the Taj staff, who formed a human chain around us, shielding us from bullets and the urge to stampede.
Coming home
A pointless hour at the Azad Maidan police station and a lucky taxi ride later, I was home. (The police refused to provide transport to the survivors, let alone having doctors or counsellors on hand to attend to survivors). The phone calls didn’t cease for a day. The several voices ranged between concern, relief and voyeuristic curiosity.
On Saturday morning, as I tried ‒ and failed ‒ to absorb the horror of the Paris attacks, my foggy memory jogged lose one nugget.
That morning on November 27, 2008, when I recharged my phone and browsed through my messages, there was one text from an acquaintance who wrote that he read my quotes in the Times of India and was glad I was alive. I had spoken to journalists the night before, but when he sent the text at around 8 am the next day, when I was still in the Chambers room, certain that I wouldn’t make it.
That one text drove home the terrifying notion of the long drawn terrorist attack propelled by ceaseless news broadcasts and social media streaming. That this new template, field-tested in Mumbai, allowed terrorists to effortlessly dominate the media and forced the world to witness the fate of those trapped in these protracted attacks. This, the terrorists presumably believe, bleeds deeper into international consciousness than a single suicidal explosion could ever do.
Many more people were killed by the bomb Islamic State claims to have planted on a Russian airliner that crashed minutes after leaving an Egyptian resort on November 2 than in Paris on Friday night. But we will all remember Mumbai 2008, Westgate 2013, Tunisia and Paris 2015.
I fear that I will revisit my experience of surviving the Mumbai attack more often, on more such bloody dawns.
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