On a fierce November Morn by Bhisham Mansukhani - A surviour of the attack on the Taj Bombay

Fate has a strange sense of humour. At least for those who believe that their lives oscillate under its whimsical influence. We all have an assortment of beliefs and bear them fiercely. Reality doesn’t care for what we believe in or perceive and every now and then, it obliterates our illusions. For some, the event is a sharp uninvited finish. Others, reality inflicts so sharply, ruthlessly vapourising their sense of being that neither turn of fate holds much appeal. Very little belief is left to hold up either. None of these weighty thoughts were filling my head as I lazed through a typical day at work on the Wednesday of November 26, 2008. I have nothing to say for my existence. I unrepentantly lead a dull, shallow life devoid of anything interesting or inconvenient. I don’t read and have never felt the need to challenge myself in the world outside my comfort zone and do not despair for meaning nothing to anyone. I drink enough alcohol to kill off any potential realisation of emptiness and failure. Indifference is my reliable, dastardly refuge. I have no inclinations for weddings either. It’s a dour affair that celebrates an institution I couldn’t care for. The food is usually vegetarian and there is no bar. Moreover, one needs to behave.

Not in my right mind, would I attend one but some sort of misplaced kindred spirit for my close, long time friend Amit with whom I pretty much grew up, forced me into an aberration. It hadn’t been too bad so far. There had been a drunken Sangeet party, the preceding Sunday afternoon and the wedding ceremony that presented the rare opportunity to do the Bollywood dance set piece on the road while my friend sat on a horse drawn carriage, embarrassed and sweating on a sultry winter evening. I finished a good bottle of Bordeaux back home later, contemplating a fine Clapton rendition and a late awakening set me back on day when a punctual arrival at the Taj Hotel was non-negotiable. Getting home from work was a headache as cabs refused to oblige. The long walk had worked up my appétit for at least two drams of scotch but my mother’s presence and usually irritable mood kept me from stoking trouble. We did spar for a reason that I can’t now recall but I do remember snapping altogether and telling her to stay home. Eventually, we brokered an uncomfortable truce. She had worn a lovely black embroidered saree, already ornamented and layered with make up. We encountered surprisingly minimal traffic given the hour and I found the perfect excuse not to make conversation as I called on my other school mates, coordinating a rendezvous in the Taj lobby at 9.45 pm. I always liked the lobby. Besides, more time alone with my mother could only combust matters. The cab pulled up in front of the lobby and the security detail before it, at about 9.25 pm.

Passing through metal detectors and into the lobby, it felt like any other evening but this wedding was special. There was a bar waiting up stairs and neither of my friends had arrived. The customary halt in the hotel’s elegant loo was mandatory. Taking a piss in the john, staring blankly at a sketch of a fat English lady in a corset that hung above, I never stopped to wonder about its intended location. It wasn’t in the least stimulating. I walked out back to the arterial corridor and stood, thinking vaguely. It was 9.35 pm. To the left, the sprawling lobby milling with faces I didn’t stop to absorb. On the right, further down, left, and up the stairs was the Crystal Room blocked for my close friend Amit Thadani’s reception on his insistence, contained a bar. My mother looked question at me while I felt like a Bloody Mary, smothered with bitters. And the good bar tender fixed me one. The hall was ominously empty and had the Mangishikars not already been there, going back to the lobby might have felt wise. But I already had my drink. Another of Amit’s friends Samridh and his girlfriend Meera were also on time. The unsociable killjoy that I am, I broached the subject of the deepening recession.

Right about then, we noticed that the doors had been discreetly bolted and the sound of what could only be firecrackers filled the room. Samridh and I exchanged curious glances, someone speculated about gang wars. I gulped my vodka cocktail and continued bemoaning the plunging Nifty. Almost immediately, the glass panel above the bar shattered and the glass shards narrowly missed Samridh and me. We instinctively ducked under the tables – a silly idea in retrospect – hiding under uselessly thin white table cloth. The second before, the idea of gunfire seemed bizarre. Now it was unanimous. More machine gun fire reverberated through the hall ending with a single gunshot. The ambient festive music was still playing. Squatting underneath the table besides my stunned and panicky mother, I was suffused with absurd regret for not having had more of the drink. For what was to follow, I would needed as much as I could get into my bloodstream. I didn’t know then that the next 12 hours would be dry and possibly my last.

As the firing abated and the realisation of it began to sink in, the Taj staff, strikingly calm, had already saved our lives having bolted the banquet hall doors just minutes before the gunmen had reached our floor. They saved us several times over the next many uncertain hours. Ambient celebratory music still filled the room. The situation was too bizarre for me to comprehend. I queued with the rest and we filed into the service corridor that snaked around the hotel. I spotted Taj’s foremost chef Hemant Oberoi, hands folded, frozen smile, asking us to calmly keep walking. This all seemed surreal. Perhaps more alcohol could’ve helped. Calling people on the outside was futile. No one quite knew what was going on. Ironically, i called my close friend Siy who was parked at Press Club. He’d just heard firing ringing in from CST.

The corridor opened into the Chambers verandah overlooking the Gateway of India – a grand and familiar sight I had only ever associated with wine soirees and parties, the last one I recall gate-crashing had been hosted by the London Mayor for the Bachchan family. We continued indoors into the opulent restaurant famous for menus that don’t bear prices. Beyond the restaurant was a corridor lined with about five break away rooms. Somehow, I was processing all this trivia. May be it was a sub-conscious ploy meant to keep me from panicking. But I wasn’t even close to panicking. Again, the hope for a drink resurfaced but was met with a surfeit of colas and starters. The staff worked diligently to accommodate and make comfortable the constant droves of people steaming into the Chambers floor and occupying its halls. Families, suited individuals, foreigners, children staying off and being reigned in by their chastening mothers – it didn’t feel like we were holed up in a hotel under attack by well armed, blood thirsty terrorists. The reality though dawned on me at about midnight.

I had wandered into the Lavender Room, chancing on a British couple that preferred to squat on the floor sitting atop blankets. I tried to comfort them saying this was a temporary hold up and that the gunmen were probably already overwhelmed and taken out by the response by Mumbai’s cops. Just about then, I heard a huge explosion which was significant because the Chambers floor was virtually sound proof and we hadn’t heard gunfire since we had been there. Just then, i received two messages. My friend, a journalist texted me that Karkare, Salaskar and Kamte had been assassinated. Then another friend, also a journalist and a colleague texted me, urging me frantically to duck because the Taj was on fire. I began contemplating the worst and began calling. Panic had arrived. Everywhere in the Chambers, people slumped to the floor.

The next few hours saw more people slipping into impatience, paranoia or frustration and it took a resolute staff to keep things together. At about 4 am, an evacuation was called for. As I waited with my mother and everyone else, tightly packed into the corridor, people in batches of four were let through the corridor to what I was given to believe was an elevator or stairway and that there were commandos at the head who had secured the area. As the first lot left, the crowd began moving. As I got close to the corridor, the sound of bullets reverberated through the packed corridor, followed by screaming and a stampede. It was the loudest I'd heard and I ran back only because everyone else was. Everyone dispersed into different rooms. I followed my mother into the Lavender room. Just about then four people along with a Taj employee ran out back out. Some one had been shot. Apparantely, one person was shot and killed. Another, an old maintenance staffer of the hotel was lying on the staircase. He’d been shot. I think he was a little ahead of me in the line before the firing began. My friend's father is a doctor and he bandaged him but had no medicine or penicillin. We botled the door with a oval table and chairs, shut off the lights, the airconditioner. We were waiting. I was sitting opposite the man who'd been shot and heard him call for help in agony. he was bleeding to death. my mother was in the room at the far end. she was bare feet. at that point, i thought we were not going to make it. in fact i had little doubt that it was just a matter of time before the sniper from the floor above us, came to our floor, going room to room, spraying us with ammunition. i took strange comfort in laying my head on the wall that seperated the room from the corridor, knowing the bullet could pierce the wall and all that rested on it. i sent a close friend of mine an sms saying this was probably it and to another, i stole his favourite two words : "so what". the silence was constantly interrupted by gun fire exchanges which almost always ended in a grenade being exploded. after a point, it did'nt even distract us from our busy smsing. all the while i was looking at this man, bleeding, throwing up, begging for mercy. all i could do was urge journalists outside to inform the commandos to at least rescue him first. at about 9.30 am, the unexpected came to pass. we heard sharp knocking on the door -- some one claiming to be state police. no one wanted to open the door until we were sure. then a female voice from the outside was met with familiarity by the Taj service staffers who had probably saved us from dying in an act of panic and the door was torn open. the injured man was let out on a stretcher into an ambulance and we all had our hands raised as we walked through the corridor down towards another service stairway. i saw blood and spent ammunition on the very spot that i'd been drinking coke and chatting away before midnight. on the corner of the service stairway, another pool of blood stood beside a rumpled commando cap. the effect of the blood was sharp and burning. i couldn't keep my eyes open. as we came down to the main lobby, the shattered glass panels and cracked tiling was the grim reminder of the madness that has ensued before. but as we stood outside the lobby and two police vans were loaded with some of the survivors, as the second van exited the lobby entrance, there was more firing from probably the fifth floor and more panic. this wasn't over. they herded us into a BEST bus, i was in the back, with four Russians, all of us crouched like tormented creatures, i sat up with my head between my knees, watching the hotel windows as the bus pulled away, still waiting for the worst which didn't come. the city was ghastly. straight slivers of people looking zombie like, populated the streets and a strange black car behind seemed like it was in pursuit. we were taken to the Azad Maidan police station and let off in 10 minutes. No food, no water, no transport to go home. Still, an interesting day to be alive. Walking out with my mother, i felt no elation, no sense of relief, just a bittersweet blankness and cynicsm that that sense of fatality i felt at 5 am may have to be called, someday again. i wanted to talk. i wanted to talk directly to the terrorists. i wanted to tell them that they didn't get me in a physical sense but that in a metaphysical way i was already dead. that i was already somewhere else. i didnt quite get the world anymore. not the one i had walked back into. i wanted to tell them that i will go every place they intend to strike. i don't think this complicated, dour world is one i want to grow old in but unfortunately i have some residual self respect left which stops me from getting rid of myself while they don't so they can come get me. i'm waiting. not because i have any courage. i don't. i am a coward. i am concieted and i live a pointless life. in the evening i heard that the Taj GM Karambir Kang's wife and two young sons had been burnt alive in the suite next to the dome. i don't know how to react when my friends who have been calling and messaging me all through, say "thank god, you're alive and unharmed".i don't believe in god and i didn't pray even when we were all holed up in that room with the gunmen outside at some point before 9.30 am. i didn't think i'd see 9.30 am. and i retain my atheism. sitting there as the light began to shape the concrete webbing that filled our windows, i saw and heard the crows, indifferent to the terror of the night, going about their lives. there's wasn't much fear to go around. there was nothing to do. There's no time left to argue about whether Bombay is any worse than anywhere else. these modern times, death is everywhere to be had and if we escape its scope, like i did, the conceited being that i am, it could just as well have gone the other way. the crows would have still been at it in the morning and the one after and it would have been a beautiful day and i wouldn't be around to wonder about it or where the next drink was coming from. I recall recently being on an NDTV show featuring the honourable home minster P Chidambram. When given the chance to ask the minister a question, I summarised the abominations of the past year – the denial of incompetency by the police, the pradhan committee report, the fact that hafiz saeed was alive and well and that kasab was more secure than me and far from being handed due justice. The man looked at me unblinking. I felt no empathy in his response. I knew what was coming. He asked me how i would have brought hafiz saeed to justice. I saw through his ploy to dodge the question. Perhaps out of misplaced deference or just helplessness, I didn’t opt for hostility. Instead I responded stutteringly, naively. Like an ignorant fool. Much to his satisfaction. I feel nothing but pity for him. The question will come back to him at a press conference when the next, inevitable attack occurs. What will he answer then? Will he throw the floor open for suggestions about how to nab saeed because the home and external affairs ministry is out of options. I 'm not making any sense so i'm gonna borrow the closing words of the movie Seven because i can't write anymore because my fingers won't let me.

"Someone once said, The world is a beautiful place. It's worth fighting for......I agree with the second part."