I spent the few hours I got at home in the last few days hugging my daughter and telling her that I love her.
Staring at death and grief non-stop for over three days has amplified what I feel for those I cherish.
As I write this, the anti-terrorist commando operations across Mumbai have just ended. But the cloak of fear still covers us.
There’s no gainsaying that Mumbai’s spirit will never be broken.
But, like New York after 9/11, will the city I love ever be the same again? Will I ever again visit the Sea Lounge at the Taj without glancing over my shoulder? When I look out across the harbour from there, will I ever feel the same mix of serenity, joy and pride? Or, will there also be an amalgamation of pain?
When I walk through Colaba Causeway, will it still be as much fun taking in the sight of hawkers, the Victorian structures and the presence of the colonial ghost? Will a drive past Machhimar Nagar, where the terrorists landed in their dinghy, conjure up the same memories — of my childhood, when I passed it every day on the way to school, hoping to spot a catch of fish or whales that would get beached there from time to time?
It’s like 1993 all over again. I remember the day after the serial blasts that rocked Mumbai then. We drove by the Worli blast site and saw entire facades of buildings ripped away. Fans, blades crumpled by the heat of the bombs, stood like tragic sentinels to the memories of lives that had been snuffed out there.
A cold, icy hand grips my heart as I try to think of what it must have been like at Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus on the night of November 26 as two men walked in and dispensed death. I saw a photograph of one of the gunmen, the crazed look in his eyes. Could he have belonged to any religion at all? What faith could his heart have held?
At this moment, I am overwhelmed by fatigue, drained emotionally. The chronicling of a tragedy does that to you. I should know — in my increasingly long career as a journalist, I’ve brought out far more editions on such horrific events than I would have liked to.
Ashraf Engineer
Gentledove said,
November 29, 2008 at 3:29 pm
So pleased for you and your loved ones Ashraf
Vidya said,
November 30, 2008 at 4:57 am
Ashraf, even being so far away from Bombay I feel like I’m bleeding with the attack on our city. I can only imagine how it could be for you living there.
Here too, as you highlighted in the Delhi post, the media has played an awful part. They don’t seem to have a grip on reality at all. The point seems to be maximum shrillness and minimum – or no – accountability. Rajdeep shrieked about fresh firing at VT and had to apologise. Barkha gave away facts that probably led to the remaining gunman in the Taj shooting even more people. They were guests hiding in their rooms, hoping to go unnoticed – and what does she do? Shrills that there are “people still inside”. Why didn’t she just print gold-edged invitation cards for the gunmen? This was not a natural disaster where you talk about how many people are trapped and so on. This was an ongoing terror attack. There were military operations going on, discretion *had* to take precedence in this instance. But when you consider that the point of the broadcast is the fact that *Barkha* is on the scene, the real incident takes second place. Unfortunate that she becomes the news. And this is after the border incident when she “secretly” reported “live” using a cellphone when she was instructed not to do so, and literally broadcast the location of the post and caused those soldiers to die. Do these people have no conscience? I feel embarrassed to be part of media, the travesty of it that they have made. Surely this is not the freedom that media enjoys? Where is the responsibility? Freedom without responsibility is, as we know, anarchy.
And even disregarding this aspect, why the blazes does everyone yell into their mikes? Contrast this with reporting from international reporters – they are quite intelligible and lucid, and our Indian reporters sound like crazed banshees in comparison. Embarrassing again.
Vidya said,
November 30, 2008 at 5:05 am
The places attacked are so familiar, so much a part of the Bombay which we see in our mind’s eye, that it really feels like an attack on one’s person. I can’t bear to think of the street vendors, the commuters, the hotel staff, the residents on their balconies, the Leopold staff… just ordinary people on an ordinary night, killed, hurt, terror-struck. Hell, we know those guys who sell fake antiques and ethnic doodads outside Leo’s. They were just doing their job, as were the policemen, people reporting for night shift, people going home… Every piece of the news hurts. Thinking of Bombay is like touching one’s raw wounds.
Hug from across the ocean.
Lotfullah said,
November 30, 2008 at 6:23 am
Ashraf,
I pray that Mumbai atmosphere is once again covered with love and peace and I pray you and your family enjoy a life under a stable and fearless sky of Mumbai, eventually, i pray terrorists never access to any possibly to act such brutal to destroy a land of peace.
Dilnaz said,
November 30, 2008 at 2:10 pm
This city will never be the same again. I have seen this kind of destruction in Kashmir and I hoped that this violence wouldn’t strike my city and it has… it is devastating.
Lina Mathias said,
December 1, 2008 at 5:00 am
Hopefully, the media will learn from this entire sorry tragedy. For too long we have covered up our own lack of thoughtfulness, introspection about our ways of functioning and lack of internal guidelines under the excuse that our duty is first to the viewer or reader. True, the media must be accountable to the news consumer but given the impact it has, we can no longer blame the need to react fast or the lack of official information or the hundred and one excuses that are ususally trotted out for irresponsible and often hysterical reporting. In fact, most British journalists could not believe that television cameras were allowed that close or such continuous access during a risk-fraught operation.
While the Friday rumour mongering about a second CST firing was really stupid, I must commend Rajdeep Sardesai for his commentary during ATS chief Hemant Karkare’s funeral. Unlike another popular Hindi channel which kept spewing nationalist platitudes which really didn’t mean anything, he kept harping on the Mumbaikar’s need for answers from the political class and the hypocrisiy of those who had vilified Karkare when he was alive and were so quick to put up hoardings celebrating his heroism after he died.
There is no doubt however that the Indian television media and much of the print media too needs to do a post-mortem on the way it has covered these 3 days.There was indignation following the Aarushi-Hemraj murder coverage too but one did not see any collective soul searching emerging from it.
Vgossip said,
December 1, 2008 at 5:23 am
Ashraf:
There are several points that we need to ponder here. We can call media the culprit in highlighting the mayhem inside, but it too was an essential part of why authorities were under pressure and acted swiftly. Media did many irresponsible acts,but that’s been a history across continents (why blame just indians here)…again blaming is too easy a task!
How many will now go and get their voter id cards made so that they can vote responsibly? How many mumbaikars have even bothered to vote…if they havent voted this government in then they have no right to shout about the lacunae in the system. If they did vote, then why didnt we all shout and express our outrage when malegaon blasts happened. Were those lives less important to us. Was that not a blackmark on our country and its history.
How dare we differentaite between the lifes lost on VT station or Gateway of India or Malegaon or Lajpat nagar in Delhi than those in 5 star hotels!
We are the culprits. Then the terrorists.