Bombay Attack: The Best Eyewitness Account

by Michael Pollack, general partner of Glenhill Capital, a firm he co-founded in 2001

My story begins innocuously, with a dinner reservation in a world-class hotel. It ends 12 hour later after the Indian army freed us.

My point is not to sensationalize events. It is to express my gratitude and pay tribute to the staff of the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai, who sacrificed their lives so that we could survive. They, along with the Indian army, are the true heroes that emerged from this tragedy.

My wife, Anjali, and I were married in the Taj's Crystal Ballroom. Her parents were married there, too, and so were Shiv and Reshma, the couple with whom we had dinner plans. In fact, my wife and Reshma, both Bombay girls, grew up hanging out and partying the night away there and at the Oberoi Hotel, another terrorist target.

The four of us arrived at the Taj around 9:30 p.m. for dinner at the Golden Dragon, one of the better Chinese restaurants in Mumbai. We were a little early, and our table wasn't ready. So we walked next door to the Harbor Bar and had barely begun to enjoy our beers when the host told us our table was ready. We decided to stay and finish our drinks. Thirty seconds later, we heard what sounded like a heavy tray smashing to the ground. This was followed by 20 or 30 similar sounds and then absolute silen ce. We crouched behind a table just feet away from what we now knew were gunmen. Terrorists had stormed the lobby and were firing indiscriminately. We tried to break the glass window in front of us with a chair, but it wouldn't budge. The Harbour Bar's hostess, who had remained at her post, motioned to us that it was safe to make a run for the stairwell. She mentioned, in passing, that there was a dead body right outside in the corridor. We believe this courageous woman was murdered after we ran away. (We later learned that minutes after we climbed the stairs, terrorists came into the Harbour Bar, shot everyone who was there and executed those next door at the Golden Dragon. The staff there was equally brave, locking their patrons into a basement wine cellar to protect them. But the terrorists managed to break through and lob in grenades that killed everyone in the basement.)

We took refuge in the small office of the kitchen of another restaurant, Wasabi, on the second floor. Its chef and staff served the four of us food and drink and even apologized for the inconvenience we were suffering.

Through text messaging, e-mail on BlackBerrys and a small TV in the office, we realized the full extent of the terrorist attack on Mumbai. We figured we were in a secure place for the moment. There was also no way out. At around 11:30 p.m., the kitchen went silent. We took a massive wooden table and pushed it up against the door, turned off all the lights and hid. All of the kitchen workers remained outside; not one staff member had run. The terrorists repeatedly slammed against our door. We heard them ask the chef in Hindi if anyone was inside the office. He responded calmly: "No one is in there. It's empty." That is the second time the Taj staff saved our lives. After about 20 minutes, other staff members escorted us down a corridor to an area called The Chambers, a members-only area of the hotel. There were about 250 people in six rooms. Inside, the staff was serving sandwiches and alcohol. People were nervous, but cautiously optimistic. We were told The Chambers was the safest place we could be because the army was now guarding its two entrances and the streets were still dangerous. There had been attacks at a major railway station and a hospital. But then, a member of parliament phoned into a live newscast and let the world know that hundreds of people--including CEOs, foreigners and members of parliament-- were "secure and safe in The Chambers together." Adding to the escalating tension and chaos was the fact that, via text and cellphone, we knew that the dome of the Taj was on fire and that it could move downward.

At around 2 a.m., the staff attempted an evacuation. We all lined up to head down a dark fire escape exit. But after five minutes, grenade blasts and automatic weapon fire pierced the air. A mad stampede ensued to get out of the stairwell and take cover back inside The Chambers.
After that near-miss, my wife and I decided we should hide in different rooms. While we hoped to be together at the end, our primary obligation was to our children. We wanted to keep one parent alive. Because I am American and my wife is Indian, and news reports said the terrorists were targeting U.S. and U.K. nationals, I believed I would further endanger her life if we were together in a hostage situation.  So when we ran back to The Chambers I hid in a toilet stall with a floor-to-ceiling door and my wife stayed with our friends, who fled to a large room across the hall.

For the next seven hours, I lay in the fetal position, keeping in touch with Anjali via BlackBerry. I was joined in the stall by Joe, a Nigerian national with a U.S. green card. I managed to get in touch with the FBI, and several agents gave me status updates throughout the night. I cannot even begin to explain the level of adrenaline running through my system at this point. It was this hyper-aware state where every sound, every smell, every piece of information was ultra-acute, analyzed and processed so that we could make the best decisions and maximize the odds of survival. Was the fire above us life-threatening? What floor was it on? Were the commandos near us, or were they terrorists? Why is it so quiet? Did the commandos survive? If the terrorists come into the bathroom and to the door, when they fire in, how can I make my body as small as possible? If Joe gets killed before me in this situation, how can I throw his body on mine to barricade the door? If the Indian commandos liberate the rest in the other room, how will they know where I am? Do the terrorists have suicide vests? Will the roof stand? How can I make sure the FBI knows where Anjali and I are? When is it safe to stand up and attempt to urinate?

Meanwhile, Anjali and the others were across the corridor in a mass of people lying on the floor and clinging to each other. People barely moved for seven hours, and for the last three hours they felt it was too unsafe to even text. While I was tucked behind a couple walls of marble and granite in my toilet stall, she was feet from bullets flying back and forth. After our failed evacuation, most of the people in the fire escape stairwell and many staff members who attempted to protect the guests were shot and killed. The 10 minutes around 2:30 a.m. were the most frightening. Rather than the back-and-forth of gunfire, we just heard single, punctuated shots. We later learned that the terrorists went along a different corridor of The Chambers, room by room, and systematically executed everyone: women, elderly, Muslims, Hindus, foreigners. A group huddled next to Anjali was devout Bori Muslims who would have been slaughtered just like everyone else, had the terrorists gone into their room. Everyone was in deep prayer and most, Anjali included, had accepted that their lives were likely over. It was terrorism in its purest form. No one was spared. The next five hours were filled with the sounds of an intense grenade/gun battle between the Indian commandos and the terrorists. It was fought in darkness; each side was trying to outflank the other.

By the time dawn broke, the commandos had successfully secured our corridor. A young commando led out the people packed into Anjali's room. When one woman asked whether it was safe to leave, the commando replied: "Don't worry, you have nothing to fear. The first bullets have to go through me." The corridor was laced with broken glass and bullet casings. Every table was turned over or destroyed. The ceilings and walls were littered with hundreds of bullet holes. Blood stains were everywhere, though, fortunately, there were no dead bodies to be seen.
A few minutes after Anjali had vacated, Joe and I peeked out of our stall. We saw multiple commandos and smiled widely. I had lost my right shoe while sprinting to the toilet so I grabbed a sheet from the floor, wrapped it around my foot and proceeded to walk over the debris to the hotel lobby. Anjali and I embraced for the first time in seven hours in the Taj's ground floor entrance. I didn't know whether she was dead or injured because we hadn't been able to text for the past three hours.  I wanted to take a picture of us on my BlackBerry, but Anjali wanted us to get out of there before doing anything. She was right--our ordeal wasn't completely over. A large bus pulled up in front of the Taj to collect us and, just about as it was fully loaded, gunfire erupted again. The terrorists were still alive and firing automatic weapons at the bus. Anjali was the last to get on the bus, and she eventually escaped in our friend's car. I ducked under some concrete barriers for cover and wound up the subject of photos that were later splashed across the media. Shortly thereafter, an ambulance came and drove a few of us to safety. An hour later, Anjali and I were again reunited at her parents' home. Our Thanksgiving had just gained a lot more meaning.

Some may say our survival was due to random luck, others might credit divine intervention. But 72 hours removed from these events, I can assure you only one thing: Far fewer people would have survived if it weren't for the extreme selflessness shown by the Taj staff, who organized us, catered to us and then, in the end, literally died for us. They complemented the extreme bravery and courage of the Indian commandos, who, in a pitch-black setting and unfamiliar, tightly packed terrain, valiantly held the terrorists at bay.  It is also amazing that, out of our entire group, not one person screamed or panicked. There was an eerie but quiet calm that pervaded--one more thing that got us all out alive. Even people in adjacent rooms, who were being executed, kept silent.

It is much easier to destroy than to build, yet somehow humanity has managed to build far more than it has ever destroyed. Likewise, in a period of crisis, it is much easier to find faults and failings rather than to celebrate the good deeds. It is now time to commemorate our heroes.

Why Do We Hate Arundhati Roy?

(By Kanishka Lahiri, a Bangalore-based professional in the semiconductor industry. To provide feedback about this piece, please email him directly at kanishka.lahiri@gmail.com)

In middle-class educated circles, it has become unfashionable, in fact, often downright ludicrous to quote Arundhati Roy. In a recent email exchange with contemporaries (with whom I shared the experience of attending one of India's elite engineering schools, yes, you guessed, one of the highly trumpeted Indian Institutes of Technology) she was described as "worse than a cockroach that infests the sewer systems in our country", and the "greatest con act of an activist anywhere in the world", an anti-national who "could be convicted for treason". 

I believe many people in similiar echelons of Indian society share this view, but don't necessarily articulate them as clearly. The majority just simply refuses to read her essays based on a reasoning that goes something like - "she's just out of control, she's anti-national, there are no facts in her writing, how can educated people even consider reading her". This exchange set me thinking as to why a lot of people, including some people who's opinions I respect on other matters, dismiss this person with such venom. What provokes deeply emotional responses from people, responses that suggest that Roy has somehow insulted them at a personal level? Perhaps the hatred is not really directed towards Roy the person, or Roy the essayist. Maybe it's really directed at the idea of Arundhati Roy; the idea that such a person could actually exist.

At the end of this piece, I am dead sure many of it's readers are going label me as an "Arundhati Roy sympathizer", as if she's some sort of terrorist. Those that do, will serve as perfect illustrations of the point I am trying to make. I don't believe Roy's writing is flawless, or readers should necessarily agree with her opinions, but a refusal to even listen to her line of argument, and separate her facts from her personal opinion seems to represent a strange intent to blindfold oneself to the realities which surround us. That is downright strange, since if anything, the urban middle class rightfully prides itself on being well informed. So what's really going on with the public vs Ms Roy? 

Interestingly, most of the hysterical rhetoric flung at Roy that I have come across comes from male quarters, ranging from celebrity historian Ramachandra Guha to my IIT buddies. Could it just be that Indian men feel slighted that she can provoke the highest establishments of the land, like the Supreme Court, which have always been traditional male bastions, being a woman? Saba Naqvi in an article published some months ago in Outlook suggests the resentment may even have something to do with her sartorial taste and hair-do, which hypocritcal Indians might find more acceptable if she was say, part of the intellectual diaspora living in New York City. In the grassroot Indian context, which is Roy's habitat, to many, her physical appearance and shrill voice seems out of place in a society where where female Bollywood leads are expected to retire after they get married. The question is, if Arundhati Roy was a man, or if she tied her hair in a bun and wore a bindi, would we have aimed our collective automatic weapons at her with such deadly precision? 

I'm not trying to defend the factual accuracy of her writings, or praise her prose. The point is, so what if she's guilty of less than civil writing? So what if she's got a few facts wrong? If we the public were as effective in scrutinizing and passing judgment on the administration as we are on Ms Roy's writing, India would be a different country. It seems pretty clear that the anti-Roy rhetoric has got more to do with the fact that she raises uncomfortable topics which makes for extremely unpopular drawing room conversation in middle-class English speaking households. If these "readers" (the skepticism is rooted in an observation that several of my acquaintances are eager to dismiss her writings without even having read them) are so contemptuous of what she writes, if they think she has all her facts wrong, if she's really just an average essayist looking for attention, then why do they get roiled up at all? Perhaps it really is to do with the threat Arundhati Roy poses to the "shining" Indian middle-class and it's beloved diaspora. Maybe folks fear that she actually is a capable and knowledegable person, wielding a mighty pen and power brandishing inconvenient truths about the Indian state. Maybe deep down, the upper-middle-class Hindu knows that the train to utopia they are riding could very well be derailed, or delayed by this puny writer from Kerala. A utopia in which big dams supply water and electricity to the cities while decimating rural populations and destroying the environment, where Muslim youths are shot on sight on the flimsiest suspicions; where India's nuclear arsenal is large enough to annihilate a subcontinent that is home to a quarter of the world's population; where power is absolute and autocratic, as long as it serves the interests of the urban elite. 

India doesn't need an Arundhati Roy. We need a few thousand. From the collective screaming, there are higher chances that truth will emerge, and minor errors made by individuals such as Roy will get drowned by the availability of a quality of information that we are denied today by a media stifled by politics and profit. In the tradition of the argumentative Indian, I invite people to
counter Roy through intellectual debate, rather than calling her names.

Am I Communal?

From some of the responses I'm getting I'm getting a feeling that I might be sounding communal, anti-Muslim to be more specific. That's why let me try to introspect into what might have caused this.
I've said that we've to be very harsh on terrorists and if that means indiscriminate killings, we shouldn't mind doing that. History says me that more innocent people are always killed to contain a few terrorists, but that pays off because the few slain terrorists could have killed much more than the few hundred innocent people killed in the encounters. That's what all governments do, be it Russia or Germany or US or Israel. I'm equally vocal against the LTTEs, all of whom happen to be Hindus. People like Karunanidhi shouldn't have the audacity to sympathize for the killings of Tamil speaking people in Sri Lanka because most of them are LTTE sympathizers. Resorting back to my old bearded man, Tagore - Anyay je kare, ar anyay je sahe, tava ghreena jena tare treena sama dahe - meaning "he who commits an unlawful act and he who tolerates an unlawful act, your hatred should crush both of them under your feet like grass". I think this is the most violent form of expression from Tagore. His writings never talk about even little harm to people and animals and plants. A terrorist and a sympathizer of terrorism are both equally criminal and should be punished under law with the strongest of punishments. Politics shouldn't come in between tackling terrorism. Whenever regionalism or religion comes in the way of government actions against terrorism things get complicated and finally inefficient. None of my official identity cards, passport, PAN, driving license, voter's ID, ration card etc have the mention of my mother tongue or my religion. My identity is that of an Indian and anything else is just ignored officially. Why can't the same be true every where? Some of my close friends happen to be Muslim. Their religion or their ethnicity rarely come to my mind. And to be very frank I don't find any similarity between them and the Islamic fundamentals. That I'm hell bent to eradicate the Islamic fundamentalists from our country doesn't mean I want to wage a war against my friends also. My friends are Indians first and Muslims much later. The very idea of Hindustan doesn't link to any religion. Anyone staying in this part of the world has been referred to as Hindu and Hindustani for centuries. Hindustan has nothing to do with any religion or language. Akbar was a Hindustani very much like a Shivaji or Guru Govind Singh or Rana Pratap Singh. Historically even a Hindu is not a religious entity, but a geographical entity. Anyone staying in the land of Sindhu is a Hindu or Hindustani or Indian or what-so-ever you call. But anyway, I don't want to go back so much into history. The bottom line is that anything that strikes at the very concept of India should be dealt with the most stringent actions. If that means killing more people belonging to a particular community so be it. Does this mean I am communal?

Fight Against Terrorism: What should be Our Action Items?

It's high time that we take stock of the present situation and come up with Action Items for our fight against terrorism. It's heartening to find that so many people have come up with suggestions and action items in innumerable blogs, social-sites etc. Let me summarize all these and add my two cents:

1. Dogs not welcome: This is the first thing to be done. Dogs are not welcome anymore. Well, by dogs I don't mean the dogs literally. The CM of Kerala, when refused to be allowed to enter the house of Mr. Unnikrishnan, the father of the slain NSG commando Sandeep, has reminded us all that "Had it not been Sandeep, even the dogs won't have visited his house". He was referring to himself. Yes, the political class has finally spoken the truth that they are the dogs. Off course I don't know if it's good to demean dogs by associating them with the politicians of our country. Maneka Gandhi and the other PETA activists might take offence and they really have a point here. Dogs are much better animals than the politicians of our country. The first Action Item is to let the politicians know what we all think about them. I hope some day they really awake up and start behaving like good animals. I don't expect them to behave like humans anyway!
2. Our lives are also equally important: Yes, we don't have any problem with the lives of PM or President. They do have the right to live. But we also do have the same right. So it shouldn't take 10 hours for the commandos to start their action at any place in India - be it Tamang or Okha, Kargil or Rameshwaram. There should be commandos reserved specifically for civilians, the same way they have been just for the politicians till now.
3. All intelligence reports should be made public: As per RTI every quarter, all intelligence reports should be made public along with the specific actions taken by the concerned authorities. This will ensure that the governments are indeed taking actions on time and none of the warnings are just ignored. It seems that enough warnings have been provided about the terror strikes in Taj and Oberoi but still everyone was sleeping.
4. Revoking of POTA and similar acts at federal level: Stop all debates. We just need to give supreme authority to the police and army to take any action against acts of terrorism without getting entangled in laws. People booked under these acts would be prosecuted within a few weeks. The punishments should be very severe. Even little sympathy towards a terrorist or and act of terrorism should be punished with capital punishment. The laws should be so stringent that even a facilitator of an act would think million times before indulging into any such act. And yes, there would be some misuse of such acts. But even if it's used correctly one in a hundred cases, that would be good enough. All these acts should be enforced from center without giving any state any chance to debate in their respective assemblies. The authority entitled to use POTA would be also a federal agency with branches in all states. This federal agency should report directly to the President and should be immune from any political intervention. For practical purposes this department would come under Ministry of Defence, but the Defence Minister should have no business other than just sanctioning funds.
5. Hang Afzal: This should be done immediately. Otherwise any terrorist would think that he/she can get away so easily. There should be a number of capital punishments served to multiple people to send out a very strong message.
6. Come down heavily on people sympathizing with LTTE: This is also equally important to send out the message that our country is dead against terror of any kind - be it Muslim or Hindu. People like Karunanidhi and others who cry for Tamil speaking people being killed in Sri Lanka should be dealt with very sternly. At the end of the day most of these people killed in Sri Lanka are LTTE sympathizers and there shouldn't be any mercy shown to them. No one should have the audacity to ask the PM of India to ask Sri Lankan government to end strikes against the terrorists. LTTE or Lashkar-e-Toiba, all are same - all the criminals.
7. Don't pay any heed to Arundhati Roy and Shabana Azmi: This is also a very critical thing. Killing any human being is always a violation of human rights, even if we kill a terrorist. Philosophically, no one has the right to take a life when we can't create the same. So there can be debates about the human aspect of killing terrorists and a number of innocent civilians along with them. We shouldn't allow people like Arundhati Roy and Shabana Azmi to come to streets and create a scene every time a terrorist is killed in an encounter. We should accept the fact that even if 100 innocent people are killed along with one terrorist, that's much better than allowing the terrorist to flee and then kill another 1000 people later. We shouldn't negotiate with any terrorist even if that costs th ives of 100% of the hostages. This is the sacrifice that the few unfortunate innocent people have to make for the country and we all should be ready to be one of those unfortunate hostages!!
8. Cast Votes: Finally we all should arise, awake and cast our votes and make sure that we don't place a heinous animal in parliament or assembly. We know that getting humans is tough, but at least we should try to place a dog.

There are several other suggestions like being strong on Pakistan. But I feel if we show our strength internally Pakistan would get the message automatically. 

Does Mumbai Terror Attack Highlight Need for Solution in Kashmir??

This is indeed a very preposterous comment that I've come across in Guardian. It was an article by William Dalrymple published on Nov 30th. You can read the full article at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/30/mumbai-terror-attacks-india1.
I'm shocked that the same writer wrote Last Mughal!! Not only is he ill informed about the history of Kashmir and the related facts surrounding it's accession into India, but he is also biased and totally irrational. He doesn't even know what he is trying to convey!! He is just another example of those people like Arundhati Roy who thinks that showing a pseudo secular image can buy prizes!!

He says that the recent Bombay attack is an indirect impact of the atrocities done by Army in Kashmir Valley for the past many years. He points out the India has manhandled the people of Kashmir, played with their sentiments and emotions, rigged election and finally rendered a reign of Army strikes on innocent people. Al these have created serious resentments among the Kashmiris and that's why they have struck back. He is so bothered about the 70000 (Well, I need to clarify his numbers, I have never come across this figure) Kashmiri Mulsim killed by the Indian Army, but he never talked about the evicted 400K Kashmiri Pandits & Sikhs who constitute the biggest displaced group of people in the world after the Jews. Well, this is a bare fact that every one knows. Now have you ever talked to a displaced Kashhmiri Pandit? Well, I've the fortune to know quite a few of them and their stories are also never printed in the media. So you can't say that the media is biased against the Muslims. Had the media written about the plight of the Kashmiri Pandits then even a non violent person like Dalai Lama would have taken arms and there would have been civil wars (read communal) in India....And to make things correct, the atrocities towards Kashmiri Pandits started long before Indian Army increased its offensive in Jammu & Kashmir (and this pseudo secular writer doesn't even know that the name of the state is Jammu & Kashmir and not Kashmir...).

The blame can't be put on the Indian Army. Kashmir was ruled (rather governed) by popular Kahmiris like Sheikh Abdulla and his son Farookh Abdulla for many years. The former also known as the Lion of Kashmir was instrumental in ending the King's Rule in Kashmir and starting a democratic governance. He was also a supporter of Kashmir's accession into Indian Union. Though he had several flip-flops with Nehru regarding his loyalty and disloyalty to India, still the fact remains that he did get chance to rule Jammu & Kashmir for many years. Till now all the Chief Ministers of Jammu & Kashmir have been Kashmiri Muslim in spite of the fact that Jammu & Kashmir has a considerable number of Buddhists in Ladakh region and Hindus in Jammu region. All of these Chief Ministers couldn't do anything good for the local people. The story is same in Bihar also. Most of the politicians don't deliver and the same happened in Kashmir also. It's not that only Kashmir had a rigged election. Almost all elections in Bengal have been rigged till recently and that's how the CPM is in power for so long. But that doesn't mean that local people would take to arms. Most commodities have been always hugely subsidized in Kashmir for all along. No other state enjoys so much subsidy. Whatever was possible by the Central Government was always done. If the local government fails to perform that doesn't mean that you all become terrorists and kill non-Muslims.

In 80s when the exodus of the non Muslims became suddenly very high then the government had to take action. When so many local people are up in arms how do you bring the situation under control? KPS Gill brought the Punjab problem in control by just killing indiscriminately anyone who appeared suspicious. The same tactic was applied by Shiddharta Shankar Ray in West Bengal to crack down Naxalites. 90% people killed in Naxal and Punjab strikes were Innocent people. That was the only way to tackle the problem. Every house in Bengal as someone killed in 70s during the Naxal movement. Otherwise it won't have been possible to tackle the problem at all. So the bottom line is that you don't search for Sanjivani, you just carry the entire mountain that has Sanjivani.... Innocent people have been always killed to control any armed revolution, be it the Naxalite or Punjab problem. Why don't people speak anything about how many innocent people were killed in Punjab? Why does it become a big issue only when some innocent Muslims are killed in encounter? If you have to contain the terrorists, you have to resort to indiscriminate killing - because you don't have time to find out in which house in a village is one terrorist hidden. You will land up killing many people and that's the only way to go. If you think about the few innocent people and leave the terrorist go, he will later kill many more innoent people. So it's always pays to kill a terrorist at any cost. That's what most of the countries do.

Statistically much less Muslim have been killed till date in the past 20 years than the number of Naxalites and Sikhs killed in just those 2-3 years of strike....This writer better gets his facts correct before writing such pseudo-secular crap... And yes, that's the stand that most of the opportunistic people take now-a-days. Pseudo secularism sells that's what he is doing, that's what Arundhati Roy does..

The terrorist attack in Bombay has nothing to do with the Kashmir problem. The people with vested interest in Kashmir will never want the problem to be solved because then they themselves will lose their importance. If the people of Kashmir are so much disgruntled with Indian governance then why are they coming out and casting their votes? The percentage of votes polled in Kashmir valley is not much lower than the average. The problem in Kashmir is with a certain section and that has to be eliminated.... offcourse if these pseudo secular people oblige to be quiet.

Are Indian media and intellect really biased against Muslims?

We've a googlegroups for all the people who were involved in TMS (Technology Music Society), at IIT KGP. Very logically all our discussions over the past few days were centered around the recent Bombay terrorist attacks. I'd like to capture the highlight of the discussions here because I feel we did touch upon some very serious points.

Obviously the discussions started with bashing our Government of being soft towards the Mulsim in general just to keep them appeased for getting better vote-share. Subhashish started the discusison with this:
As I stand numbed and shocked out of our wits at the sheer ruthlessness of a handful of fundamentalist bastards whose hearts did not miss a beat while pumping bullets into a crowd of innocent men women and children, there is little one can do standing 14,000 miles away except wring our hands and shake our heads. But wait a minute , perhaps there is something we can do that may be the ultimate solution here - help a kid in Afghanistan , Pakistan or Bangladesh to go to a "real" school where they actually teach math , science and literature and not hatred against non-believers, help organizations that are working on building support structures for communities in these parts and weaning people away from despondency and in turn from the clutches of Madrasas which are fertile recruiting grounds for extremist outfits. While the Commandos go from one blood splattered room to the next and answer each bullet with more bullets the world needs to take a moment to think- why again ?

I responded saying
Well, we can do many things... but that requires guts and politicians to rise above the sole intention and motive of getting votes.... Even the main accused of Patliament attack can't be hung in India because he is a Musilm.... Cops can't kill terrorists in a Delhi locality because that's a Muslim area and voters won't like that.... What we need is just people rising above all these. There's no difference between a Hindu LTTE and a Mulsim Lashkar-e-Toiba. Both are criminals and should be killed.... But well, LTTEs have supporters here in Karunanidhi and the Muslims have support from most of the politicians... So there's not much can be done.

Anandaroop added the following to my comments:
However much I dislike George W Bush, I think we need to follow his example (after 9/11) at this point. Give 1 month notice to these bastards to surrender (and indirectly tell Pakistan to capture and hand them over) or go all out after that deadline. But that requires guts - which our politicians do not have. As Alu said - a guy comes and bombs our parliament but 7 years hence, we have still not been able to execute him. I would go on to add that according to a recent news report (which you need to take with a pinch of salt) the family members of the policemen who were killed in that parliament attack are living today in utter poverty.

Anandaroop's comments about George Bush's guts is something that I also heard in a program conducted by barkha Dutt in NDTV in Bombay. The panelists for the discussions were Bachi Kakaria - one the most prominent female voices of Bombay and a senior journalist at Times of India, Simi Grewal, Ness Wadia and many more. Simi Grewal also made the similar statement that even though George Bush has lost his presidency for his excesses in post 9/11 strikes in Iraq and Afghanistan, but still it ensured that there was no further terrorist attack on US soil. How much we condemn George Bush, I also feel the same - that he showed to the world that US can't be taken so easily by a bunch of criminals. Do we really that guts? Does our government has the guts to strike against the Muslim majority areas to fish out the terrorists?

At this Kanishka, brought out a very serious point:
One thing we seem to miss in the blame game is the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the media in India. Facts are twisted, statements distorted, relevant information is hidden or at times, controlled by the govt, events are dramatized, and in the end, the public is misinformed, crippling our chances of demanding policy changes that improve the quality of our administration. Mohd Afzal's case is a good example, of how the out of control media, baying for blood, made the nation believe the that Mohammad Afzal was the mastermind of the Parliament Attacks and that religious politics are preventing his execution. The truth is far more complex --- from what I have understood by "reading behind the media", the case against him is very flimsy, either because in truth, he is completely innocent, or at worst, a sympathizer or bystander, or, the investigation was botched, and did not uncover the type o evidence required to hang a man. The media turns a blind eye to events in a Srinagar hospital on Aug 11, when the Indian army stormed the place, burst grenades, and fired automatic weapons to instill a sense of fear, smashing windows and leaving behind injured nurses and bullet ridden holes. Reason: patients in the hospital were Anti govt demonstrators who had been injured earlier in the day at a rally that had been fired upon by the> army. In J&K, where the Indian state has been Terrorist #1 for the last 20 years, are we surprised that events like this occur? If we continue to be misinformed by the self-serving TV and print media, with what basis do we question policy makers?
Interesting article by celebrity historian William Dalrymple: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/30/mumbai-terror-attacks-india1
Site for all details about the Afzal Guru case: http://justiceforafzalguru.org

Kanishka's points are valid. There's no doubt that Afzal was indeed not the 'main person' behind the attack. But then there's also no doubt that he is a sympathesizer and also indirectly involved in planning and/or helping the attack. Isn't that enough to hang him when Apte was also hung for being a planner for killing Mahatma Gandhi? If that's the reason then why are we still keeping the facilitator of the killers of Rajiv Gandhi injail? She should be also released, right? It took the India Government just less than a year to hang Nathuram Godse and Apte and it has taken more than 8 yeears to kill Afzal!! I have full faith on our Supreme Court because they have shown their guts in the recent past in passing important verdicts against the elite class. When the Supreme Court has passed theverdict against Afzal I don't have any complaints against the highest judicial body of our country. When the verdict has been passed we should just accept it. Everyone knows why he is not being hung!! Police can't even go for encounter in Mulsim dominated areas. One of the bestcops have been killed in an encounter in Delhi and the local people are claiming that was a fake encounter to kill Mulslims. C'mon, give me abreak, what was the civilian doing with guns when the police attacked him? And now the govt. is even trying to investigate if at all the encounter was required. If this is the scene, then what message are we passing?
I'm not against any religion. I'm even dead against Karunanidhi for his sympathies for the Tamil speaking civilians being killed in Sri Lanka. At the end of the day they all are sympathesizers of the most sophisticated terrorist organization ofthe world - the LTTE, which happens to be a Hindu group - I have absolutely no sympaty for them. A terrorist and a sympathiser for a terrorist are equally criminal. It doesn't matter what LTTEs are fighting against. They are just criminals, the same way the Muslim radical outfits are. I've no sympathy for Nathuram, absolutely no sympathy for the LTTEs being killed in Sri Lanka and I'm equally against any Muslim who supports terrorism directly or indirectly. When we can hang Nathuram, the Sikh killer of Indira Gandhi, the hindu LTTE killers of Rajiv Gandhi, why can'twe hang a Muslim against whom the Supreme Court has already passed the death sentence?
The discussions doesn't end here. The media or the intellect are not above emotions and personal prejudices. But still there's no doubt that the government has to be more firm in handling terrorism and rise above petty vote-bank politics!!

Home They Brought 'Our' Warrior Dead!!

I'm not someone special who spent the most of the past 3 days watching the TV more than ever before. I'm sure people won't have been glued to TVs like this even during the world cup matches where India had played. What happened over the past 3 days is indeed something new that have shaken all of us. It's not that terrorist attacks haven't happened in India in the past. It's not that people haven't heard of more gory things happening to hapless innocent people. But somewhere, I don't know where, this recent incident has aroused something unprecedented. It has waken up a country that is used to be in deep slumber. Our neatly dressed Home Minister, Shivraj Patil is no different than an average Indian - always complacent, always asleep and always most bothered about his own self, his dress, his image, his security. We used to blame him always for his docile attitude and slumber when the city around him is burning. But if I think deeply, that's what most of us have been doing always for ever. We've been asleep in decades of slumber. The most striking thing that I've witnessed over the past three days is that we've finally waken up. But alas, our ministers are fast asleep even now in their safe havens.

When the entire nation has been glued to the TVs ever since the very first time the news of the Bombay Attacks started beaming in the news channels, it took almost 10 hours for the commandos to start their operations. It raises serious questions about the time our ministers take to wake up. Why should the commandos be posted somewhere from where it would take so long to reach a place like Bombay, which is the financial capital of India? Just think over it, what would have happened had the terrorists launched such an attack in some interior place in the Tamang district of Arunachal Pradesh? Why there shouldn't the commandos be posted across the country so that they should be able to reach any nook and corner of our country within 2-3 hours? Does it make any sense if you have to wait in ICU for 10 hours for your doctors to arrive from some other city and start the vital life saving operation? Are the lives of those dining at the restaurants in Oberoi and Taj, or staying in Nariman Bhavan, or those present in the CST terminus or the police officers who were killed not important? Why should we all, who also do our part of our job, not get the protection for our lives. Are we all less important than the Prime Minister and the President of our country? After all they all are selected by us to serve us, and wait a minute, not for free. They are getting their salaries the same way that we all get. They are also doing a job, might be in a much lesser dedicated way than we all do. So why the commandos, who are also created with my money and your money and every ones' money, be used only for the protection of only a few people, who anyway are just a bunch of inefficient and selfish parochial people with the least of sensitivities and moralities. I've lost my sympathy even for Manmohan Singh because indirectly is responsible for the killings of so many people in Bombay. It was he who had held up so many of the commandos in Delhi for his own safety? What do we lose if he dies in a terrorist attack? Is his life more valuable than the life of the police officers who were not sleeping at 10pm in the night but chasing the terrorists with meagre equipments because all the costly equipments have been reserved for the PM and the President? If a PM dies, he will be replaced by another similar or even more inefficient PM. But can we replace the able police officers with more able ones? Can we get the newly orphaned Jewsih kid, whose parents were killed in Nariman House, another set of parents? Can we get back the sole bread earner of the multiple poor Hindu and Mulsim families who were killed in the CST station? No we can't. Are these people less important citizens of India. Does our constitution give more right to life to the politicians? Then why all the security would be reserved for the people in Delhi? Why only now the PM is talking about setting up NSG Commandos in different parts of the country? Why didn't he think of the same long before? Why do we have to spend so much money for the politicians, who are the biggest of the thugs and criminals, in maintaining their lavish life styles and providing security to their useless lives?

Each and every person who had fought for their life are our warriors. There's no one even to provide them the right to live. I salute to all the lives laid in the past 3 days!! And I ask everyone to arise, awake and stop not till we ensure our own security.... There's no one to help us out. We have to do it ourselves....

Yes, enough is enough!!

Identity and Violence

I don’t think there can be any more apt title to my article, which I’ve been thinking of writing ever since one Mr Raj Thackeray has been inspiring the Indian Press to popularize a term called “Marathi Manoos”. There is nothing wrong in the term. It refers to the Marathi people. But the context in which the term is being over used nowadays in the media has resulted in seeing it in a bad light. “Marathi Manoos” has become synonymous to violence against the North Indians, specially the Biharis, in Bombay on the statistically wrong allegation that they are snatching the employment opportunities from the localites.

The entire episode stirred several questions in my mind. A similar allegation has been levelled by a much lesser known outfit called “Kannada Rakshaka Vedike” in Bangalore against the outsiders. The first question that came to my mind is what’s the identity of a localite. A further extension of the question is what’s my identity. Am I a localite in Bangalore? Let me try to find the answers to my questions.

I was born more than some three decades back in a place, which no longer exists. The name of my birthplace has been changed. Officially there’s no place called Calcutta now. So I don’t know what’s the official status of my ‘birth place’. My mother has inherited the knowledge of spoken Bengali from her parents. So from that point of view officially I can claim that my mother’s tongue is indeed Bengali. To make things simpler my father’s mother tongue also happens to be Bengali. So there’s no confusion with regards to my mother tongue. So that makes me a Bengali speaking, by birth. I started speaking Bengali at home. As a matter of fact I still speak Bengali at home with my wife, whose mother’s tongue also happens to be Bengali. So apart from being born a Bengali speaking, I’m also a surviving Bengali speaking person. But then I was never a permanent resident of any place within West Bengal. I never paid any tax in West Bengal. I voted only once in West Bengal. I’ve been staying in Bangalore for the past eleven years. I paid more than 95% of my total income tax till now in Bangalore. I’ve regularly voted in Bangalore for the past eight years. I own properties only in Bangalore. I own cars registered only in Bangalore. My passport has my Bangalore address as the permanent address. My PAN card, Voters ID card, Ration Card everything has my Bangalore address. Apart from the mention of the now non-existent ‘Calcutta’ as my birth-place in my passport there’s no other reference to my connection to any place other than Bangalore anywhere in any official document.  So what’s my locality? Do I belong to Bangalore or I still belong to Calcutta?

Unlike most people in Bangalore, whose mothers’ tongues happen to be a language called Kannada, I don’t speak the ‘local’ language. Wait a minute, what’s the definition of local language? Is Bengali the local language of Calcutta? Or is Kannada the local language of Bangalore? Well, officially not, but unofficially yes. The constitution does acknowledge Bengali and Kannada languages as major languages spoken in India, but there’s officially no reference to tagging Bengali to Calcutta or West Bengal and Kannada to Bangalore or Karnataka. There’s no discrimination between the Kannada spoken in Deshpriya Park in Calcutta and that in Bangalore in Karnataka. I understand that the rights of people speaking Kannada at home in Deshpriya Park are exactly same as that of the majority of the people speaking the language in Bangalore. In Deshpriya Park, if an entire ‘para’ or locality speaks Kannada, then the children there can surely grow up with the idea that their local language is indeed Kannada and not Bengali, though the later might be spoken by more people around – outside their ‘para’. Till now my kid of six years has encountered more Bengali than Kannada speaking people in his life. In his world he still knows that ‘majority’ of the people around him speak Bengali in Bangalore. He has been to Durga Puja where he has seen thousands of people speaking ‘his’ language. He is yet to see such huge crowds speaking any other language. So there’s no wrong if he feels that he speaks the language that’s spoken by majority of the people in his locality and that language is Bengali. So you see, there’s a difference in perception of the ‘local’ language between him and myself. So the question remains – is there any definition of a ‘local’ language? Yes, there’s always a statistical definition of the majority language in any city or state or locality. But I don’t know how to define a local language.

The survival of any language or religion or tradition doesn’t depend on who speaks the language or who practises the tradition. They survive naturally as long they are required to survive. Despite royal patronage, Sanskrit or Pali couldn’t survive because they were no longer required by the people. The survival of Kannada doesn’t depend on whether 100% of people staying in Karnataka speak or respect the language. Even if majority of the people in Karnataka stop speaking Kannada it might still survive if it’s really required to survive. Just by enforcing people to use Kannada can neither ensure the survival of the language nor impact the growth of the language. From this point of view it makes no sense to make the knowledge of any language a necessary or sufficient condition for association of an individual with any locality.

So coming back to my original question: Where do I belong? I don’t speak the majority language in Bangalore and I don’t stay in the place whose majority language I speak at home. Physically, financially and economically I’ve been connected to Bangalore for more than a decade. So which one takes precedence? What decides where I belong?

Well, truly speaking, there’s absolutely no necessity to find out authentically where I belong because none of my official work or identity requires that. Constitutionally I have the same rights irrespective of my belonging to Calcutta or Bangalore. So why the hell am I bothered about finding out if at all I belong to Bangalore? Well, I shouldn’t bother at all. There’s no statehood or cityhood in India. The reference to Calcutta, my birth place, is just a matter of fact that’s mentioned in my passport. There’s no special status or identity attached to this matter-of-fact. In the same way my residential address of Bangalore is also mentioned as a matter of fact in my passport. My identity would have been the same had my place of birth been some nondescript place in Ladakh and my permanent address some unknown hill-top in a tribal village in Coorg.

I’ve only one identity and that’s I belong to the sovereign socialist republic of India. Any locality can have any majority language or religion or creed or ritual or tradition. That has nothing to do with the identity of the people of the locality.

Alas!! There are many people who have absolutely no regards for our constitution. They commit the criminal offence of distorting and disrespecting our constitution and thwarting self-claimed identities to the people of India. Calling an Indian by any other name, be it the name of a language or religion, is itself showing disrespect to the very idea of ‘India’. More than a nation, India is a symbol of pluralism, an epitome of a civilization of humanity where all other identities and traditions and rituals and religions have amalgamated into just one identity – that’s of an Indian. No other identity can bear our true identification. The only commonality that ties each and every Indian is this very identity of Indianness, something that the people of the whole world have identified us with forever. For centuries and millennia, the people throughout the world have always found this striking commonality among all of us. It’s not for no reason that we all have been always identified with India or Hindustan or Hindi or Hindu or Sindhu or Indi what so ever similar names irrespective of the fact that we always spoke so many languages and followed so many different traditions forever. If we could retain our identity since time immemorial, why should we change that and identify us with some other names now? Any other identity of an Indian will just lead to violence and nothing else.

Don't Divide Us Further

This is with reference to the recent euphoria about conferring the status of Classical Language to Kannada and Telegu languages.

It's really shocking to see that many so called non-political literary people were involved in demanding classical status for their languages. As if, without the official status the fate and status of these languages would have been questionable. Technically, culturally and emotionally, each and every language in the world is classic in it's own way. The development of a language is perhaps one of the most fascinating things about the human race. Each language shapes up over so many years to express the feelings, emotions, love, technology and above all the culture of a race or creed. This evolution itself qualifies each language, irrespective of it's age and usage, to be classic in it's own unique way. So it really sounds so gross to attribute some special status to a particular language. It's also another way of further dividing our already divided country on another basis.

Linguistically, the present form of any language, be it Tamil or Hindi or anything else, is way different from what it used to be thousand years back. Each language has undergone tremendous changes over the years. Majority of the Indian languages have come from the Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Sino-Tibetan and the Austric group of languages. Both the Dravidian and the Austric groups are much older than the Indo-Aryan group. Apart from Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam, languages with Dravidian origin are still spoken in far off places like Baluchistan (Brahui) and Bengal (Malto). Most of the tribal languages of the Santal, Kol, Bhil, Mundas etc are derived from the Austric family, which is as old as the Dravidian group. Apart from this, most of the modern day major languages of Indo-Aryan group like Bengali, Assamese, Gujarati and Marathi can be traced back to 10th century AD. Manipuri language can be traced back to 3rd century AD. But none of these languages resemble much the primitive forms that existed thousand years back. The fascinating thing is that there have been so much amalgamation between all these languages that it's really hard to isolate the unadulterated nascent forms. This very amalgamation has created, in Tagore's words, the "ocean of the super humans of Bharatavarsha", on the pure banks of which he aspires his mind to arise - "He Mor Chitta, Punya Tirthe Jago Re Dheere / Ei Bharater Mahamanaver Sagar Teere". Let's not speak of Bengali or Tamil or Hindi. Let's realize that we all speak only one language and that's the language of Bharatavarsha. There's no division, there's no special status, there's no rivalry. As mentioned in Upanishads, "Srunvantu Vishve, Amrutanshya Putrah", we, all Indians are the children of immortal bliss. We all are equal and for God's sake, let not the politicians divide us further!!

Thanks & Regards,
Sudipto Das

 

+91-9886067137
http://www.mirafra.com

 

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                                                                               http://www.sudiptodas.com

My grand mother

I've been always waiting for this day to write something about my family. In school we had to write essays on family. I still remember how much I hated all those days. It used to be the most boring thing to do. Days and years have passed and then suddenly I felt the urge to write something about my family. I don't remember what exactly I used to write in the essays back in school. But I'm sure I never wrote what I'm going to write now.

I'd really love to write a novel some day about my family...

 

Let me start with my grand mother, my father's mother, Saraju Bala Das. She had died in 1986, when I was just 13 years old. I never spent much time with her. But I grew up with fascinating stories about her since my childhood days. Her life is one of the most enchanting ones I've ever heard.

She had lost her parents at a very early age and was brought up by her maternal uncle. This part of her life is least known to anyone in my family because perhaps she herself never told anything to anyone. None of her children had ever seen or heard about any of her relatives. The only time that she went to her uncle's home after her marriage was when her uncle had expired. She had taken my eldest aunt, then a toddler, with her and this aunt happens to be the only one who had seen at least a few of my grandmother's people from her maiden life. From the very fact that she was kept illiterate till marriage - and she remained so till her death -  we all could deduce very well that she didn't have a good life with her uncle's family. She was married off to my grandfather, who had been already married twice by then and had four children three of whom were even older than my grandmother at the time of her marriage. The first marriage of my grandfather had been sometime in the early childhood and the first wife had died even before he became an adult. The second wife survived longer and bore the four children. After the death of the second wife people had advised him to marry once again just to have someone to take care of the family. It was an arrangement, that my grandmother's uncle had done in lieu of some financial benefit, that my grandmother got married to Rajendranath Das, my grandfather when she was still in her early teens.

 

My grandfather never had much time to spend with my grandmother. He was a practicing Ayurved and stayed away from home for most of the time. My grandmother adapted herself into his family. All his three daughters, all older than my grandmother and already married with children, did welcome her into the house and called her 'Ma', something which even I remember. Very soon she engrossed herself completely into the various household activities. She became famous for her culinary skills and very soon she used to be invited to cook for the whole village in marriages - something that she kept on doing relentlessly.

Gradually she had six children, my father being the second youngest one. Her kids never got much of her time as she used to be always busy in work. My father was raised by one of her step-sisters, the youngest one from my grandfather's second marriage.

Gradually her kids grew up and got married. My the middle of 1940's the eldest two kids, one son and one daughter were married and settled in Calcutta. The other four kids were still in our ancestral village of Gaila in the Barishal district of present Bangladesh, when it was getting more and more clear that staying in Bangladesh would become difficult in coming years. The political unrest had already begun, communal riots were getting more and more common. People were hearing harrowing stories of Noakhali riots, where Mahatma Gandhi himself had to go in person to calm down tension. Finally when the partition happened it was decided that my father and his elder brother and sister would leave for India for good leaving behind their parents and new born toddler youngest sister.

 

I still remember how many times I wanted to hear each and every details of the last day at Gaila. My uncle, father's elder brother, remembers each and every minute detail of that day even after sixty years. After that fateful day my father and his two siblings never met their mother for the next seventeen years and their father ever. My grandfather had decided to stay back in Bangladesh despite the threat to their lives because he preferred that more than the ignominious life at relatives' place or refugee camps in Calcutta. But he didn't want his kids to risk their lives. But there was no one to take the three young kids - my father five years old, his elder brother and sister twelve and nine years old respectively - to Calcutta. So finally they sailed off on their own, banking just on their fates, to India on an eventful and never ending journey on steamers and trains amidst all unknown and hostile people and fear of getting killed anytime. I believe my father was too young to understand the enormity of the events. My uncle had a much tough time because he knew where they were headed. He knew very well that he might not see his parents ever in his life. At the tender age of twelve my uncle seemed to grow up a hundred years just in a few days.

 

The days in Calcutta were full of hardship but filled with life and hope. The next decade, when India was also struggling through its infancy after birth, shaped the life of my father and his siblings. Away from their home and parents, they were raised by their elder sisters. Finally by the mid sixties my father had become an engineer from Jadavpur University and his elder brother joined the shipping corporation in Calcutta. That was when my grandfather had expired and my grandmother came to Calcutta along with her youngest daughter. My father saw his mother and sister after almost eighteen years. It's beyond my imagination how my father would have felt when he met his mother after so long. I never asked him about this. Neither did he ever say anything about the day.

 

After that my grandmother survived twenty more years, saw each of her kids getting married and settled in life. She had seen all of her grand-sons and grand-daughters and also a few great-grand-sons and great-grand-daughters in her lifetime.

Till the last day she remained illiterate. But she never lacked any maturity. All her kids used to always seek her advises in most of the family matters till the last day of her life. Even I never felt that she couldn't write her own name. She knew most of the mythological stories to the finest details. She used to enthrall us with so many stories with moral values that I kept on wondering what actually she would have lacked in not getting a formal education.