In Mumbai
THE Indian Airlines flight to Mumbai was nearly empty and Mumbai’s Santa Cruz domestic airport wore a deserted look as I landed on Thursday afternoon, nearly 18 hours after a group of armed terrorists had attacked nearly a dozen locations in the city and took several hostages in two hotels and a Jewish residential complex.
I had to check into a hotel first, dump my stroller and head for the scene of action, all in a 5 square km area in South Mumbai. The airport is at the northern end of the teeming city. Time was of essence, considering that Singapore is two and a half hours ahead of India.
The few taxis at the airport refused to take me to south Mumbai because there is a curfew there. I check into a hotel a few kilometres from the airport and ask for a hotel cab to take me to Taj Mahal hotel, one of the hotels under terror siege.
"There’s trouble there, sir. It is dangerous. There is still firing going on. We would advice you to remain in the hotel," the receptionist said.
I have to be there, I insist and tell him about my profession – where no sane person wants to go, journalists do.
"It will take one and a half to two hours to cross the city," a local journalist colleague observes when I tell him where my hotel is located. Mumbai is not my town, but in this profession you learn to find your bearings quickly and overcome logistical problems.
I venture out of the hotel and manage to get a cab to take me to the "closest point" to Malabar Hotel. The roads are deserted and the 1990 model Premier Padmini Fiat flies like a Formula One car, creating as much, if not more, noise.
"What do these fellows get by killing so many innocent people?" says the driver, Abdul Majeed, a Muslim, after he learned the purpose of my visit to the curfew-bound area. "These are misguided young men. The government should talk to them and find out what they want."
He drops me near a police barricade. I have to trek nearly two kilometres to reach the Taj and flash my press card half a dozen times before the policemen posted at various points lets me through.
The Taj, a sprawling, opulent hotel with its distinctive onion domes and pointed archways, was built in 1903 by Indian businessman Jamsetji Tata in an act of defiance after he was turned away by some fashionable Mumbai hotels of that time because they admitted only the colonial British.
The hotel overlooks the Arabian Sea and is close to the Gate of India, built to commemorate the visit to India of King George and Queen Mary in 1928. Ironically, the terrorists, who were holding hostages at the Taj and other places had also arrived by sea and landed somewhere near, according to police.
"From maharajas and princes to various kings, presidents, CEOs and entertainers, the Taj has played the perfect host," says the Taj website.
By the time, I reach the spot, the conflagration that had engulfed a part of the hotel had been put out by the fire brigade after battling the flames for several hours. There are scores of journalists of all nationalities who had converged on the spot to cover the hostage drama. Dozens of TV cameras were trained on the hotel to cover every second of the unfolding drama. They have been staking out there since the previous night and many looked tired.
Suddenly, there is a burst of gunfire heard from the hotel and I hope that the spot where we were is beyond the firing range of weapons the terrorists were armed with.
I decide to head towards Oberoi, the second hotel where the terrorists had taken hostages. If Taj Mahal exudes the old world charm, Oberoi-Trident Tower is a fixture of the arriviste, modern, hep, the last word in luxury.
There again, a large number of journalists were staking out, recording every movement, the sounds of automatic gunfire, explosions. I join them.
The police had barricaded all approaches to the hotel and have to wield their long sticks to chase away curious onlookers, including men, women and children, who had come in droves as if it was a picnic spot.
Among the unspecified number of guests taken hostages in Oberoi is Singaporean lawyer Lo Hwei Yen, who, it was announced the next day, was among some 30 innocent victims of terrorist violence.
Even as I stand there, a call comes from a colleague out at the Taj. A terrorist lobbed a grenade from a second-floor window at the journalists and four scribes sustained shrapnel injuries.
At both places, senior army or police officials come out occasionally and brief the news hungry media about the progress of the mopping up operations by the National Security Guard commandos, which only increases the media’s appetite for more information.
There is a commotion every time a group of guests are rescued by the National Security Commandos and whisked away in waiting vehicles. Every relative of the hostages waiting outside anxiously is interviewed.
"I think you people are going overboard. How can you subject husbands and wives, sons and daughters about what they felt about the loss of their dear ones," says a man on discovering that I’m a scribe.
"The 24-hour TV news channels are the worst," he said.
"Stop viewing them then," I say to him as I go looking for a taxi that would take me back to the hotel, planning the strategy for next day’s coverage.