Not this time!

From whatever I have been hearing from people I have invariably been discussing the last few days' events with, I think that Mr. Joshi has hit the nail on the head with the following:

The night when I was almost a hostage

This is going to be one long post!

Even as I write this, two floors of the Oberoi Hotel Towers are on fire and explosions follow gunshots in what can perhaps be a final assault by the security forces aimed at flushing out terrorists holed up inside the Trident-Oberoi hotels and probably holding hundreds of people hostage.

As is a usual pattern now, I was in office last night with three other colleagues of mine, working on an important client presentation to have happened today and watching the fifth one-day cricket match between India and England. As we were celebrating yet another Indian victory and watching the post match presentation ceremony, Nitin got a call from his father asking him to take care while returning home as news channels started carrying the first reports of indiscriminate firing at the Mumbai CST railway station.

We were just debating if we should switch channels and watch some news when Ashish heard some shouting outside. As we ran towards the windows of our 9th floor office, we could clearly hear sounds of gunfire and see sparks flying in the building right across the road. This building opposite our office building is, of course, the now immensely-in-news Oberoi Hotel. It was immensely confusing as people started calling us talking about firing and bomb explosions in other parts of South Bombay while we, a bit ahead of the news, were experiencing something ourselves.

It was just a matter of time when we could see smoke rising through the hotel building, and filling the rooms overlooking our building. We watched in alarm as people broke open the window glass and were hanging out the window ledge in an attempt to escape the black smoke that could be seen enveloping the entire building. There were some people who broke these windows in panic and there were others (like the one I saw) very calmly going about his business of talking on the phone as he picked up a chair and struck the window pane with it. I might just have seen a terrorist!!!

As events started unfolding at a furious pace one after the other, the exclamations only grew louder. As we watched with open mouths, we heard an immensely loud sound and our building shook. Scared for our lives, concern fuelled a little more by the now-panicky voice of Ashish, the four of us (I, Ashish, Nitin, and Sameer) rushed to the first floor of our building just in case we had to move out of the building in a hurry. On our way down, we saw some people sitting in the lobby of Kotak Investment Bank watching the news with as much interest and concern as was almost flowing through our veins.

As we reached the first floor and were peering through the window on the side overlooking Oberoi's, we started receiving calls from everyone from family members to colleagues to the senior most of management (what with Ashish being very senior in the company, of course) as the news finally broke on news channels.

Mumbai was under siege as terrorists attacked some 12 centres, mostly in and around South Bombay. There was indiscriminate firing, and along with it numerous bomb and grenade explosions that rocked the city, killing and maiming people and the entire Government machinery.

I know that I should be probably ashamed of myself but I was actually enjoying the entire event, revelling in the undercurrents of uncertainty, fear, and unpredictability. The scene was no different for the others as all of us switched between watching the TV and looking across the road peering out of tinted glass windows and finally, having a laugh at how outdated the news channels were. As people hung out at window ledges, using white clothes as distress signals, some channel carried a report branding them as terrorists. Pray, why will terrorists hang out of window ledges carrying white distress signals?

As night progressed, police forces enveloped the hotel, spreading across the entire area and cordoning off all nearby buildings including ours. The army moved in at about 3 in the night but nothing was really happening except the incessant firing and occasional explosions that we could prominently hear. Our hunger satisfied by raiding the office canteen, we sat around, resigned to our fate but just as one of us dozed off looking at the same video footage repeated multiple times, we were disturbed by yet another round of firing or yet another explosion.

Things were fast getting out of control and all the fun and excitement had given way to this nagging fear at the back of our minds. Some of the guys went into a panic mode and that was not helping either. I could almost feel my feet shaking every time I went into the room facing the Oberoi's. On one of these visits to check the situation outside, I could see someone strolling on the ledge on the topmost floor, carrying something that appeared like a torch (and perhaps a gun as well). On another, I could see (or imagine?) snipers hiding in the NCPA building alongside. As day broke, we thought it was probably just the tail lights of cars reflecting in the darkness but as per latest reports, snipers actually opened fire on the Oberoi's and guess what, they were firing from the NCPA.

The whole night had passed and the terrorists were still there holding up and the army all across, trying to get in the building in the best possible manner. In the early morning light, things were only prophesising the doom to follow. As we came down to talk to the security guards of our buildings, we could see the army guys in the compound and the entire area seemed to have been converted into a military cantonment. As we asked permission to leave, we were not prepared in the least for the way we would be led out of the back door and allowed to leave.

Sunil, my driver, after having spent the entire night on the streets on the Marine Drive in the middle of action had managed to get the car out by that time. As we rushed out to join him and started getting as far as possible from the site, he recounted his story of how a grenade exploded right in front of him, shaking the cars around, including the one he was sitting in. Dropping Nitin and Sameer en route, I was just wondering if things could very well have been closer and how God was kind to spare me the agony that so many others faced.

Three images will always remain in my memory reminding me of the night when I was almost a hostage, one of that guy breaking the Oberoi's window pane so coldly, the other of the guy strolling on the top floor window ledge and the third of people waving white flags in exasperation, piteously asking for help. God has been kind, may He bless all those affected by this tragedy and those who caused it.

Touching...

The microcosm of existence that we have got accustomed to prevents any infiltration from events, people, and issues outside our domain of immediate concern. However, there still are certain things that touch you in a way different from others, perhaps this too because it puts your very survival under some sort of risk. Floods, earthquakes, famine and starvation, and in effect anything that adds to the misery of the human populace in general strikes an emotional chord somewhere. It probably does nothing more than that due to the high unpredictability associated with these events. We typically feel that since we do not have control over such an event happening, we are somehow less susceptible to being in the midst of something like this.

The reason why a Bhuj earthquake or a Tamil Nadu tsunami was just another newspaper front page for most of us was because it would have been a little far fetched to imagine that the same could happen to us sitting in Delhi or Mumbai the very next day. However, what is not so distant is what has been happening over the last few months in the name of religion and ethnicity. With things coming to such a pass that every Muslim colony, every bearded face, and every long kurta is being viewed with suspicion, it is difficult, nay impossible to stay aloof and not have an opinion or at least, a view.

Every weekend spent in a mall, a cinema, even an inconsequential market seems to be another weekend of survival. It is no longer the tsunami that can play havoc only with coastal towns, it is no longer the earthquake that can hit only geologically unstable areas, it is no longer the famine and floods that have been known to affect certain geographies of the country, it is something much more sinister and something much closer. It can happen to any city in the country, any day (even tomorrow or for that matter, an hour later) at any place (in the city center or for that matter, next to your home/office affecting you and your loved ones).

Real lives have been lost, hopes shattered and dreams brought to a cruel full stop in the face of these so called crude bombs that have plagued the metropolitan landscape of our country. Whether it is a Bangalore, a Delhi, or even a relatively less strategic Jaipur, the method behind this madness is very scary, to say the least. This method begets the question that what, if anything, has given rise to minds so focused on acts so shameful and denigrating, from the point of view of any religion that practices good over evil.

If you ask this question to the fundamentalist, the only answer you can expect to get is that the minority Muslim community never belonged. But what, pray, is the reason for this, you ask, and you remain unanswered because no one is bothered to go that deep. It is not that deep, either, if you come to look at it. It is the insecurity that has given rise to some people, whether belonging to the Muslim community or to any other downtrodden section of the society (the naxalites, the Tamil tigers, the ULFA, etc), to take up arms and do unto others what they do not want to be done unto them.

What makes them blow little children to pieces is, however unexplainable it may seem, the insecurity that their voices are not going to be heard, the insecurity that their families are not safe, the insecurity that they will be treated differently, the insecurity that they will always be biased against, the insecurity that has grown because of the general lack of means, education, and of course, by the fundamentalist politics that goes on in the name of reviving the mainstream.

Till the time such insecurity remains, till the time the light of welfare and more importantly, education reaches the darkest corners of each and every community, we can not hope to come out of this. Till the time such happens, all we can do is pray to the Almighty to soothe the hurt and those who have hurt and hopefully, there will be light. Even after we do see light, however, there may be a different problem, the problem of plenty leading to US style shootouts but hopefully, they would be more dispersed, subject to restrictions that our culture imposes on us, and most importantly, these once in a blue moon kind of events will probably shake the entire mechanism of Government and get handled in the course of maintenance of general law and order.

Let us do something different this midnight hour

Long years ago, we made a tryst with destiny and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially.

Fifty eight years ago, as Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru spoke these golden words, and declared India independent at the stroke of the midnight hour, he would not have even imagined that the very national borders that were sacred to him and his contemporaries will start to lose meaning only half a century later. But that is precisely what is happening and precisely what should be happening.

As I stood in the administrative block grounds staring proudly at the Tricolor and listening to Rohit speak of the wars we still need to fight before becoming truly independent, I realized that perhaps there is another basic thing that we are all ignoring in the blinding light of passion and nationalism that a National Festival like the Independence Day fills us with. Perhaps we choose to conveniently ignore on such occasions that it is no longer about your country and my country, it is no longer about your progress or our progress...it is our world, our progress now.

Perhaps it is not realistic to talk about the principles of Vasudhaev Kutumbakam right now, with the super power in US rearing its ugly head every now and then to dominate and crush those constrained by geographies that are not as powerful. Perhaps it does not make sense to talk about boundarylessness with wars being fought on the slightest of pretexts and tensions simmering between borders, including our own. Perhaps it is not wise to imagine a world where humans, as a specie, will rise together and pursue their collective dreams, fight their common demons.

However, this is what the reality is going to be like, pretty soon. With the enemies that we are fighting against making their real faces visible, the realization is slowly creeping in that Darwin's theory of survival of the fittest is not as simple as fighting against your fellow beings if you need to produce your offspring and ensure its and your survival. We have to fight much more...illiteracy, poverty, ignorance, sickness, diseases, terrorism, immorality, crime, and much more if we are to survive. There is little time on our hands with the threats of an energy-less, resource-constrained, hard-winged religious, communal, and regional, nuclear anarchy looming right ahead.

The only way we can fight all this, as most of us have already come to accept, and others will do in the years to come if Darwin's evolution theory is to hold any water, is to stop giving so much importance to national borders and work towards fighting these evils plaguing our future collectively. We need to build upon our dreams and not live in the past by fighting over strips of land, drops of oceans, and breathfuls of air.

We do appreciate what the freedom fighters did for us at that stroke of midnight hour when the whole world slept and India awoke to light and freedom. We do realize the contribution they made by getting us the right to be free but all the same, the time has come to not just redeem but redefine and then redeem the pledge that they made...to let the whole world awake to light and freedom together... let none sleep this midnight, let all get up, arise, fight and be counted.