From the Commander’s Window
on December 3, 2008
Kartikey Sehgal
[The author visits the sites affected by terror and meets a Naval Officer.]
More about the incident: One, Two, Three
“I could hear the blasts all night long. I shut the windows and bolted the doors. After all, they had just passed the lanes near my home. They could have come to this building and taken entire residents as hostages.”
She is the wife of an Indian Naval Commander who missed her husband on the night terrorists attacked Mumbai at various places.
Her home falls on the route that the terrorists may have taken on their route to the Taj and café Leopold. Her husband is candid about the public outrage about the attacks.
“Just because it’s the Taj,” he pauses and adds calmly, “had it been just the C.S.T, the public would have reacted softly.”
He is fortunate that the unarmed building guard was not sighted and attacked by the gunmen. As I stepped into the building, the guard stopped me for inspection. He was wearing a bullet-proof jacket and carrying a loaded machine gun. His name is Surya Pratap Singh.
“I was given the jacket and the gun after the Taj Mahal and Trident-Oberoi siege. Earlier, I stood guard without a revolver.”
Surya Pratap is determined as he tells me about his anger. “How long will we see this madness? The people will protest today and tomorrow, politicians will start dividing the people on regional and religious grounds.”
Surya Pratap is despondent about politicians.
“We must attack the militant camps in Pakistan.”
A Police guard stopped me from going near hotel Taj Mahal.
“The President is coming.”
I waded through the traffic and felt that I am a better person to be near this iconic structure than any politician.
Fortunately, the President had spared Oberoi-Trident any such embarrassment and allowed the citizens to marvel at the destruction. While the severely damaged portions were covered by the police, the people could watch broken windows and shattered glasses.
“I wonder if there is anybody upstairs and how that person must be feeling about Mumbai looking down from there,” said a lady while making photographs with her mobile camera.
I don’t know about the people up there, but somebody in the sky was surely smiling at the city. A sign of change? Perhaps. Perhaps not.
A smile formed by two stars and the moon
Does anybody stay here?
Broken Windows of Oberoi
Lone Tower of Taj
Suddenly Armed
From the Commander’s Window. Route to Terror?
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Comments
Good, sensitive post.
But nothing has changed, I feel.
We have perfected the act of blaming others, the stock of politicians was always low- so we find it easier to be indignant at the politician.
It leaves the general public free from any responsibility, which we have always shirked.
On December 2 Times of India front page, there is a photo of Balasaheb Borkar who travelled by train to CST with his licensed revolver. He went through the metal detectors placed at different exit and entry points. Not once was he questioned by the police. When he asked the police why he was not detected, he got the reply that the police could not hear the beeps from the metal detector.
And today comes the shocking news in the same paper that one week after the outrage, railway police have recovered a 8.5 kg RDX bomb kept by the terrorists in the parcel room. It seems the police have not bothered to ‘sanitise’ the CST.
The politicians can only give a sense of direction- they have appallingly failed at that. But is there nothing the public can do?
People have to realize their responsibility. Even with the best kind of leadership, there is nothing much we can do when there is this kind of take-it-easy-slackness.
[Reply]
@Baskar
Honesty. Is honesty a virtue or is it a part of humans, as natural as breathing?
Whatever we shirk is called an ideal by the society.
[Reply]