Mumbai

The 2008 terrorist attacks on Mumbai were India’s 11th September, according to the press. Today, the megacity has almost – but just almost – returned to normal.

It was a day like any other. Sukhada Tatke was at work at the editorial offices of the Times of India. The working day was coming to a close and it was almost time to press proof the next day’s issue. She called her mother to say she’d be coming home soon; she just wanted a bite to eat, so went to the canteen. After returning to her workplace on the third floor at 10:12 pm, she sees a photographer and the secretary of the editor-in-chief jumping about in excitement. They talk of shots heard at the railway station right across from the press building, and ask Sukhada to take a look at what is happening. She reaches platform one, where she observes frightened police officers and civilians fleeing. Get out of here! She hears shots and they are getting louder. A grenade explodes. A week later she writes of her experiences, “Queen Victoria station wears a white shroud that will soon be coloured red.” She runs back to the office and hides with her colleagues under the windows with the venetian blinds. She saw two of the attackers and the baby-face of the one bristling with self-confidence.

It was 26 November 2008 in Mumbai, the day described by the papers as India’s 11th September. The attacks in Mumbai left 239 injured and 174 dead. Bombs exploded, people were shot and many were taken hostage. Later it was learned that a terrorist group called Deccan Mujahedeen was allegedly behind the attacks. It is no longer important today, but the attacks are. Ten different places in the city were targeted including the famous Taj Mahal Palace & Tower Hotel, the tourists’ Café Leopold and Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, formerly called Victoria Terminus and a world heritage site.

Hardly any conversation goes without mention of this sad chapter in the city’s history. It remains present and anyone you meet and with whom you go beyond the small talk of the hot weather at some point will mention “26/11” or 26th November 2008.

I pass by many of the places that were on the title pages of the newspaper that day, like the Taj Mahal Hotel where the hostages were held captive.

It is an early morning in Café Leopold, the tourists’ pub in the Colaba district of the old town. A couple of backpackers are breakfasting at the next table, the fans struggle to cool the hot air right below the ceiling. Six police officers stand guard at the door and a security officer inspects every bag. The guests impassively allow the controls. It is the everyday routine, which will never be the same.

It began in the Leopold. “It was only two minutes,” the proprietor Farhang Jehani tells me, “but it seemed like two hours.” Two men detonated a hand grenade and fired shots. “120 shots in two minutes,” Jehani says and shows me the many bullet holes in the walls, a burst mirror, a hole hidden by a picture. There is a hollow under a table left by the hand grenade. He does not want to cement over remembrance of the day, not gloss it out or paint it over. Seven people died here and eleven were injured. The perpetrators then moved on to the Taj Mahal Hotel, perhaps five zigzag minutes away at most.

Here, the memory of the attacks is more subtle than at the Leopold. Luxury-pampered hotel guests relax on comfortable sofas in the lobby. Japanese businesswomen flit past and a large Muslim family is checking in. The air bears a balmy scent. A marble tablet stands next to the waterfall in the conservatory with the names of the victims engraved on it.

Whoever wishes to enter the Taj must pass through security controls. It is routine here. Approximately 40 percent of the building was destroyed and another 20 percent damaged. The tower building was reopened after only 25 days and guests checked in from around the world. “We really received a lot of support,” says Nikhila Palat, the Taj press officer. Last summer the entire building reopened on India’s Independence Day. “Positive memories of the building are always anchored in the people’s hearts,” Palat tells me and I believe her, marvelling at the prominent guest list of names such as Barack Obama, John Lennon and Nicolas Sarkozy. Today almost everything is business as usual, says Palat, adding, “That is simply the spirit of Mumbai. We won’t let it get us down.”

A month ago a watch was found in Victoria Terminus that had stopped at seven minutes before ten when a bullet broke the crystal and became lodged inside. It was on 26 November 2008. Somehow, it was the beginning of a new era when everyday life continued. Somehow.