Former Herald Courier Copy Editor Reports From Mumbai

BY DEVIKA PATEL
SPECIAL TO HERALD COURIER

MUMBAI, India – I was born in Mumbai but grew up in the United States, so Wednesday night’s attack on Americans by Indians in my birth city was particularly wrenching, since I felt like I was straddling both sides of the conflict.

My husband, who had to stay behind in Tennessee for work, heard of the attack and phoned me in the middle of the night, my time, to ensure I had not been hurt. My U.S. passport put me at risk, and although I was safe in my family’s home, the attack sites were too close for comfort, near enough to leave me feeling shell-shocked.

Bombay, as many Indians still call the city, is the financial and entertainment capital of India. The country’s stock exchange is housed here, and Bollywood movies, India’s best-known export, are filmed just outside the city.

It’s a metro similar to New York, with residents as cosmopolitan and sophisticated as any you’d find in London, Rome or Paris. It boasts an international airport, which greets daily nonstop flights from New York every day. Many visitors beginning their tours of India often fly into Bombay before traveling on to sightsee in Agra, home to the famous Taj Mahal (the building, not the hotel that was attacked), to New Delhi, the nation’s capital, or to Bangalore, where many U.S. companies now have offices. So it was a logical city for the gunmen to choose if they were singling out our citizens.

The Bombay hotels targeted by the attackers, the Taj Mahal and the Oberoi, are five-star resorts, with room rates starting at more than $300 per night. The attackers knew who they wanted, specifically British and American citizens, and picked these locations knowing that they would be populated mostly by foreigners. Leopold’s, a trendy restaurant also chosen for attack, has been an institution in Bombay since the 1960s. It caters mostly to expats, and serves drinks until dawn. Also included was the railway station, where grenades shook the centuries-old building that had been built during the British Raj.

The reasons behind the attack initially were unclear, but there was certainly a plan in place. The hotels, restaurant and other areas the gunmen chose were spread across the city, implying that their actions had been carefully thought out before being implemented. Due to traffic congestion, it often can take two hours or longer to travel the city’s length, and Wednesday night’s siege, attributed to an Islamist group called Deccan Mujahideen, was not limited to one isolated area of the city. The majority of the attacks, however, took place in south Bombay, one of the oldest parts of the city and where most of its landmarks and monuments stand.

The coordinated onslaught continued into early Thursday and as dawn approached, victims were being brought to various hospitals around town. Some news reports say that two hospitals were attacked by gunfire as well, and victims apparently weren’t limited to just U.S. and British citizens. The Taj Mahal Hotel, which overlooks the waters of the Arabian Sea, was burning from explosions as firefighters tried to knock down the flames. I had eaten lunch there just two weeks ago.

By morning, the police had shot several of the militants, and the government had sent troops to the hotels, hoping to take back control of the city. Many guests had been evacuated, but far more of them were trapped inside.

During the worst of the explosions, I was reminded of Sept. 11, when New York, the city where I grew up, also had fallen prey to terrorism. Although I don’t consider Bombay my home, and the onslaught was far less than what we experienced in the U.S. on 9/11, the synchronicity of the offensive, the outrageous assault against civilians and the sheer chaos on the streets brought back the same anger, frustration and fear that I had felt seven years ago when my hometown was under attack.

Thousands of miles and several time zones away from Manhattan, it still feels like a personal affront. They were seeking to kill Americans, who knows why, and the attacks weren’t in Baghdad or Kabul, where we expect large-scale violence. These hostile acts drove home what I should have realized years ago: that the wars we’re fighting have no frontier. Americans are in danger wherever we go.

Devika Patel is a former copy editor at the Bristol Herald Courier and lives in Gray, Tenn.