The strange case of Bushlove in India

The strangest thing happened to me in my recent visit to India-- I found myself in a situation where my friends argued that Bush had been better for India than Obama could be ! Finding the logic and emotion so out of wack with my own thinking, I sought out a rational, perceptive observer and writer on the Indian scene for his explanation of this strange phenomenon. Rahul Singh who has been a journalist all his life and edited most of India's newspapers at different points in his working life, sought to explain it thus " There were three major reasons for this Bush adulation in India at the present time- one was clearly his strong and consistent support for the Indo nuclear deal. A second little recognized reason was that Bush eliminated the Taliban in Afghanistan converting what had been a Pakistan supporting regime into one that was clearly pro indian." A third reason, according to him, was the opening up of the Indian economy in the nineties where the Indian middle class found both voice and opportunity denied them in the earlier socialist oriented regimes. Their children could freely move to the US for a better life and they felt that Bush had stood against the protectionist tendencies in the US and was an ardent free trader. (He tried to argue that the removal of Saddam Hussein was another reason for the outpouring of support for Bush in the polls, but this was clearly not one rationale I could accept.)

It was interesting that the Indian midde class, was quite willing to suspend all judgement on moral issues - on subversion of the constitution in the US, Bush's policy of preemption, imprisonment without due process, denial of the Geneva convention, Abu Ghraib etc-- simply for the economic benefits that the Bush regime ostensibly had provided the Indian polity- though even that was questionable. After all the opening up of the economy predated Bush, the visa regime was more the doing of Clinton presidency and the Indo nuclear deal had plenty of opponents who were sure that it would provide India little technology and even less secuirity. They argued , correctly, that the US had not developed any technology for nuclear power plants since the last such plant was built in the US three decades ago and they had found no breakthroughs on the most vexing problem of nuclear waste disposal. And as for the removal of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the taliban were back with a vengeance and not only in Afghanistan but also Pakistan next door, thanks to a mishandled war and a diversion of resources to Iraq. So while the middle class waxed eloquent on the corruption and incompetence of the Indian government, they seemed much less disturbed by the Bush era of greed, corruption and incompetence or the fact that Bush had managed to drive the world economy into a deep deep hole which would not only impact the Indian economy in the short term but also in the long term. It also seemed clear that in late January, the Indian middle class had not yet grasped the degree of financial disruption that US recession would cause in the Indian economy.

Perhaps as the full measure of the tragedy of the Bush era becomes clearer, this Indian public opinion will change as well.

Why we came back to Trident

It was about two months ago that my wife and I were in the Trident hotel in Mumbai when the terrorists struck and we were held hostage for two days in our room. We were finally rescued on Friday, November 28 and discovered the mayhem and murder outside our doors that had taken place-- over 31 people had been killed by the terrorists including 11 staff of the hotel. We were glad to return to our placid life in the US but when an opportunity came in January this year to return to India we grabbed at it. All our family and friends were aghast warning us of the uncertain situation in the country with the possibility of more such incidents and the possibility of war with Pakistan. When we said that during this trip we would be in Mumbai for a few days, our daughter and son were furious that we would even consider such a foolish journey and there were rumblings and murmuring from my daughter who was visiting us from her perch in New York which included words such as " insane", " old age"," I give up " etc. I thought it wise not to mention that it was our plan to return to our room in the Trident hotel where we had survived the crisis ! Why did we want to return to the Trident hotel and to our room ? I tried to explain this to my children but it is always difficult to explain the rationale of your actions to your children- so it was when they were young and so it remains even though they are grown up and busy with their own lives. On the other hand, parents tend to underestimate the intensity of passion and emotion of their young.

When the invitation came to return to Mumbai for a series of seminars in january, truth be told, I hesitated a bit. And then I realized that this hesitation was exactly what the terrorists were seeking. The objective of the terrorists were clear- to create mayhem, disrupt the commercial life of India's premier city, strike terror in its inhabitants and force people to alter the tenor of their lives. We needed to respond to that both individually and collectively. As Burke had said two centuries ago "The only thing necessary for the triumph [of evil] is for good men to do nothing". There were three reasons why we decided to return but the first was simple defiance. We refuse to be intimidated by terrorists and were damned if we would allow random jihadis to dictate the direction of our lives. So our journey back was a small and perhaps insignificant gesture to say that terrorists would not dictate our lives.

A second reason was gratitude.The staff in the hotel and various other people connected with the hotel had rallied to our aid during the seige and we needed to thank them. The hotel staff in particular had been brave and couregous and considerate in looking after the residents. They merited all our gratitude. And we also wanted to stay in the hotel whose occupancy had dropped by 50% after the attack and was suffering a lack of guests. Of course going back to our old room was simply a gesture !

And thirdly, it was and is a beautiful hotel and our room overlooked the peaceful bay and we were pampered by the staff on our return. They had cleaned up the entire floor and we were the sole occupants of the floor during our stay !
There was massive secuirity around the hotel including a permenent army contingent on duty outside and we never felt safer.

Who is Obama ?

During the presidential election, the republicans ran a campaign asking " who is the real Obama"? It was a curious question given that Obama had written an autobiography at the age of 35 and another laying out his political philosophy a decade later. Both were works of incredible power and beauty in their lyricism, their integrity and their openness. Anyone seeking to understand who Obama is needs to start with these two books - " Dreams from my father" and " The audacity of hope" because it reveals him in his own words.

Yet as he takes office as the President of the USA, it would be useful to examine what he will do as president.One observer-- Andrew Sullivan-- has an astute summary that I find very convincing..

"……Obama has an old soul’s perspective and an intellectually secure man’s confidence. From the shallow brittleness of George W Bush to the supple strength of Obama is a revolution in temperament and style not seen since Jimmy Carter gave way to Ronald Reagan 28 years ago. It signals the kind of administration that now looms before us: a conciliatory, inclusive, pragmatic form of liberalism. It is a liberalism eager to learn from the insights of conservatives, and it is pioneered by a president-elect shrewd enough to know that generosity of spirit means more leverage and influence, not less. ..The goal, it now seems clear, is what some deduced many months ago: Obama wants to become the leader of an American version of the national governments that Britain relied on in the depths of the last Great Depression.

Take a few largely symbolic things that Obama has done since November 4. He gave his chief rival and fierce competitor, Hillary Clinton, the biggest job in his government. He reached out to John McCain, his opponent in the autumn campaign, and will hold a dinner in McCain’s honor soon. He asked a powerful evangelical voice, Rick Warren, to give the inaugural invocation. Last week he dined with a group of Republican columnists who endorsed his opponent. .. At the Pentagon, Obama has asked Bush’s appointee, Robert Gates, to stay on. He asked Mark Dybul, Bush’s only openly gay appointee, to remain as global Aids co-ordinator. ….Last spring he faced his biggest crisis — the exploitation by the Republican right of his incendiary former pastor Jeremiah Wright, a man whose penchant for polarization was pathological. At a moment of extreme emotion and political peril, Obama found a way to give a speech that remains the greatest of recent times, to remind Americans of their complex and painful racial past, and not to condescend or cavil. The intellectual achievement of the speech was impressive enough — sufficient to provoke Garry Wills, the Lincoln scholar, to compare it to the Gettysburg address. That Obama wrote and delivered it as he heard in his ears every racial stereotype that had pummeled his psyche for his entire life bespoke an emotional maturity that still shocks.

… there is something real about this quality that is not simply a projection of so many hopes. At several points in the gut-wrenching emotional rollercoaster of last year he simply disappeared alone into a hotel room for a few minutes to gather his thoughts and restrain his feelings. It was this emotional balance and temperamental maturity that led many to see him as a president long before it ever became feasible or even imaginable.

... Obama’s immediate and most pressing crisis is a global economy teetering on the edge. It is also a resilient banking crisis in the US that has yet to resolve itself and a collapse in demand that threatens to turn a recession into something much darker. Worse, the current budget outlook would make even Bush Republicans blanch — trillions in deficits as far as the eye can see and a record national debt (outside the second world war). ..The sheer extent of the damage that the outgoing president has done to American and global financial balance is hard to overstate. He spent like a trust-fund baby who would never have to balance the books or earn a living. He made the entitlement crisis worse by adding a massive new healthcare programme for the elderly in a naked attempt to win Florida for ever. Because of an ideological insistence on partial privatisation, desperately needed reform of social security ended in miserable failure. Trillions of dollars were poured into a war against Iraq waged on the basis of a WMD threat that didn’t exist.

Obama’s response has been to turn not to ideologues but to the smartest economic team he could find. His Treasury secretary, Tim Geithner, was integral to the Bush administration’s response to the crisis; no one doubts that Larry Summers, incoming head of the National Economic Council, is one of the sharpest economic minds on the planet. ..The policy, or what we are beginning to glimpse of it, is just as bipartisan. There will be a big increase in infrastructure projects, aimed at maximal impact on growth. But there will also be tax cuts for the middle class and a bevy of Republican-friendly business tax breaks to maximise the boost to demand. The tax hikes for the very wealthy — the only real economic difference between Obama and McCain last autumn — will not happen. No one wants to suck any money out of the spending economy right now for any reason. ..The most striking news of the past week is a strong indication that Obama will unveil a very tough spending budget, will tackle new financial regulations early and will put real reform of the entitlement state on the table. In some ways, he has no choice. Given America’s current level of public and private debt, the president-elect cannot borrow another few trillion in a few years without reassuring global markets that there is a long-term prospect for American fiscal balance.

…In foreign policy, the same pragmatism abounds. Although withdrawal of troops from Iraq will occur, Obama knows all too well that the current lull in sectarian violence is extremely fragile and that the power vacuum left by withdrawal could spark a new civil or regional war. So expect some foot-dragging.

On Afghanistan, the president-elect is too shrewd to raise the kind of utopian expectations of democracy invoked so glibly by Bush. He plans to increase troop levels there but is reconciled to the fact that the best that can be hoped for is prevention or eradication of terrorist training camps that could directly hurt Americans.

On detention, interrogation and rendition, Obama has also been hemmed in by the Bush legacy. On torture, Obama is clear enough. The appointment of a heavyweight enemy of torture, Leon Panetta, to the CIA, and of a civil libertarian, Dawn Johnsen, in the critical role as head of the White House’s Office of Legal Counsel, is as blunt a signal as any new president could send that the days of Bush and Dick Cheney are over. Among Obama’s first moves will be an executive order closing the torture and detention camp at Guantanamo.

..Obama also understands that restoring America’s moral standing on the torture question could actually give the US government a little more leeway on detention and rendition. If the world knows that maltreatment won’t happen, some sane, constitutional and legal provisions for detention without charge could be constructed on the British model. The rationale is not torturing for “intelligence” but protecting the public while evidence is searched for and doubt remains. ..

Will there be prosecutions for war crimes? Obama will not embrace that as a programme. But he is a former president of the Harvard Law Review and a teacher of constitutional law. If evidence of war crimes emerges, he will not prevent his attorney-general from prosecuting, as he must. The law grinds on — and as the Bush torture era recedes, my bet is that it will grind rather relentlessly.

What concerns Obama most of all is the Bush assertion of inherent constitutional powers to designate any human being — citizen or non-citizen, in America or anywhere else — as an “enemy combatant” and to detain them indefinitely without trial and torture them at will. This, the president-elect fully understands, is in effect the abolition of the constitution. He will take an oath on Tuesday to protect that constitution, not eviscerate it in the tradition of his predecessor.

On Israel, perhaps, we will see the biggest shift. Obama has so far been preternaturally silent on the Gaza bombardment, in deference to the “one president at a time” mantra and because he knows full well that if he were not about to become president, the Israelis would not have launched their attack. Obama does not want to get into a war of words with Israel before he even takes office, but he shows every sign of tackling the Middle East the way he has defused America’s culture wars. He will try to prick the passion and lay out a rational solution. We all know the contours of the deal that the Israelis and the Palestinians are too politically divided and weak to agree to: a two-state compromise, a roll-back of settlements, an international force on the border with the West Bank, a cessation of terrorism, and financial compensation for displaced Palestinians seeking a right of return to Israel’s pre-1967 borders. Still, if any fight could remain totally immune to Obama’s moderation, it is surely the Israeli-Palestinian death match. ..

… he will almost certainly try to change the game with a very public and early appeal to the world’s Muslims. He will take the oath of office using his full name, Barack Hussein Obama, and will likely give a big speech soon that may give his domestic advisers heartburn. His face remains one of America’s most potent weapons in the war of ideas that is integral to winning the fight against jihadist terrorism. What he is looking for is a grand bargain in the Middle East just as surely as he is seeking a grand bargain in domestic fiscal matters. Both bargains would be made possible by grave and growing crises that help to scramble the recent past, by an overarching rhetorical appeal to the masses behind the political leaders and by a bit of good luck and planning.

Be assured that Obama is more of a strategist than a tactician. He knows that all the regional conflicts are interlocked and is often a few steps ahead of his enemies (just ask Clinton or McCain). To move Israel forward, he needs to engage Syria. To deal with Gaza, he has to test the waters with Iran. To achieve minimalist goals in Afghanistan, he needs Pakistan.

When you listen to him rattle off all the dimensions of the broader conflict, you are aware that this is a president who does not see the world in black and white or in with-us-or-against-us terms. He sees it as a series of interconnected conflicts that can be managed by pragmatic solutions, combined with a little rhetorical fairy dust and willingness to offer respect where Bush provided merely contempt. This is not a panacea. But it is not nothing either.

…If you close your eyes and imagine what this combination of fiscal and foreign policy realism portends, you will come to a pretty obvious conclusion. This Democratic liberal is actually, when it comes down to it, a man almost entirely within the mainstream spectrum of the European centre right. Imagine a Cameron-style Tory becoming president of the United States and try to come up with something he would do differently. This blend of pragmatism and realism reminds me in the American context of Eisenhower more than any other recent president. Obama has the unerring instincts of a conciliator and a moderate Tory. But he has the rhetorical skills of a Kennedy or a Churchill. That’s a potent combination.

..There is something about Obama’s willingness to give others credit, to approach so many issues with such dispassionate pragmatism, and to shift by symbols and speeches the mood and tenor of an entire country that gives one a modest form of optimism. …”

Madoff and accountability

The past few weeks have been filled with the travails of Bernie Madoff, a US financier who created the largest Ponzi scheme in history and defrauded millions of about $ 50 billion. Among those he defrauded was his family-- neither his wife of 40 years nor his sons who were senior officers in the company claimed to know what Madoff did. He admitted to his crimes to his sons and not to the authorities and was able to obtain bail and thus remain enconsed in his $ 7 million penthouse in downtown Manhattan, even attempting to post some jewellery and money to his family while under house arrest. He has yet to make a public apology.

About the same time, Raju, the chairman of Satyam, a computer company in India, was also admitting to defrauding his company of $ 1 billion. He had been falsifying the company records for a number of years showing profits where none existed. He however claimed that he had not made any money and had not sold any stocks during this period. He issued an apology in his formal letter to the secuirity exchange commission and submitted his resignation from the company while absolving all others on the board of any knowledge of his peccadilos.

A third was Rene-Thierry, 65, who was found dead at his desk in the New York office of Access International Advisors on Tuesday, both of his wrists slashed. A box cutter and a bottle of sleeping pills lay nearby. Police say it was a suicide. He had invested in Madoff funds. He felt that inadvertently he had defrauded his customers who relied on his reputation to put money in his hands. He too issued an apology and then committed suicide.

At this time, Rene has committed suicide, Raju is in jail while Maddow-- well he is in his penthouse. Why is there such a different reaction? Is it cultural ? Why did Rene decide that the honorable thing was to committ suicide like "seppukku" in Japan ? Why did Raju decide to write a long letter explaining why he did what he did,exculpating his colleauges and stressing that he personally did not profit from his action ? And why did Madoff feel that he was not accountable and that hiring a bunch of lawyers was an acceptable approach and that sending money to his family after he had ruined countless friends and family members was in line with his religious beliefs ? Some of the organizations he ruined were charities ?

I find this lack of contritiion strange.........

Pundits to live by....

Life has become complicated. Newspapers are full of economic disasters and political battles that never seem to end. Commentators of every hue and shade have an opinion that they want to thrust down your throat. But alas there is too much noise, too little sense; too much posturing, too little logic or reason. And the confusion becomes worse confounded with the number of newspapers and new channels and bloggers all vying for your attention. In these times, more than ever, you need a guide, perhaps a pundit to steer you on. A pundit whose logic and sagacity you can count on even if you dont agree with him; one whose moral integrity is not for sale to the highest bidder or the latest political fervour. So I started sifting the pundits of the day and here is my list......

Paul Krugman, David Brooks, George Will,Andrew Sullivan,Tom Friedman,Frank Rich,Joe Klein,Fareed Zakaria, Racheal Maddows, Arianna Huffington....

On reflection, I note that of the list, only half are columnists, two are primarily bloggers and two spend more time on their tv shows. And they comment primarily on the US scene. What about the Indian scene ? Who are the pundits that we can rely on for at least speech that has coherence, logic and integrity ??

A Letter from a father to his daughters

Sometimes you come across an inspired piece of writing and you can do nothing more but reproduce it without any comments of your own. Here is one such piece -- written by Barak Obama to his daughters....

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Dear Malia and Sasha,

I know that you've both had a lot of fun these last two years on the campaign trail, going to picnics and parades and state fairs, eating all sorts of junk food your mother and I probably shouldn't have let you have. But I also know that it hasn't always been easy for you and Mom, and that as excited as you both are about that new puppy, it doesn't make up for all the time we've been apart. I know how much I've missed these past two years, and today I want to tell you a little more about why I decided to take our family on this journey.

When I was a young man, I thought life was all about me—about how I'd make my way in the world, become successful, and get the things I want. But then the two of you came into my world with all your curiosity and mischief and those smiles that never fail to fill my heart and light up my day. And suddenly, all my big plans for myself didn't seem so important anymore. I soon found that the greatest joy in my life was the joy I saw in yours. And I realized that my own life wouldn't count for much unless I was able to ensure that you had every opportunity for happiness and fulfillment in yours. In the end, girls, that's why I ran for President: because of what I want for you and for every child in this nation.

I want all our children to go to schools worthy of their potential—schools that challenge them, inspire them, and instill in them a sense of wonder about the world around them. I want them to have the chance to go to college—even if their parents aren't rich. And I want them to get good jobs: jobs that pay well and give them benefits like health care, jobs that let them spend time with their own kids and retire with dignity.

I want us to push the boundaries of discovery so that you'll live to see new technologies and inventions that improve our lives and make our planet cleaner and safer. And I want us to push our own human boundaries to reach beyond the divides of race and region, gender and religion that keep us from seeing the best in each other.

Sometimes we have to send our young men and women into war and other dangerous situations to protect our country—but when we do, I want to make sure that it is only for a very good reason, that we try our best to settle our differences with others peacefully, and that we do everything possible to keep our servicemen and women safe. And I want every child to understand that the blessings these brave Americans fight for are not free—that with the great privilege of being a citizen of this nation comes great responsibility.

Sasha (l) and Malia Obama at play in New Hampshire in 2007.

Bumper cars at the Iowa State Fair in August 2007.

That was the lesson your grandmother tried to teach me when I was your age, reading me the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence and telling me about the men and women who marched for equality because they believed those words put to paper two centuries ago should mean something.

She helped me understand that America is great not because it is perfect but because it can always be made better—and that the unfinished work of perfecting our union falls to each of us. It's a charge we pass on to our children, coming closer with each new generation to what we know America should be.

I hope both of you will take up that work, righting the wrongs that you see and working to give others the chances you've had. Not just because you have an obligation to give something back to this country that has given our family so much—although you do have that obligation. But because you have an obligation to yourself. Because it is only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you will realize your true potential.

These are the things I want for you—to grow up in a world with no limits on your dreams and no achievements beyond your reach, and to grow into compassionate, committed women who will help build that world. And I want every child to have the same chances to learn and dream and grow and thrive that you girls have. That's why I've taken our family on this great adventure.

I am so proud of both of you. I love you more than you can ever know. And I am grateful every day for your patience, poise, grace, and humor as we prepare to start our new life together in the White House.

Love, Dad

Terrorists in Mumbai - a personal story

As many of you may know, Ena and I were in Mumbai last week and were actually in Oberoi Trident hotel when the terrorists struck on the evening of Wednesday, November, 26. After a harrowing two days, we were finally rescued at noon on Friday, November 28.

Some of you wanted me to put down our experience in the Trident before memory dims. So here it is…

Wednesday November 26

"Boom" " Boom". It was 9:40 pm when two large explosions went off at ground level below our room 2716 in the Trident Hotel. Clouds of black smoke with an orange glow could be seen from our room window which overlooked the sea. Nothing else was visible. Soon the hotel's fire alarm went off and we ran out to the corridor to find out the cause of the explosions. A few of our neighbors, too, had come out in the corridor but none knew what was happening and there were no announcements from the hotel's PA system. The fire alarm soon stopped and as I stepped back into the room to switch on the TV to see if they knew what was happening, it was the start of an ordeal that we least expected.

Ena and I had flown into Mumbai on Friday, November 21 since I had agreed to direct a program for the Indian School of Business for the senior managers of the Oil and Natural Gas Company. After spending a few days with Niloufer Bilimoria, who had hosted a party on Saturday to celebrate our 37 th wedding anniversary, we shifted to the Trident Hotel – the new name for the old Oberoi Hotel – at Nariman Point. On that Wednesday, I had had a heavy schedule of lectures at the Intercontinental Hotel at Sahar airport which had gone on longer than planned and I returned to Trident hotel around 8:15 pm. I collected the IHT from the bookshop, waved to the bell captains and the lobby manager and went off to our room on the 27 th floor. Since I was really tired, we decided to order food from room service rather that go to one of the restaurants in the hotel – it was to prove a fateful choice as we were to learn later. Room service had barely cleared the room when the explosion that triggered the mayhem went off.

As we stood in the corridor deciding what to do – should we leave as at least one couple had decided- or should we wait and see what the event really was. Given the shape of the hotel and where we were, if there was a fire below us, the elevator would have to pass through the fire. If we took the stairs- and that was a big if since I could not really envisage climbing down 27 stories- would we have to go through a raging fire? We decided to stay in our room and see if we could find out what was really happening.

As I turned on the television, there was news that terrorists had entered Mumbai and were attacking the VT terminus, Taj and Oberoi hotels. The first clips also showed a fire which they reported was in the lobby of the Oberoi hotel. (The Trident hotel is the tall hotel next door to the shorter Oberoi hotel next door but since both belongs to Oberoi, this caused confusion in the media all during this period.) We too were often confused as the media would often report events in Oberoi while showing shots of the Trident and vica versa. We switched channels on the TV to see if we could find out what was happening outside our door.

One thing was clear that terrorists were now in the Trident hotel – but none knew how many there were and where they were. The explosions were followed by continuous rat a rat of gunfire from within the hotel below us. The hotel phones were now dead and our sole source of news was the TV. We were indeed lucky that the previous Sunday my cousin Lalit Khanna had loaned us his cellphone. This now became our only other source of information though we could not call out since, as we soon found out, all the phones were jammed. So we double locked the doors and sat inside the room waiting. We barely slept, watching on TV as the events unfolded through the long night. It seemed that another team of terrorists had entered the Taj Hotel and there were major shooting there as well.

Thursday, November 27

The news on the TV became grimmer as the scale of the attacks and the fatalities piled up. We could see the fire in the dome of the Taj hotel and heard reports of the deaths at the VT station and Leopold Café.

In the middle of the night, I thought that perhaps the intenet connection that we had might still be working. So I turned it on to find that indeed it was. I was able to send messages to our children and the family that we were safe in our room. Here are some excerpts from these emails

" Shibani: Just to let you know that we are both safe. About an hour ago there were blasts near our hotel --Trident hotel which is next to the Oberoi hotel-- but as of now we have not heard of any new developments. we are safe in our room – 2716. So dont worry. But Janet you may need to cancel your stay in Taj hotel.love from the both of us."

An hour later "We are safe in our room. But the situation is still not fully under control so that we are not allowed to leave the room. None of the phones are working. I have Lalit's cellphone which works occasionally --9920486268. Do call all over to inform them of our safety."

Then a minute later " If you see the photos, the Trident is the taller hotel while Oberoi is shorter in height. We have all the tv channels on in our room- so we are getting the same news. However there is no shots etc or anything in Trident that we can hear."

Email from Shibani " I know that but the news is focusing on the Trident. Apparently the gun battle is in your hotel!! Hostages have also been taken at the Trident and the Taj but they are looking for foreigners so that should keep you safe. Keep emailing me please."

Inside our room, there was little news of the events in Trident on TV till Barkha Dutt, a local newscaster, came on screen to announce that commandos were planning to use a brown building behind the Oberoi hotel as their launching pad to try and attack the terrorists in Trident hotel. In the next few minutes, the tv went off. A few minutes later the internet connection was also cut off. Now we were truly in the dark. Our only connection to the outside world was now our cellphone on which we could receive calls but could not call out. I think for some time people did not realize our predicament and there was a long silence in our room.

In the early hours, we hear some cries of women outside the door but I could see nothing through the peephole.. Thoughout the night though we kept hearing sporadic shooting sounds inside the hotel and we could see a crowd gathered on Marine drive watching the Trident hotel if we looked out of our room window.

Early Thursday morning, calls come from ONGC that they were sending a car with a security man and a doctor to the Trident who would take us to their guesthouse as soon as it was safe. I told Shivaji the security man to keep calling us to give us information on what was happening as we were now completely cut off. Shibani announced that she was going to call us on the hour every hour from New York. Niloufer and other friends too were on the phone giving us information on the events developing outside.

One mentioned that there was a ticker tape on tv channels stating that ONGC staff were negotiating with the terrorists to obtain the release of an ex director (me) of ONGC. We were furious as this only increased the risks confronting us as we had heard the terrorists were apparently going from room to room collecting hostages. Fortunately this was soon taken off.

We were advised by our friends to remain in our room till the commandos had complete control of the situation as it was probably the safest place to be short of a terrorist directly attacking our room. Other advised us to keep wet towels in case of fire.

On Thursday afternoon, Shivaji rang up to tell me that there was a fire in Trident hotel around the fourth floor below us and that the fire engines were battling it.

"If the choice for us is the fire or the firing of the terrorists" I told Shivaji. "I would rather take the risk of terrorists shooting bullets and descending the 27 floors than wait for the fire. So if the fire shows any sign of being out of control, you must call me immediately".

Fortunately, the fire was controlled within the hour and we remained in the room waiting for the commandos to come get us. By now Niloufer had contacted Rajagopalan, who used to the the chief secretary of Maharashtra and Cabinet secretary and an old friend. The three of them were gathered near the Oberoi hotel to try and pass on our room number to the security people so that we could be rescued.

Our major concern besides the terrorists and the fire was the fact that we were on the 27 th floor. At every phone call, Ena would urge people to find a solution to this problem. "My husband is a heart patient and there is no way he can walk down 27 stories".

We had by then packed up our belongings and were ready to leave at short notice as we were told that the commandos would knock on our door and if we did not open the door in a few seconds, they would blast open the door with explosives. So we kept waiting. We would get regular updates on the phone reassuring us that commandos were on the way. We were to remain in this condition through the night.

At 9:30 pm, Lav Vadhera called to tell us that the situation was getting complex and more dangerous. And that the commandos were facing more resistance than expected. Clad in our day clothes, we slept fitfully through the night waiting for the rescue effort.

Friday, November 28

In the morning hours we were told that attention had now shifted to the Nariman house where a major offensive by the commandos was on the way and we would have to be patient a bit longer.

Throughout this ordeal, the two questions that were uppermost in every communication from our friends were "Are you all right ? And do you have enough food and water?"

We would tell them that we were safe as we were locked in our room and we would emerge only if there was a fire or if the rescue team came for us. As for food, Ena had earlier bought some fruits and some savories which we nibbled on through the day and were enough for us to survive on. And of course we had the mini bar which had water, soft drinks, liquor, chocolates and nuts. None of this was good food for a diabetic but fortunately I had an upset stomach during this entire siege and so it did not matter !

When Shibani and Akhil called I told them "We are both in good spirits, but some of us have more spirit that others!" By then Ena had drained the sole red wine bottle which was in the mini bar!

Of course, by Friday morning our stock of food was running out. We had a solitary apple left and we looked at it trying to decide whether that should be our breakfast, lunch or dinner.

At about 11 am, we received a call from the hotel – the only time that we had any communication from the hotel during this period – that a group would soon come to our door and would announce that they were from housekeeping. We were to open the door and they would then escort us to safety. Soon I heard activity outside the door, and saw four or five young men without any guns outside. I opened the door and identified myself. They then took over and told us to take all our luggage with us. They helped us into the one elevator that was working and took us down to the lobby.

As we passed the lobby, we could see bloodstains on the floor and glass scattered all over. We were handed an orange, a bottle of cold water and a diet coke as we were ushered to the nearby Air India building along with other guests. We sat in a line while each of us was registered, our passports examined, and photos taken. Then we were offered a transport to the Maratha Sheraton hotel at the airport where a room had been booked for us. We declined and chose instead to move back to Niloufers apartment for the remainder of our stay.

As we waited for the ONGC car to come, I received phone calls from from family and friends as well as from R.S. Sharma, the Chairman of ONGC and his Director , Dr Balyan. Beyond the registration tables, there was a security cordon with hordes of anxious relatives and media persons. We were advised to wait till the car could back into the cordon so that we were not bothered by the media outside—indeed it seemed for a moment that we were more afraid of the media than the terrorists.

It was now 12 noon on Friday. We were soon in the car and the nightmare was finally over.

--------------------

When we were inside our room during this entire period, we had little idea of what was really happening outside our door. So I tried to piece together from various accounts what really happened in Trident ..

Two young men, dressed in jeans and green t-shirts, carrying backpacks and toting AK-47 walked through the main entrance of the Trident hotel at 9:30 pm on Wednesday, November 26. They were spraying bullets from their AK 47 as they walked in, passed the door scanner. They shot the security guard and two bellhops. The hotel had metal detectors, but none of its security personnel carried weapon.

The gunmen raced through the marble-floored lobby, past the grand piano into the adjoining Verandah restaurant, firing at the guests and shattering the windows. As people ducked and dived to the ground, they threw two grenades in the lobby shattering the glass windows that looked out into the sea.

At the end of the lobby, they burst into a bar called the Opium Den, shooting dead a hotel staff member. Then they ran after a group of guests who tried to escape through a rear service area. They killed them, too.

Schubert Vaz was a witness to this: "I was playing the piano as usual as I have for 27 years at the sea-facing lobby of the Oberoi, when I heard gun shots. As soon as I realized that gunmen had entered the lobby and shooting people, I ran into the Opium Den bar. They had already killed two bell boys. Other bodies were on the floor.

But the terrorists were going into restaurants and firing. Along with some Oberoi staffers and guests, we next ran into the computer room. We felt that was also not safe. We next headed for the back-up systems room which had batteries and so on. I could continually hear gunshots.

I called up my brother in law over the cell phone and spoke softly to tell him that terrorists had taken over the Oberoi, but not to tell my wife. If I was delayed, I asked him to tell her that a guest had invited me to play in his house after my duty hours at the Oberoi. If I did not come home by morning, it meant I was in serious trouble.

We were hiding in the back-up systems room when one of the terrorists entered. He started firing from his machine gun. He shot a 20-year old Oberoi management trainee Jasmine. She died. He killed some guests at point blank range.

I thought my time had come to die. I could see the image of my family flash before my eyes. At that time I prayed, "Lord, save me." The terrorist stopped firing. We were very lucky as for some reason he did not spray the room with bullets as he could have done with a machine gun. He just fired single shots. I could not see him, but could see the muzzle of the gun from where I was hiding. If he had sprayed bullets all of us in the room would have died.

The terrorist did not say a word while he was killing people. He was not angrily shouting, but appeared calm and methodical as he was shooting at us. That made him scarier. The terrorist left the room. I asked others in the room, including some foreign guests, to put their mobile phones in silent mode. We waited.

After about 30 minutes, we began to think of how to leave the hotel. We decided to leave for the Regal Room, and there we found our senior managers who were wonderfully helpful. They asked us to keep calm, and told us security forces will rescue us. We were then taken in groups out of Oberoi, to the nearby INOX theatre where we waited until morning. At about 5.30 am, I took a local train to my home in the suburbs."

The gunmen returned to the Verandah, climbed a staircase, dashed down a corridor lined with jewelry and clothes shops, and stopped in front of the glass doors of Tiffin Restaurant, a swanky restaurant with a sushi bar in the Oberoi hotel.

They killed four of six friends who live in south Mumbai and had just settled down at a table near the front door. One member of the group, a mother of two, threw herself to the ground and shut her eyes, pretending to be dead. The men circled the restaurant, firing at point blank range into anyone who moved before rushing upstairs to an Indian restaurant called Kandahar.

The manager of the Kandahar restaurant on the first floor saw what was happening and tried to close the door to his restaurant but the terrorists shot the door open, killed him. Then they compelled some of the staff to set fire to the restaurant and then shot him dead as well.

Restaurant workers there ushered guests closest to the kitchen inside. The assailants jumped in front of another group that tried to run out the door. "Stop," they shouted in Hindi. They corralled about 20 diners and led them up to the 18th floor. During this, some of the people managed to open the fire doors on the 14 th floor and escape. Others were not so lucky. One man in the group dialed his wife in London and told her he'd been taken hostage but was OK. "Everybody drop your phones," one of the assailants shouted, apparently overhearing. Phones clattered to the floor as the three women and 13 men dug through their purses and pockets and obeyed.

On the 18th floor, the gunmen shoved the group out of the stairwell. They lined up the 13 men and three women and lifted their weapons. "Why are you doing this to us?" a man called out. "We haven't done anything to you."

"Remember Babri Masjid?" one of the gunmen shouted, referring to a 16th-century mosque built by India's first Mughal Muslim emperor and destroyed by Hindu radicals in 1992.

"Remember Godhra?" the second attacker asked, a reference to the town in the Indian state of Gujarat where religious rioting that evolved into an anti-Muslim pogrom began in 2002.

"We are Turkish. We are Muslim," someone in the group screamed. One of the gunmen motioned for two Turks in the group to step aside.

One of the terrorists received a phone call asking him to blast all the people. Which they then proceeded to do in cold blood. About 15 people were killed. Some fell under the bodies and escaped. A few minutes later the terrorists walked upstairs to the terrace. Unbeknownst to the terrorists, four of the men were still alive.

All this happened in the first hour of the start of the carnage.

There was an eyewitness to all of this and his son tells the horrible tale" "On Wednesday night, my father and his two friends arrived at the Indian restaurant on the first floor of the Oberoi Hotel for dinner at about 10pm. They had barely sat down when they heard gun shots in the lobby of the hotel. The terrorists, armed with AK-47s, grenades and plastic explosives, had entered the hotel and were executing everybody sitting in the ground floor restaurant. Realizing the situation, the staff of the restaurant my father was in asked them to quickly exit through the kitchen. As the guests tried to rush into the kitchen, one terrorist burst into the restaurant and began to shoot anyone that remained in the restaurant. At this point my father was in the kitchen and along with his two friends rushed to the fire exit. They had barely descended a few steps when they were trapped from both ends by terrorists. The terrorists then rounded up anyone alive (about 20 people) and made them climb the service staircase to the 18th floor. On reaching the 18th floor landing they made the people line up against a wall. One terrorist then positioned himself on the staircase going up from the landing and the other on the staircase going down from the landing. Then, in a scene right out of the Holocaust, they simultaneously opened fire on the people. My father was towards the center of the line with his two friends on either side. Out of reflex, or presence of mind, he ducked as soon as the firing began. One bullet grazed his neck, and he fell to the floor as his two friends and several other bodies piled on top of him. The terrorists then pumped another series of bullets into the heap of bodies to finish the job. This time a bullet hit my father in the back hip. Bent almost in double, crushed by the weight of the bodies above him, and suffocating in the torrent of blood rushing down on him from the various bodies my father held on for ten minutes while the terrorists left the area. When he finally had the courage to wiggle his arms he found that there were four other survivors in the room. They communicated to each other by touch as they were too afraid to make a sound. My father moved just enough to allow himself room to breathe and then lay still. The survivors passed over twelve hours lying still in the heap of bodies too afraid to move. They constantly heard gunfire and hand grenades going off in the other parts of the hotel. They feared that any noise would bring the terrorists back. After approximately twelve hours, the terrorists returned with a camera and flashlight and joked and laughed as they filmed what they thought was a pile of dead bodies. They then moved to the landing below where they set up explosives. On their departing, my father decided that it was too risky to remain where they were due to the explosives. Along with the other three survivors he climbed the rest of the stairwell, where they discovered a large HVAC plant room in which they decided to take shelter. They passed the rest of the siege hiding in this room trying to get the attention of the outside world by waving a makeshift flag out of the window. They drank sips of dirty water from the Air Conditioning unit to survive. Finally on Friday morning they were spotted by a commando rescue team that was storming the building and were evacuated to safety and taken to the hospital."

After the first hour of blood letting, events become a little blurred as there are no eyewitnesses that have come forward as yet. What did the terrorists do next? Where did they go? One theory has it that they had a suite on the 18 th floor as their headquarter from which they would emerge to shoot randomly and try to set fire to the various rooms in the hotel. Gunfire would be heard through out the night from different parts of the hotel. At this time there were no commandos in the hotel and it seemed that the terrorists had complete freedom of action within the hotel.

Thursday

Again there is shooting and a fire starts in the Trident lobby but this is soon contained.

The pace of attack seems to slow during the day but with occasional bursts of shooting. By evening, commandos had gained access to Oberoi and were now searching for the terrorists.

All the residents were told to remain indoors – this was more through word of mouth and not by any public announcements. By this time, the internal phone system was working so that you could call out and to other rooms in the hotel.

This cat and mouse game between the commandos and the terrorists continued through the night.

Friday.

The NSG commandos cut off the Trident from the Oberoi and so the evacuation of the Trident guests could start at about 9 am.

Apparently the two terrorists were finally killed in the Oberoi but the NSG is not sure if there were still other terrorists still in hiding or if there were more bombs and booby traps that still existed. It is only by 3"30 pm that the process is completed and all the guests finally evacuated both from Trident and Oberoi.

The total casualty figures for Trident and Oberoi – 10 staff , 22 guests and 2 terrorists.

But this still does not account for any bodies that still may lie behind doors or in stairwells. Actually 2 bodies were found in a stairwell.

Many questions still remain even as this pieces together all I know from various accounts till date. Where were the terrorists after the initial shooting spree? How many were there? Did they drag guests out of their rooms to kill them? Did they have a list of whom they were targeting or was it all random? How many more did they kill?

Terrorists in Mumbai - an update

My wife and I had been in Trident hotel when the terrorists had struck in Mumbai in November. I had posted a blog of our experiences. I have since learned of what really transpired outside our hotel room during this period and it makes for a chilling read. This updates include three eye witness accounts, an excerpt from the government of india report issued last week and copies of cellphone conversations that the terrorists had with their handlers in Pakistan......

When we were inside our room during this entire period, we had little idea of what was really happening outside our door. So I tried to piece together from various accounts what really happened in Trident ..

Two young men, dressed in jeans and green t-shirts, carrying backpacks and toting AK-47 walked through the main entrance of the Trident hotel at 9:30 pm on Wednesday, November 26. They were spraying bullets from their AK 47 as they walked in, past the door scanner. They shot the security guard and two bellhops. The hotel had metal detectors, but none of the security personnel carried a weapon.

The gunmen raced through the marble-floored lobby, past the grand piano into the adjoining Verandah restaurant, firing at the guests and shattering the windows. As people ducked and dived to the ground, they threw two grenades in the lobby, shattering the glass windows that looked out into the sea.

At the end of the lobby, they burst into a bar called the Opium Den, shooting dead a hotel staff member. Then they ran after a group of guests who tried to escape through a rear service area. They killed them, too.

Schubert Vaz was a witness to this: “I was playing the piano as usual as I have for 27 years at the sea-facing lobby of the Oberoi, when I heard gun shots. As soon as I realized that gunmen had entered the lobby and were shooting people, I ran into the Opium Den bar. They had already killed two bellboys. Other bodies were on the floor.

But the terrorists were going into restaurants and firing. Along with some Oberoi staffers and guests, we next ran into the computer room. We felt that was also not safe. We next headed for the back-up systems room which had batteries and so on. I could continually hear gunshots.

I called up my brother-in- law over the cell phone and spoke softly to tell him that terrorists had taken over the Oberoi, but not to tell my wife. If I was delayed, I asked him to tell her that a guest had invited me to play in his house after my duty hours at the Oberoi. If I did not come home by morning, it meant I was in serious trouble.

We were hiding in the back-up systems room when one of the terrorists entered. He started firing from his machine gun. He shot a 20-year old Oberoi management trainee, Jasmine. She died. He killed some guests at point blank range.

I thought my time had come to die. I could see the image of my family flash before my eyes. At that time I prayed, "Lord, save me." The terrorist stopped firing. We were very lucky as for some reason he did not spray the room with bullets as he could have done with a machine gun. He just fired single shots. I could not see him, but could see the muzzle of the gun from where I was hiding. If he had sprayed bullets all of us in the room would have died.

The terrorist did not say a word while he was killing people. He was not angrily shouting, but appeared calm and methodical as he was shooting at us. That made him scarier. The terrorist left the room. I asked others in the room, including some foreign guests, to put their mobile phones in silent mode. We waited.

After about 30 minutes, we began to think of how to leave the hotel. We decided to leave for the Regal Room, and there we found our senior managers who were wonderfully helpful. They asked us to keep calm, and told us security forces will rescue us. We were then taken in groups out of Oberoi, to the nearby INOX theatre where we waited until morning. At about 5.30 am, I took a local train to my home in the suburbs.”

Another story : “Mr Jones was dining at the Oberoi with a colleague when chaos broke out. "We decided to go to a bar on the roof of the Trident hotel," he said. "It's about the 33rd floor, and we got up there and the bar was closed, so we headed back down to the lobby of the hotel," explained Mr Jones. "As we got to the lobby, the doors of the lift opened and we heard bangs. "The Japanese gentlemen who were in front of us in the lift... stepped out. Immediately they indicated we should get back into the lift. As they got back into the lift one of them was shot. I'm not sure if he was shot once or twice, but he was certainly shot in the back of the leg quite badly, with blood and flesh and bone just showering us in the lift." Mr Jones said he desperately pressed the close doors button on the lift, in a bid to escape. "There was more firing - it felt like the gunman was coming towards us," he said. Mr Jones said he was hiding in the lift "trying not to be shot" as the gunfire was "getting louder and louder". But the foot of the man who had been hit was preventing the doors from closing, and Mr Jones had to get down and pull his foot, which was in a pool of blood. Mr Jones fled to his room on the 28th floor of the hotel, and shortly afterwards was sent to a safe area in a basement ballroom. "We stayed there for about an hour. There were a few panics obviously," added Mr Jones. "From the basement ballroom we left the hotel via a back door in groups of 10. We had to poke our heads out of the door and leg it - run as fast as we can." Mr Jones said he was now safe in his offices in the city. "That's where we've been holed up ever since and watching it unfold on TV. "I feel pretty bad, but I feel less shaken than I had been."

The gunmen returned to the Verandah, climbed a staircase, dashed down a corridor lined with jewelry and clothes shops, and stopped in front of the glass doors of Tiffin Restaurant, a swanky restaurant with a sushi bar in the Oberoi hotel.

They killed four of six friends who live in south Mumbai and had just settled down at a table near the front door. One member of the group, a mother of two, threw herself to the ground and shut her eyes, pretending to be dead. The men circled the restaurant, firing at point blank range into anyone who moved before rushing upstairs to an Indian restaurant called Kandahar.

The manager of the Kandahar restaurant on the first floor saw what was happening and tried to close the door to his restaurant but the terrorists shot the door open, killed him. Then they compelled some of the staff to set fire to the restaurant and then shot him dead as well.

Restaurant workers there ushered guests closest to the kitchen inside. The assailants jumped in front of another group that tried to run out the door. "Stop," they shouted in Hindi. They corralled about 20 diners and led them up to the 18th floor. During this, some of the people managed to open the fire doors on the 14th floor and escape. Others were not so lucky. One man in the group dialed his wife in London and told her he'd been taken hostage but was OK. "Everybody drop your phones," one of the assailants shouted, apparently overhearing. Phones clattered to the floor as the three women and 13 men dug through their purses and pockets and obeyed.

On the 18th floor, the gunmen shoved the group out of the stairwell. They lined up the 13 men and three women and lifted their weapons. "Why are you doing this to us?" a man called out. "We haven't done anything to you."

"Remember Babri Masjid?" one of the gunmen shouted, referring to a 16th-century mosque built by India's first Mughal Muslim emperor and destroyed by Hindu radicals in 1992.

"Remember Godhra?" the second attacker asked, a reference to the town in the Indian state of Gujarat where religious rioting that evolved into an anti-Muslim pogrom began in 2002.

"We are Turkish. We are Muslim," someone in the group screamed. One of the gunmen motioned for two Turks in the group to step aside.

One of the terrorists received a phone call asking him to blast all the people. Which they then proceeded to do in cold blood. About 15 people were killed. Some fell under the bodies and escaped. A few minutes later the terrorists walked upstairs to the terrace. Unbeknownst to the terrorists, four of the men were still alive.

All this happened in the first hour of the start of the carnage.

There was an eyewitness to all of this and his son tells the horrible tale” “On Wednesday night, my father and his two friends arrived at the Indian restaurant on the first floor of the Oberoi Hotel for dinner at about 10pm. They had barely sat down when they heard gun shots in the lobby of the hotel. The terrorists, armed with AK-47s, grenades and plastic explosives, had entered the hotel and were executing everybody sitting in the ground floor restaurant. Realizing the situation, the staff of the restaurant my father was in asked them to quickly exit through the kitchen. As the guests tried to rush into the kitchen, one terrorist burst into the restaurant and began to shoot anyone that remained in the restaurant. At this point my father was in the kitchen and along with his two friends rushed to the fire exit. They had barely descended a few steps when they were trapped from both ends by terrorists. The terrorists then rounded up anyone alive (about 20 people) and made them climb the service staircase to the 18th floor. On reaching the 18th floor landing they made the people line up against a wall. One terrorist then positioned himself on the staircase going up from the landing and the other on the staircase going down from the landing. Then, in a scene right out of the Holocaust, they simultaneously opened fire on the people. My father was towards the center of the line with his two friends on either side. Out of reflex, or presence of mind, he ducked as soon as the firing began. One bullet grazed his neck, and he fell to the floor as his two friends and several other bodies piled on top of him. The terrorists then pumped another series of bullets into the heap of bodies to finish the job. This time a bullet hit my father in the back hip. Bent almost in double, crushed by the weight of the bodies above him, and suffocating in the torrent of blood rushing down on him from the various bodies my father held on for ten minutes while the terrorists left the area. When he finally had the courage to wiggle his arms he found that there were four other survivors in the room. They communicated to each other by touch as they were too afraid to make a sound. My father moved just enough to allow himself room to breathe and then lay still. The survivors passed over twelve hours lying still in the heap of bodies too afraid to move. They constantly heard gunfire and hand grenades going off in the other parts of the hotel. They feared that any noise would bring the terrorists back. After approximately twelve hours, the terrorists returned with a camera and flashlight and joked and laughed as they filmed what they thought was a pile of dead bodies. They then moved to the landing below where they set up explosives. On their departing, my father decided that it was too risky to remain where they were due to the explosives. Along with the other three survivors he climbed the rest of the stairwell, where they discovered a large HVAC plant room in which they decided to take shelter. They passed the rest of the siege hiding in this room trying to get the attention of the outside world by waving a makeshift flag out of the window. They drank sips of dirty water from the Air Conditioning unit to survive. Finally on Friday morning they were spotted by a commando rescue team that was storming the building and were evacuated to safety and taken to the hospital.”

After the first hour of blood letting, events become a little blurred as there are no eyewitnesses that have come forward as yet. What did the terrorists do next? Where did they go? One theory has it that they had a suite on the 18th floor as their headquarters from which they would emerge to shoot randomly and try to set fire to the various rooms in the hotel. Gunfire would be heard throughout the night from different parts of the hotel. At this time there were no commandos in the hotel and it seemed that the terrorists had complete freedom of action within the hotel.

Thursday

Again there is shooting and a fire starts in the Trident lobby but this is soon contained.

The pace of attack seems to slow during the day but with occasional bursts of shooting. By evening, commandos had gained access to Oberoi and were now searching for the terrorists.

All the residents were told to remain indoors – this was more through word of mouth and not by any public announcements. By this time, the internal phone system was working so that you could call out and to other rooms in the hotel.

This cat and mouse game between the commandos and the terrorists continued through the night.

Friday.

The NSG commandos cut off the Trident from the Oberoi and so the evacuation of the Trident guests could start at about 9 am.

Apparently the two terrorists were finally killed in the Oberoi but the NSG is not sure if there were still other terrorists still in hiding or if there were more bombs and booby traps that still existed. It is only by 3:30 pm that the process is completed and all the guests finally evacuated both from Trident and Oberoi.

The total casualty figures for Trident and Oberoi – 10 staff, 22 guests and 2 terrorists.

But this still does not account for any bodies that still may lie behind doors or in stairwells. Actually 2 bodies were found in a stairwell.

Many questions still remain even as this pieces together all I know from various accounts till date. Where were the terrorists after the initial shooting spree? How many were there? Did they drag guests out of their rooms to kill them? Did they have a list of whom they were targeting or was it all random? How many more did they kill?

In January 2009, the government of India came out with a report on these events. Some excerpts from this

“ Trident Hotel: The hotel has two wings, one named Oberoi and the other Trident. Together they have 877 rooms. At about 22:00 hrs, two terrorists (Abdul Rehman Chotta and Fahadullah) entered Trident Hotel through the main entrance and started firing indiscriminately. They crossed over to the Oberoi and
sprayed bullets into a restaurant. Two IEDs were exploded. The terrorists moved to the upper floors of the Oberoi, killing guests and staff who came in their way. Finally, they holed up on the 16th and 18th floors where they kept many guests hostage. NSG Commandos took charge of the operations on the morning of
November 27, 2008. The operations were concluded after 42 hours on the afternoon of November 28, 2008. The two terrorists were killed. In the attack on the Oberoi-Trident, 33 persons were killed. Police recovered two Kalashnikov rifles, six magazines of which two were loaded, a number of empty cases and hand grenade clips.”

The report also provided some excerpts from the actual cellphone conversation among the terrorists and their handlers in Pakistan:

“Oberoi Hotel : 27.11.2008 0350 hrs

Caller: Brother Abdul. The media is comparing your action to 9/11. One senior police officer has been killed.

Abdul Rehman: We are on the 10th/11th floor. We have five hostages.

Caller 2 (Kafa): Everything is being recorded by the media. Inflict the maximum damage. Keep fighting. Don't be taken alive.

Caller: Kill all hostages, except the two Muslims. Keep your phone switched on so that we can hear the gunfire.

Fahadullah: We have three foreigners including women. From Singapore and China.

Caller: Kill them.

(Voices of Fahadullah and Abdul Rehman directing hostages to stand in a line, and telling two Muslims to stand aside. Sound of gunfire. Cheering voices in background; Kafa hands telephone to Zarar)

Zarar: Fahad, find the way to go downstairs.”

.

Mystery books from around the world

Most of us love detective stories. They are as addictive as crossword puzzles and I have been, along with my wife, a passionate lover of mystery and detective fiction for a long time. But lately I have detected a new pattern- while I love a good mystery, I also want the author to be literate and erudite and a joy to read, an author who takes trouble to craft sentences and does not rush headlong into piling coincidences over coincidences, and who introduces a new approach to the genre. So I started to look for authors from different countries. Here is my collection up to date and I would welcome suggestions on books from authors in different countries......

Robert Littell ..(US)..The Company
John Le Carre..( UK)..Absolute Friends
Bikram Chandra..(India) Sacred Games
P. Matthiessen.. ( Denmark).. Smilla's Sense of Snow
Hanning Meskell.. ( Sweden)...Faceless Killers
Leslie Forbes.. ( Canada).. Bombay Ice
Andrea Camilleri..( Italy)..The Patience of the spider
Arnaldur Indridason.( Iceland)..Silence of the grave.
Mohammad Hanif.. (Pakistan).. The case of the exploding mangoes
The Number 1 Ladies Detective agency..( Boatswana)..Alexander McCall Smith
A corpse in Koryu..(set in North Korea) .. James Church

Books of 2008

Some years ago, I was watching an interview with an elderly chinese gentleman who was browsing in a bookstore. He was asked what book was he looking for. His reply " I want an interesting book on a subject I know nothing about" stuck in my mind. From the year 2000, I determined to read at least one book every month on a subject I knew nothing about- a practice I have continued to this day.

Here are my books for the year 2008:

The Audacity of Hope... Barak Obama
Hot, Flat and Crowded... Tom Friedman
The Tipping Point... Malcom Gladwell
E=MC2.... David Bodaniss
The Code Book.... Simon Singh
India after Gandhi.... Ram Chandra Guha
The Case of Exploding Mangoes...
Sacred Games.... Bikram Chandra
How Doctors think...Jerome Groopman
Blood of the earth....Dilip Hiro
The way of the world... Ron Susskind
The Black Swan... Nassim Taleb

Heart failure and its lessons

This I have learnt...

It has been almost two years since my heart attack and during this period there is much I have learnt about myself and about the world around me. The thought of being hanged in the morning, as they say, wonderfully concentrates the mind. But there are a few things that have imprinted themselves on me during this period…

Of that the most important is accepting the infinite complexity of the human body and mind. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy. Despite the rapid advances in medical science and technology, there is much the medical profession still does not know about the human mind and body. It is well to remember this even as the various medical experts pronounce verdicts on your well being. The fact is that sometimes even they don’t know.

Nothing illustrated this more vividly than the recovery of Norman Cousins from an unexplained illness by the powers released through his viewing humorous movies. In August 1964, Norman Cousins flew home from a trip abroad with a slight fever. This malaise rapidly deepened and within a week he could not move his neck, arms and legs. His sedimentation rate was over 80 and soon moved up to 115, generally considered to be a sign of a critical condition. He consulted a large number of specialists who diagnosed that he was suffering from a serious collagen illness. One of the specialist conveyed that Cousins had one chance in five hundred for full recovery, adding that he had not personally witnessed a recovery from this comprehensive condition. Cousins started his own research and became convinced that if negative emotions produce negative chemical changes in the body; wouldn’t the positive emotions produce positive chemical changes? Was it possible that love, hope, faith, laughter, confidence, and the will to live have therapeutic value? He checked out of the hospital and into a hotel nearby, rented old Marx brothers movies and laughed his way back to life. He died in 1990 almost 26 years after he was given no chance of surviving. As he notes in his book “Anatomy of an Illness”, “Never underestimate the capacity of the human mind and body to regenerate- even when the prospects seem most wretched. The life force may be the least understood force on earth. William James said that human beings tended to live too far within self-imposed limits. It is possible that these limits will recede when we respect more fully the natural drive of the human mind and body towards perfectibility and regeneration. Protecting and cherishing that natural drive may well represent the finest exercise of human freedom.”

It is also not enough to only rely on the best hospital in the world or on the best surgeon in the world. While it is reassuring to have access to the best in the world, again the fact is that even the most renowned of medical experts can sometimes make mistakes. So there is need for care in accepting a verdict, any verdict, unsupported by more than one expert, especially when the pronouncement is about the end of your life. The case of Art Buchwald provides a salutary lesson.

In September 2005, Art was diagnosed with an acute kidney problem, which led to the removal of a leg. He was told that if he did not have his leg removed, he would die of gangrene- a slow and painful death. After the operation, the dye used to perform the angiogram led to a complete failure of his kidneys and he was forced to begin dialysis. After twelve dialysis he decided that did not want to continue and he checked into a Washington hospice for what he thought would be at best a two or three week stay. The purpose of a hospice to let you die with dignity and make death easier on you and your family. You can enter a hospice only if your doctor certifies that you have less than six months to live. But six months later, he was still alive contrary to all prognostications of his doctors. He went back to his doctors to find out what happened. They said at the time Art decided to enter the hospice to end his days peacefully, his “kidneys were not functioning. Gradually the kidneys began to rally…It became clear that the insult to the kidneys caused by the angiogram dye was resolving and now you no longer have both acute and chronic kidney failure, but just kidney disease.” And the topper to a man in a hospice “If there is no further injury to your kidneys you can have a reasonable life without dialysis”. So beware of the certainty of medical specialists. In the words of Reagan “trust but verify”!

In the last few years, fortunately, the internet has grown to be able to provide a wealth of information and data on the remotest of diseases. If you are to get the best of treatment, it is essential for you to become an advocate for yourself in the medical setting and for this you need to educate yourself before you step into a doctor’s office. Too many of us surrender our minds as soon as we face an expert and believe that he will prescribe the best course for you. Actually our attitude to the medical profession today is no different to the ancient tribe’s aeons ago when they went to the witch doctors for a cure for their ailments. While we certainly cannot do without the medical expertise of the doctors, it is essential to remember that when you ask informed questions or raise issues based on your personal experience, you are helping not hindering him in his desire to cure you. But you need to be your own advocate armed with the latest data you can find. You also need to resist the tyranny of medical statistics to define your specific problem or prospects for a cure. The statistics are often based on a population that you may not be a part of but which is the only one available. Another source of practical information and data are the various support forums that have sprung up on the internet e.g. the CHF forum on patients of heart failure. Not only do they provide support but they are also a wealth of information on the impact of various medicines and technology on individual patients with similar diseases.

It is important to understand the limits of technology as well. There has been a tremendous growth in drugs and technology in the US in the past few decades and there is a great temptation to believe that the latest technology will somehow provide the cure for all diseases.

Sometimes the very technology, which is meant to save you pain and your life, can end it. A few weeks ago, the Washington Post had a story on how “Devices can interfere with peaceful death. “ Many heart patients are implanted with an implantable defibrillator (ICD) – there are about half a million of them in the US. Unlike a pace maker, which delivers small electrical pulses if the heart rhythm is too slow, an ICD sends a large shock if the heart rhythm is too fast or chaotic. About the size of a stopwatch, the ICD is implanted under the skin near the shoulders and wires are threaded through blood vessels to the heart. If a fast or chaotic rhythm is detected according to norms preset in the ICD, a capacitor sends a rather powerful electrical shock through the wires – much like the heart paddles used in hospitals – to jolt the heart back to a normal rate. The problem arises if the patient is dying of other causes or even if the heart is failing since the shock delivered by an ICD is like being “kicked in the chest by a horse”. The only way to turn off the device is by use of specialized magnets or from a remote site by the device manufacturer. But the manufacturers and the nurses will not summon the device technicians till there is a written order from a doctor! So a device meant to prolong your life can become the unwitting tool of further pain at your journeys end. Technology can sometimes outpace the ethics and medical dilemmas they bring in their wake.

On a more personal front, the greatest danger for a patient lies in the danger of invalidism or becoming and acting like an invalid. The person, who is put on notice by his doctor that he has a “weak or bad heart”, invariably starts to live a life of reduced expectations, to take slower and fewer steps, and to move tentatively in the outside world. I had called it “life in slow motion” when I was recovering from the heart attack in Cleveland after the surgery. It is true that you have a sense of being locked into a body that is inadequate for its needs, the sense of living under a lowered ceiling, the sense of having to separate oneself from vital prospects, the sense of coming to terms with bleakness. But how does one avoid the feeling of being an invalid when the underlying conditions create and indeed seem to dictate it, when your support system of loved ones insists on helping you over the smallest hurdles, when friends drop by and want casually to take a photograph with you (as a memory when you were alive!)? When your doctors tell you that your heart is weak and must be spared the strains that other people routinely and joyously bear, how do you go through life without flinching when you approach stairs or hilly streets or children reaching out to be lifted or hanging a picture on the wall or shifting a box of books?

There is, however, a difference between being an invalid and thinking and acting like one. I had reacted violently when my family suggested that I start using a wheelchair to get around but came around to the view that perhaps for the long journeys in airports it was not such a bad idea. One has to come to terms with the physical limitations that a weak heart would require but at the same time one does not have to surrender to it completely and become an invalid. Few of us will pass through our lifetime without the challenge of one or more serious sickness. It is also possible that recovery may not always be within easy reach. But we have the obligation to ourselves and those we love not to invite defeat by being defeatist. The challenge is to figure out how to do that when you are in your depths of despair and then to have the emotional strength to follow it up. I had once said that sometimes accepting the inevitable was easy, it was the daily minutiae of life that was the hard part. Each of us has to find our own path to this balance. This may be a mix of routine and the new to keep you alive and retaining a capacity of outrage and for passion to give piquancy to your life. Even while you accept the limitations that life imposes on you, it helps to create new passions whether it be writing or traveling or teaching, because they all force a focus on the possible future away from the painful present.

Too often we forget the most important person in this whole saga – the caregiver be it a spouse, a child or a parent. The fact is that many diseases strike not only the patient but the entire family. Sometimes I think the family members are the ones who suffer the most because even when they are in pain and in anguish as they see their loved ones suffer, they are not able to show it. They are forced to live a double life - putting on a brave face for the patient lest he becomes despondent- one required for their own normal life. The patient often forgets that he is going to leave behind another patient, his caregiver, if he is not careful. The care and nurturing of caregivers needs to be an important part of a patient’s life plan for life will go on without you. For a patient the world beyond his or her pain does not often exist but there is a need to break out of the narcissistic phase that a serious illness almost always implies. Thinking of the caregiver and her future without you may be painful but you need to think about it and plan for it so that she can live her life even without you.

There is a tendency especially as an illness drags out with no prospect of immediate recovery to expect the worst. But it is also true that positive emotions- hope, faith, love and laughter, the will to live—can have salutary effects on the body’s chemistry and functions and contribute to the natural healing processes of the heart. It is well to remember that the body has a unique ability to heal itself in ways that medical science is still grappling with. It was Norman Cousins who said that “confidence, deep purpose, joyousness, laughter and the will to live are good conditioning agents and their value should never be underestimated…the body’s drive to recuperate may not work under all circumstances but it works often enough to warrant one’s confidence and special effort.. For there is never a time when the nourishment one puts into one’s body or one’s mind is not essential to health.”

I had once asked an old family friend, who had weathered many a storm in his life, but even at the age of eighty had a spring in his step and a sparkle in his eyes, how he did it. He had told me he woke up each morning just happy to be alive in this wonderful world, and to be able to give thanks that he was healthy and was still able to do the things he loved to do. More than anything else, a love of life and for life seems to be an essential prerequisite to recovery.