The first phone call!
Where were you when terror struck Mumbai last November, asked a friend who had recently come to Mumbai for a job interview.
An innocuous question, but I took time to answer. It was his tone, which expressed nothing but curiosity, that irritated me. So that was it, I thought, only curiosity about the monumental tragedy that had shaken the entire country, and even the world? No outrage; not even an ounce of concern for a city mauled by 10 jihadis from Pakistan in which more than 175 people were killed and about 300 injured?
Where was I on that fateful night of 26/11? At home trapped in the pages of One Hundred Years of Solitude, that masterpiece by the Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcial Marquez. Until the phone rang.
"Firing has broken out at Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST)," screamed an anxious friend." It could be a gang war!"
Image: The view from a window of the Taj Mahal Hotel, which was attacked by terrorists on 26 November 2008. Photograph copyright Associated Press. Unauthorised reproduction prohibited.
Also see: Remembering 26/11: A Sify.com tribute | 26/11: Back to square one
