German Bakery....Another memory sullied...

On Feb13, as I lay in bed on a lazy Saturday afternoon in Brighton, unwilling to read yet another paper on Counter-Insurgency that Im writing a research brief on... A short text message from my friend got me out of the lethargy: 'Deeps, need help, blast in Pune, can you come online?' My inertia and sleep forgotten, I was online in 30 seconds...and soon enough I saw another memory of my two wonderful years in Pune sullied... 

The German Bakery in Koregaon Park - the place where a country bumpkin who had lived a life so sheltered that when asked to cuss in her language she looked blankly and said 'I don't know how to swear' in proper English - got one of her first classes in growing up....

I learnt there, while trying out their sinful pastries, how to distinguish the sweet smell of weed mixed with tobacco from normal nicotine cigarettes...The first time I realised I was among weed smoking foreigners and students, I wondered if that was crime enough to have me arrested...Little guilt pangs of a straitjacketed life, I tell you! But then the crazy student life that Pune offers gives you a masters degree in life too along with the subject you landed up in the city to pursue... The Osho Ashram that is like a stone's throw away remained a mystery behind gates that were almost always tightly shut....But the maroon robed inmates who frequented the bakery seemed a lot of fun...more approachable..Not that I was curious enough to walk up and strike a conversation...

It took me about a year in journalism to be desperately curious enough to start attempting that.. I wonder how Koregaon park will be without the German Bakery to be pointed out to as a landmark...I wonder where I can now sit watching the Osho chappal vendors sell those little light chappals that I see young girls still stuck in the psychedelic 60s era still spot in chilly Brighton winter..My friends have been posting on facebook how it was just a couple of months back that they too sat on a balmy morning in the Bakery digging in to burgers and fries and their ohh-so-awesome apple crumbles.... 

Some wonderful photographs of the time spent there are I think gathering dust in albums in my cupboard at home in Kochi...Its no great shake...I remember one of my friends, who had heard so much about the German Bakery before landing up there, exclaiming 'were you talking about this hole in the wall???' That's what it is...a Little Hole...Talking of which the Blast, I heard as I compulsively listened to live streaming of news from India, blew a 6x4 feet crater in German Bakery...The little kitschy 'hole in the wall' is scarred forever...marked by terror..

But this time around when I sat watching the Home Minister's press conference, for once i wasn't bothering about whether the graphics were firing right or the spellings were correct on the jackets running over Chidambaram's visuals.. I was watching it like any other viewer...feeling the sense of violation of a lovely memory left sullied by terror....that's irreparable, isn't it??

The Terror Remembered..One year Later..

My reporting days for television are perhaps over for good... But I can't help revisiting a coverage that left a huge scar behind...the 26/11 attacks on Mumbai last year.. After putting in nearly 60 hours of non-stop vigil outside a burning Hotel- that had many innocent civilians still trapped in there..many of whom were charred or suffocated to death...or brutally gunned down - for no fault of theirs.. I had broken down completely after returning home... Had come completely undone...wept loudly- deep wracking sobs for over an hour, when the truth of what I had witnessed and reported on, sank in....hours after the NSG claimed that the Operation was over...the last terrorist holed up inside the Taj was gunned down... I wonder, how I stuck on, battling waves of fatigue and lack of sleep...as the non-stop coverage of the Taj Seige continued for three days..

At about 4AM on the final day, I remember being asked to sound 'less dead' - slightly more animated over air, about the shellings and the blasts I could hear from the hotel, that was just about a few hundred yards in front of me.. But the truth was that I was so dead on my feet that even the dangers of being this close to actual gunfire and possibility of it being fatal never occured to me...Any one of the reporters could have been sitting ducks for sniper fire, we were well-within range..No reporter shirked. We all sat there, waiting for the war to be won and for the satisfaction of witnessing it ( Photo courtesy: Dinesh Parab, Outlook)

My heart was in my throat literally, emotion choking me as I reported the rescue operations late into the night.....seeing guests in shock escorted out by security forces and bundled into waiting buses, even as covering gunfire raged on in the background... the discomfort at the sight of white bundles being brought out- that they were dead bodies were clear in the way the bundles jutted groundwards....the siren of the ambulances...the smell of gunpowder that wafted with the sea breeze.. What are the images that will stay on with me? Moments after I saw a charred dead body falling out of a window of the Taj Hotel, I can still see the NSG commandos walking out of that ruined shell of a hotel...if their body language was not indication enough as one of them fished their phone out, yards ahead of me to talk to his daughter, I got a confirmation from a very tired soldier, who smiled through his fatigue and braved imminent death - ' hamare liye kuch bhi mushkil nahin hai' - that was what I remember of the Taj ordeal, a year later...The Indian forces won...but at what cost? Taj's General Manager Karambir Kang lost his family in one night even as he battled to save the lives of many others....Children whose parents went out partying that night, found themselves orphaned..Many innocent commuters at the VT station who were just hurrying home to have their dinners with their families never made it off that platform that night...The policemen...and then the little angel Baby Moshe Holtzberg who was saved by his nanny from the Chabad House at Nariman House...Wonder how he is doing, a year later...transplanted to Israel, growing up never knowing his parents...who were tortured to death - in the name of religion?

This sight of the smouldering Taj burning with the fires that raged on for hours,still rankles me....I have it on my desktop, this picture, clicked on my mobile phone.... Will the end of the Kasav trial be closure enough? Has the Indian government guaranteed that we wont be gullible targets for another such audacious attack in the future? Or should we, as Indians often do, believe that till what's pre-destined for us in the lines that run through our hands and heads or drawn into our horoscopes gets extinguished... we shall survive..

Grim prognosis...but in a struggling country like ours, do we have the right to demand that more premium be placed on our safety?? I dont know if I support a Global War on Terror...I don't know if I'm willing to blame Pakistan for every evil thing perpetrated on the Indian soil...I don't know if aggressive posturing through mass media or denouncements of every peace initiative that never succeeded are solutions.. But I do know that the answers I want, that I seek are currently with no one...no one really knows how dangerous the terror game we find ourselves entrapped in, is..... Till then remember we are pawns....blindfolded, clueless... This photolink of by the TIME magazine is worth a click...