Hey guys,
I ve been receiving many scraps, messages and emails since Wednesday night, but I couldn't possibly reply to each one of them.
I am safe and so are all my friends. It was my laziness that saved me, as I had plans to go to a bar which is about 50 meters from Cafe Leopold, which was one of the sites attacked, but fortunately for me, I was feeling lazy and decided against going out that night. Unfortunately, some of my journalist and PR colleagues were inside the Taj and the Oberoi hotel at the time the attack started as these two hotels generally have many media events happening almost everyday, but luckily all of them managed to safely escape from the hotels, although some of them were inside for 30 odd hours.
Regarding the conditions here, its a little hard to explain. Most of the city, except for south Bombay which is where the attacks were centered is back to normal, although I don't know how much work is actually happening because everyone in the city is glued to their TVs watching the events unfold.
We've suffered many attacks before in the past, and have gotten back to normal the very next day, but in this case the situation is completely different as the military operation finally ended here after 62 hours and most of us haven't slept for the last three days. We spent most of our time going from the TV to the Internet to get information, and trying to make sure that everyone we knew was OK.
Having lived here for quite some time, I know that things will be back to normal by tomorrow, but this time it is a little different, the places they've attacked are the very symbols of the city and what make up its identity. (Along with the fact that they've basically opened a completely new front in terrorism, looking at their methodology which hasn't been seen before the the past). Some of these are places which we frequented regularly, some of my most cherished memories are from these places where we spent endless hours drinking, partying, socialising, whining about college, abusing our bosses and just sitting there whiling away time when we had nothing else to do.
All that seems like a distant memory now, the last two days have been like watching someone rip the very heart out of someone that you love dearly, while we sit on the sidelines unable to do anything.
I hope that the Indian government does do something meaningful in the next few weeks, although in the past they have acted like a bunch of impotent and incompetent morons too busy playing politics on every issue to deal with the real crisis.
But, I can tell you one thing for sure, the very day that the Taj, the Oberoi and Leopold Cafe reopen, me and my friends will be there like before and do the things that we've always done.
The terrorists can bomb our cities, kill us and those that we love but we refuse to live in fear and all that the terrorists will get from us is a big "F**k U".
Tushar
PS: I started writing this email thinking that I would just send in a two line message to everyone, but it has clearly become a lot more than that. And a lot of it does sound a little overtly emo and jingoistic, but I guess after three nights without sleep and endless hour spent watching the news, coherent and balanced thoughts are hard to come by. Tushar! Segura a barra aí meu querido! Tudo vai voltar ao normal sim!!! Grande abraço do Brasil!
