A reporter talks on her cell phone outside the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower on November 27, 2008, hours after the terrorists struck. By Arko Datta/Reuters/Landov.
November 26th would mark the one year anniversary of the carnage in Mumbai, when armed gunmen from Pakistan rampaged through the city by the sea indiscriminately shooting innocent people and taking two five-star hotels hostage.
There was so much that was gruesome about that attack. The sheer brazenness, for one. The fact that someone could just hop off a boat and start shooting into the crowds.
Then, there was the media coverage – with the Western outlets focusing on the attack as targeting Americans and Britishers and the Indian media falling all over each other, trying to outscoop each other; revealing sensitive information and hampering rescue efforts as they dragged on over 60 hours.
In the end, 117 people were killed in the attacks. Died before their time, because some doped-up, impoverished extremist from a remote valley believed that this would, in some way, be tantamount to achieving whatever it is that he set out to accomplish.
PBS is due to broadcast Secrets of the dead: Mumbai Massacre – a documentary based on the testimonies of those who survived the attacks. It is due to air November 25th. Check your local listings. If you don’t live in the United States, you can always catch the documentary a day after its broadcast on the PBS website.
“This film offers an unprecedented, inside view into the attacks,” says Jared Lipworth, executive producer of Secrets of the Dead. “It not only reveals how the victims and terrorists acted during the massacre, it highlights how consumer technologies and social media gave the victims a chance to survive, while also putting them directly into the line-of-fire of the terrorists who were hunting them down.”
The film, made by Australian Elizabeth Pitt, is heart wrenching.
Watching it made me relive the anger and horror I experienced as I watched hour after hour of the non-stop TV coverage of the attacks. I remember being glued to the TV set, ranting on Facebook, G-chatting with friends back home, and checking Twitter for updates. It’s also amazing to note technology’s role in this attacks. From the Perpetrator’s side – there was the use of cell phones, satellite phones, GPS systems and on the Victim’s side – it was text messages from cell phones, blackberries, and I-phones. Nowhere before, have the predators and prey been so wired. It’s chilling to think of how information was used as a weapon and as a means of escape in this incident.
I am not sure what lessons India learned after this attack. But a hat tip to the crazy chaotic nation for not going to war with Pakistan, despite its security being blatantly breached by its rogue neighbor.
For more, read Marie Brenner’s “Anatomy of a Siege” in Vanity Fair (a piece that focussed only on the Taj and its survivors, prompting author Mira Kamdar to quip “It’s almost as if Ratan Tata commisioned this piece.)
