life in general: bombay! what's in a name? money extortion!

A news snippet in today's newspaper, here in Bombay, says that Shiv Sena wants the Bombay High Court to change its name to Mumbai High Court. The politics of name continues. I, for one, prefer to use Bombay because it adjectively describes the physical nature of the city.
'Bombay' name originated from Portuguese 'Bom Bahia' that, in English, translates to 'Fine Bay'."Mumbai' the legal name of the city since 1998 originates from Mumbadevi (a local goddess) and 'ai' is the Marathi word for 'mother'.

Extortion of money is the main reason behind name politics. No money can be extorted from the Bombay High Court judges hence the grumbling by Shiv Sena about the name.

But it is left to the imagination as to what it (and MNS as well) would have extorted from two well-known entities -- the oldest stock exchange in the country is legally called 'Bombay Stock Exchange Ltd.' (BSE) and one of the largest and oldest listed companies in the country uses the name 'Bombay Dyeing' in its factory showroom in Elphinstone Road in Bombay. I suspect the BSE would have got away by paying very little since its governing board is filled with Hindutva cronies and SS is a Hindutva outfit itself. But Bombay Dyeing would have paid a hefty amount.

Shiv Sena (SS), and its twin, MNS (Maharashtra Navnirman Sena) are largely extornists like most other political parties such as Congress and NCP. The difference is in the level of sophistication. Congress and NCP do it slyly and sophisticatedly while SS and MNS do it openly and crudely.

life in general: truth helps, not hurts

'India protests BBC film as poverty porn', states the headline of a newsreport in today's edition. I read the newsreport and realise that it is self-defeating for my country's government to resort to objections of this kind. A British media series 'Grand Designs' sent its main main, Kevin McCloud, to Dharavi, a very large slum in the centre of Bombay.

Kevin stayed inside the slum with a local family, and made a film/documentary. Read some more about Kevin's film and experiences in another recent newsreport, that I have cut and pasted in its entirety below.

There must be at least 20 million staying in slums in cities and towns of my country. These Indian citizens would stand to benefit if the Indian government's politicians, bureaucrats and police force can just stop meting out injustices of various kinds.

The objection of Indian government includes the fact that Kevin had not disclosed accurately of his film while taking permit from the Indian High Commission in England. Well, if Kevin had disclosed the fact then he would not got the visa to travel to India at all. And, his film is not negative about the slum life. What happens inside the homes of many affluent Indians is also not necessarily clean and hunky dory.

Here then is Kevin talking about his experience in Dharavi:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/6952436/Kevin-McCloud-on-his-trip-to-India.html

Kevin McCloud on his trip to India
This Indian shanty town has Kevin McCloud rethinking some of his grand designs.
By Kevin McCloud
Published: 4:49PM GMT 08 Jan 2010

Imagine a town of a million people living in dark, cramped shanties and tenements. Their homes are rudimentary, tiny, spotless, with minimal sanitation. Five people inhabit each room. Every morning this industrious population rolls up its beds and in an instant transforms tens of thousands of living spaces into an informal network of freelance workshops, making and selling almost anything imaginable. This is the Mumbai district of Dharavi, Asia’s largest slum and the supposed setting for Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire.

But Dharavi is also an economic miracle, and its one square mile of shanties has a turnover of an estimated billion dollars. Plague, cholera and TB abound, but its citizens are among the happiest and most beautiful I’ve seen. If there were a world prize for best-dressed neighbourhood with special award for dazzling teeth it would go to Dharavi. When I went to film two programmes for Channel 4 about how Dharavi has organised itself, I felt the scruffiest person there.

Architects and urban planners are apt to celebrate Dharavi’s 80 neighbourhoods as a “proto-city”, in formation like an economic supernova. They like the chaotic, plan-free and dynamic way in which the people there organise their lives. Before I went I did not share their enthusiasm. I’ve always considered the design process as highly efficient and proven; the planning of space as important. Their enthusiasm begged the questions: what are the essential requirements for human beings to get on together and become happy? How dense can communities get? What, for that matter, is a community? Does privacy matter?

Kevin McCloud in a Mumbai shanty town Photo: Channel 4

I found surprising answers to these questions when I stayed with families in Dharavi. In the ramshackle potteries district, where potters set fires in fuming, open kilns right outside their front doors, I lodged with Veni Patel, her husband, Anand, and the 19 other members of their family. Grandma lumps pots and clay around their tin shack workshop cum living room cum bedroom; Monica and Akhshay go – immaculately dressed and coiffed – to local schools, funded partly by the economic success of Dharavi. Monica wants to be an air hostess; Akhshay could follow his cousin into IT or even his neighbour, Dev, who’s a banker.

The complex lifestyle of these extended families that reaches across not just Dharavi, but Mumbai (with which the slum has a symbiotic relationship), revealed how flexible people have to be when living cheek by jowl in such tiny spaces. We, meanwhile, take for granted things like a bedroom — in other words, a room with just one designated role. As a Dharavi social worker put it: “Virtually every home doubles up as a productive space. Work at home if you can afford it. If you can’t then live at work.”

Privacy in the West is linked to physical space whereas to the average Dharavian it resides in the mind. It has to. The threshold of the home, the point between public and private space moves throughout the day with the use of that space. The potters in the family will also invade the alleys and squares with trays of their freshly turned pots before firing, claiming public space as their own for a short while. Over here they’d be fined for causing a health and safety risk. There it’s just part of the give and take – sharing.

It is this give and take that allows people there to live together in such large numbers. We live far more formalised and rigid lives, insisting on immutable thresholds to our homes, on fetishistic levels of cleanliness, light and space that Veni Patel would find risible. And yet, if we’re going to be living low-carbon lives in low-carbon houses in Britain, we’re going to have to figure out some very extensive ways of being flexible: sharing the resources we have to make them last.

Sharing is something that families in Dharavi do very well. The family is also the nucleus of social life, meaning that its members may know other households around the square but be oblivious to residents just one street away. After all, why bother to get to know another streetful of people when 19 of your relatives live in your house – when those same relatives greet you at the end of a back-breaking day in the sweatshop with a smile? The family, it seems, makes a huge contribution to the overall happiness of people in Dharavi and in India in general.

These were all intriguing revelations perhaps too woven into life in Dharavi to translate into the sustainable and ecological housing schemes that my company, Hab, and others are trying to realise in Britain. But there are wider lessons to learn: from the way Veni’s family share the public realm outside their front door and graciously accommodate their neighbours’ needs; from the car-free life they lead in which everything they need is available within a five-minute walk; from the lack of interest in material excess in favour, perhaps, of time shared. Not all these can be designed into a newbuild British scheme, but they can be given an opportunity to take root and flourish, as they have done in other European model communities.

Meanwhile, as the social observer Robert Neuwirth points out, a billion people currently live in slum conditions. That’s a sixth or so of the world’s population. By 2050 it will be three billion, a third. If you want to know what the worldwide city of tomorrow is, Dharavi is it.
- Kevin McCloud: Slumming It is on Channel 4 on Thursday at 9pm

life in journalism: another cowardly attack on nikhil wagle & his team by shiv sena goons

Whenever any one asks me who is my most favorite editor in the media I take no more than a micro-second to answer "Nikhil Wagle". Yes, Nikhil Wagle, who is presently the editor of a Marathi TV channel, IBN-Lokmat, but whom I know since 1992-93 as the editor of daily Marathi newspaper, Apla Mahanagar. I do not watch TV so I don't know what Wagle and his team is upto on IBN-Lokmat channel but I still buy and read, as often as I can, the Marathi newspaper 'Apla Mahanagar'.

Today, two groups of Shiv Sena party workers, under instructions from their goon leaders, severely attacked the offices of IBN-Lokmat in Bombay and Pune. In the Bombay office they targetted Wagle as well as physically assaulted journalists and other employees including women. These goons were armed with iron rods and cricket wickets (these wickets have pointed metal jutting out at one end, see the image to the right) and they used these to break computers as well as assault people in the two offices. Read more about the attacks here and here among several other places.

What a shame! I am born and brought up in Bombay and studied Marathi as one of the three language subjects in school. But my real grasp on Marathi is thanks completely to the Marathi newspaper 'Apla Mahanagar' because it was the only newspaper in Bombay during December 1992 and January 1993 that dared to take on the terrorism of Shiv Sena, Bajrang Dal, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bharatiya Janata Party. Wagle and his small team of brave Marathi journalists then formed a civil group called 'Nirbhay Bano Andolan' ('Be Firm' Movement) that organised public meetings to protest against the terror of Shiv Sena and the other three rogues.

I participated in these public meetings and a few of them were also attacked by Shiv Sena's goons. But the group sustained itself and the Shiv Sena and BJP terrorists learnt that civil society will not get intimidated by their terror tactics. Today, Pakistani civil society is also undergoing attacks by Talibani terrorists. Its a sad state of affairs in this sub-continent of our planet.

There is no difference between Shiv Sena goon-leaders and the goons of their subsidiary political group 'Maharashtra Navnirman Sena'. After Bal Thackeray, the mastermind of terror in Bombay since the last 40 years, these two groups will merge themselves and continue spreading their terrorism in Bombay and elsewhere.

But the real onus lies on the Congress party and the Nationalist Congress Party which is the joint ruling alliance in Maharashtra. They failed miserably in 1992-93 and several other times to book these goons to justice. The NCP itself is known to be violent in Pune and some other parts of Maharashtra. I do not think they will fare any less miserably this time around. Bombay's police force is completely communalised and beholden to elements from Shiv Sena and MNS. Nothing can be expected from them.

But I once again salute Nikhil Wagle and his team of brave Marathi journalists and staff members because of whose force of moral and ethical strenght which I respect Maharashtra's culture and its language. Shame on the false representatives of Maharashtra belonging to Shiv Sena and MNS!

life in general: beautiful bombay sky!

Today morning, I was looking up at the clouds-laced sky here in Bombay. It was a beautiful mix of white/dark, scattered/dense & designer/simple! Just magnificent!

The monsoon clouds clean up the Bombay sky which is otherwise, normally, very hazy.

Look up!

life in general: monsoon eludes bombay & north of it!

In my previous (last Friday) blog post on monsoon, I posted a satellite picture of the Indian sub-continent from the University of Dundee's satellite receiving station. In that picture, you can see a large cloud formation taking place deep inside the Arabian Sea.

Well, look at the latest (yesterday evening's) satellite picture below (click on the image to see it enlarged). That large cloud formation has now approached the Indian coast. But it is to the south west of Bombay and if winds, as they have been in the last many days, continue to flow from west to east (instead of south-west to north-east as they normally do during this time of the year) then Bombay could be in serious trouble. If no new big cloud formations form quickly that moves in the direction of Bombay and north of it, there won't be any decent amount of rainfall for another 2 weeks at least.

As per Indian Meteorological Department's (IMD's) regional centre in Bombay, the rainfall-measuring centres in Colaba and Santacruz have recorded, (till now in this year's monsoon season), a rainfall of only 5.5 millimeters and 0.1 millimeters that, compared to the IMD normal figures for 18 June is short by 227 millimeters and 205 millimeters respectively.

IMD's report of 10 June for Maharashtra and Goa revealed the following facts:

WEATHER DURING THE WEEK ENDING ON 10-06-2009

CHIEF FEATURES : . South West monsoon further advanced into some more parts of Central Arabian Sea on 06th June.The Northern limit of monsoon passed through 15 o N/ 60 o E ,15 o N/ 70 o E and Karwar. On 7th it further advanced into some more parts of Central Arabian Sea, entire Goa State and some more parts of South Konkan. The Northern limit of monsoon passed through 17 o N/ 60 o E ,17 o N/ 70 o E, Ratnagiri and Gadag.

a) Districtwise rainfall for the week ending 13-06-2009 ( From 04-06-2009 to 10-06-2009 )

Excess Goa,Sindhudurg,Gadchiroli,Chandrapur Normal Ahmednagar,Pune,Sangli,Satara,Nagpur,Bhandara. Deficient ratnagiri,Kolhapur, Scanty Mumbai,Raigad,Nandurbar,Nashik,Solapur,Aurangabad,Beed,Jalna,Latur,Nanded,Osmanabad,Parbhani,Amaravati,Buldhana,Gondia,Wardha,Washim,Yeotmal No Rain Thane,Dhule,Jalgaon,Akola, DNA

In Bombay, to make matters much worse, the 4-5 artificially-constructed lakes 100-200 kms to the north-east and north of Bombay are seeing their water levels (from last year's monsoon) fall. See the newsreport here or read it below the satellite image below. Water, in the meanwhile, continues to used recklessly and wastefully by the affluent citizens of Bombay. It is a criminal waste as I have highlighted in a couple of past blog posts. But BMC and the mainstream media will continue to maintain a criminal silence on it and do absolutely nothing about it. Shame on such Indians!



http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Cities/Mumbai/Get-set-for-more-water-cuts-if-it-does-not-rain-soon/articleshow/4668876.cms
18 Jun 2009, 0049 hrs IST, Sukhada Tatke , TNN
There is more bad news for the city which is already facing a 10% water cut. More water cuts seem imminent if it does not rain by the end of the week as the dipping lake levels have become a cause for concern.
The city right now has water reserves to last only up to a fortnight. Of the six lakes that supply water to the city, the Vihar and the Upper Vaitarna have already reached the lowest drawable level. The Tansa and the Tulsi have enough water to last for a week and the Bhatsa and the Modak Sagar can continue supplying water with ease till the end of the month.
Civic officials say they cannot take the risk of using up all the water that is there now and that is why more water cuts may be a reality. "The water levels are dripping drastically. This will pose a major problem next year. The situation is very grim, the meteorological department has not been able to give us a proper prediction,'' said a senior civic official.
Hydraulic chief S S Korlekar said the department would have to assess the situation and come to a conclusion soon. "We have to still decide on how much further we need to increase the cut,'' he said.
The hydraulic department, in its white paper tabled at the civic standing committee on Wednesday, blamed unplanned and rapid development in the past three decades for the water scarcity in the city and warned the situation might worsen if the state and the BMC continued to provide FSI and TDR sops. But civic chief Jairaj Phatak said: "FSI does not necessarily lead to population growth. Even if there is an increase in FSI, the same people get rehabilitated after redevelopment,'' he justified. However, corporators cried foul saying that the explanation was not good enough.
"The white paper clearly says that the water supply network has been planned on the basis of norms formulated in the Development Control (DC) Regulations, 1991, where FSI for the island city and suburbs was restricted to 1.33 and 1. Phatak always presented the amendments in the DC rules in a positive light,'' BJP leader Ashish Shelar said.
The white paper says: "The incentive FSI and TDR perquisites for slum and private redevelopment of new and dilapidated buildings have put severe burden on it, leading to reduced water supply.''

life in general: bombay citizens' apathy towards trees

I really enjoy commuting on Bombay's roads and suburban railways during national holidays. The sea of humanity is not there and its just a stream of humanity. Today is one such day, the 26th of January, a national holiday in India on account of it being the Republic Day (when the Constitution of India was formally adopted on this day in 1950).

Anyway, thats not the main thrust of this post. After having lip-smacking sambar with authentic dosas and idlis at Mani's Udipi hotel in Matunga Central (where I specially went today for a different but delicious breakfast), I decided to walk for a km before catching a taxi to go to my office that is 4-5 kms away from Matunga.

As I was walking in the inside lanes of Matunga-Dadar, I came across a small garden (see the image to the right). As I passed by it I was shocked (yes, such things still shock me because I do not care about those who say we should not be sensitive towards these things) to see trees fallen inside the garden. See the image below.

My heart goes to the trees of Bombay and all those other places in India and elsewhere where insenstive citizenry, bureacracy, politicos and corporates are mercilessly and cruelly hacking trees way in excess than required and all in the name of the much-abused word 'development'. This is not development. It is plain and simple murder.

life in general: beautiful white clouds in today's bombay-northwest sky!

Ah! Its a beautiful sight outside my home window today morning at 9-10 am. White clouds have enveloped the sun and swarmed the atmosphere. In the pic above, see the sun peeping out a teeny-weeny bit from the white clouds above the left-most and near tall building. I took the pic facing south-south-east (i.e, between south and south east). My home is in Kandivli East that is considered as being in the north west part of Bombay.

Till 3-4 days back, December was feeling like April. It was so hot in Bombay. But it is not that bad now although the temperatures could ideally be a lot more less.

life in general: bombay takes stock...

As many in Bombay, rest of India and rest of world, take stock of the real casualties figure and the potential real details of terrorists' entry/operations/motives & lack/disregard of intelligence agencies' alerts (read here, here and here), a few random thoughts and 1/2 personal experiences that I want to share:

1. I have been to Taj, Oberoi and Leopold many times in the last many years, the first two for attending work-related seminars/conferences and the last for a glass of beer. About 7 weeks ago, when I went to Taj (i was going after a gap of about 3 months), and as I went to the secondary entrance that faces the sea directly (and not the primary one that faces the Gateway side) I saw it was closed and completely barricaded. So I made my way to the primary entrance and there was struck by an unprecedented security check with 2/3/4 gun-toting security men standing at the entrance. My shoulder bag was checked thoroughly. I had a bit of argument with the security guard telling them that while it is fine for them to check bags of mine and visitors why were they not opening the bags of the guests who were checking in to stay at the hotel. Seeing my verbal conversation with the security guard a black-coated Taj manager who was standing there near the entrance walked up to me and sternly asked me what was wrong. I told him, but by then I had seen that check-in guests' bags were going through a metal detector itself (that though begs the question of how plastic explosives can be detected).
The point I am making above is that intelligence agencies' alerts had already reached the managements of most of the biggest hotels in Bombay. A TV news channel, Headlines Today, is in fact just now (as I write this at 3 pm) reporting that it has a 'top secret' letter by Indian intelligence agencies to the Bombay police that in their interrogations with captured terrorists in Uttar Pradesh and other places in north India they have been told that Pakistan's ISI and even Pakistan's Navy is involved in training terrorists to launch an unprecedented, well-organised offensive through the sea route from Karachi to Bombay.
This letter is apparently dated December 2006, but the unprecedented security checks I mention above only about 2/3/4 months back. This newsreport in Outlook brings out even more information about the heightened knowledge of an impending sea-borne attack. As is from my above-described experience, this information had also been passed on to the Taj Hotel and perhaps the other big hotels in Bombay too. But the Taj Hotel management (and also the Oberoi Hotel management) did not take adequate measures to protect every corner of the hotel. As I quoted a Colaba-residing friend of mine in my previous post the terrorists gained entry in the Taj from a shop at the backside and the shop opened outside on the street as well had a door that opened inside the hotel. Why didn't the Taj management keep gun-toting security men continuously (for 24 hours and not just during peak-time daytime hours) at all ground-floor corners and sides of their hotel/s from the inside and the outside? Instead of blaming the government, Ratan Tata should have taken his hotel's management to task for not taking seriously the threat perceptions emanating intensely from the intelligence agencies. Night-time security checks also seems to have been lax compared to day-time security checks.

(the pic to the right has been taken from mumbaimirror.com and shows the terrorist who was at the VT station, later caught alive & now in official custody)

2. The TV news channels (and not so much the print media although many of them too) have focussed 99% of their news coverage on three places--Taj, Oberoi and Nariman House--and have not culled/scoped out the happenings at VT station, Leopold Cafe and Cama Hospital. There is much to be reported and analysed from these other places as well. VT station, for instance, saw over 50-60 casualties and Leopold saw over 25.

3. Even at this time of tragedy, the inefficiencies and corrupt bureaucracy of state/private administration continue to trouble the relatives of the victims and the missing.
Also, the Colaba Police Station that is opposite Cafe Leopold, had the most pathetically inept response when the firings were going on at Leopold and which they could easily hear. They were deliberately slow in reaching that place (even though it was less than 20-30 metres away) and in fact like cowards closed the gate of their police station. Residents in Colaba, who know about them, of course say they did not expect any better from the Colaba police station which could perhaps rank among the top 5 corrupt and brutal police stations in Bombay and in the top 10-20 in India. Had Colaba police station officers counter-attacked the terrorists at or near Leopold Cafe itself those guys could have never reached Taj Hotel. But their police officers are so steeped in corruption they have lost all ability for any concrete action involving using their guns to take on the real goons or in this case the terrorists.
This newsreport also says that at CST station there was armed police personnel that could have easily shot dead the two terrorists. But they did not do so. Shameful!
4. Pakistan's ISI is perhaps the worst official agency in the world that cleverly aids terrorists' activities and has been doing so for many years. For India to put pressure on Pakistan's current democratic pressure is being foolish. The ISI in Pakistan, closely affiliated to the Pakistani military, is a law unto itself and has to be tackled directly bypassing whoever is the Pakistani government. For this, in fact, India should shed its cowardliness and take on the United States of America that in the past and even now (discreetly though) has looked the other way if not actively coordinated with the ISI. And if the US can attack Taliban inside Afghanistan, and if Israel can carry out operations inside its neigbouring countries including Palestine, and if Russia can carry out operations inside Georgia, then India can too carry out operations in the mountains of Pakistan where these terrorist groups receive their training.
Many of general Pakistani citizens do not like their country's ISI and extremist elements. By blaming Pakistan as a country where its citizens do not have enough democratic rights is according to me not wise at all.

5. It also needs to be told that the owners (two of them -- Faizad and one more) of Leopold Cafe are racist against locals, Bombayites and Indians and give extra-special treatment to the foreigners. I say this from personal experience, and therefore avoid going there to the extent possible. I don't blame the waiters as I think they are specially trained by the two owners to be like this.

6. What has happened is 'private' terror, that is, private groups (though backed by overseas official agencies like the ISI) have carried it out fighting state forces in India/Bombay. But we ought to remember the ugly consequences of other forms of terror that feeds into the private terror groups. And one of them is 'state' terror. India is not at all clean on this. The state-sponsored genocide in Gujarat in February-March 2002 and continued boycott/harassment/denial-of-rights of the Muslims in Gujarat stands out as one of the worst forms of state-sponsored terror anywhere in the world. Then, the US-UK-Australia ugly & illegal invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and continued forced occupation of Iraq is even a worse kind of state terror
than Gujarat was because the entire country of Iraq and all its citizens have been hurt badly by the American-British forces.

life in general: horrific tragedy; who, how, why?

(the pic above has been taken from mumbaimirror.com, casualties at VT/CST railway station) (updates to this post are given below)
As the intense nature of tragedy unfolds in Bombay this new morning (it is 10.25 am as I write this) (click here, here and here), the question that is coming to most people's mind is 'Who did it, where did they come from last night, how many were involved?'.
It looks like a very organised operation that could have emanted from outside Bombay itself, except for recce operations done earlier. Very few terrorist groups have the capabilities to carry out operations of such a heinous nature -- Al Queda and 1-2 other Muslim extremist groups being the most prominent. It appears to be their doing.
But police and Indian intelligence agencies did have a whiff of this, for sure. The targets -- 5-star hotels and large railway stations -- were commonly known, but the likely dates of the strikes could never have been easily forecastable by anyone.
One more point: its not only foreigners that have suffered heavy casualties, local Bombayite-Indians have too. See the first news link above, and one of the pics below.

Pic 1 to the right: After shooting passengers in the waiting area for long distance trains at CST/VT, the two terrorists walk to the local/suburban platforms
Pic 2 to the right: This man, shot inside CST/VT, managed to walk to the subway entrance outside near Capitol cinema. Both pics are from mumbaimirror.com

Update 1 (5.54 pm, Bombay time): From 3 to 4.30 pm, I commuted by road & rail from my home in Kandivli (north-west Bombay) to office in Worli (central Bombay) that is 30 kms to the south from my home. Am at office as I write this. Catching up on tv news footage and a lot is still going on. Terrorists are still there at the two hotels and also at a Jews-owned guest house called 'Nariman House' at Colaba area. Guests and visitors at these 3 places are still trapped inside.

Update 2 (7.15 pm, Bombay time): Ugly incidents (blasts, gun firing etc) still on at the 3 places although police/army commandoes are also inside 1/2/3 of these and carrying out combing operators.
An aside. Yesterday, senior police officials were killed, purportedly in action and by terrorist. I have my doubts though In the murky world of Bombay police and governmental secrets anything is possible. My hunch is that Hemant Karkare, one of the anti-terrorist cell (ATC) chiefs, that got killed yesterday, could have died in mysteriously unexplainable circumstances yesterday. It is very unlikely that the overseas/Pakistan-based attackers of Bombay would know they were shooting a chief. I suspect there is something very majorly wrong in the police-ATC-government-politicians-Hindu extremists nexus/hotchpotch that has led to 1/2/3 of these senior police guys being killed yesterday night.
Update 3 (8.30 pm, Bombay time): Its still on, unfortunately, but some rescues are also taking place but again they are being shrouded in secrecy by the police (which is pathetic). Updates at ibnlive.in.com timesofindia.com, expressindia.com or mumbaimirror.com to get updates.
But I would like to briefly share a conversation I had today with a Colaba-residing friend who was at the Colaba Causeway Street yesterday and witnessed the post-firing part of incident at Cafe Leopold.
In his words: "I was about 100 metres near Leopold when we heard shots. We thought it was firecrackers being burst by cricket fans on winning yet again in a one-day international. But when it continued for 3-4 minutes we realised it could be bullets and some of us started moving in the direction of Leopold. We heard gun shots clearly. This was somewhere around 8.30 or 9 pm, and approximately 30 rounds of machine gun fire must have been fired. It lasted for about 15-20 minutes and then the 2/3 terrrorists casually walked out and started walking in the direction of the Taj Hotel. We went inside Leopold and I actually helped in pulling out about 25 dead bodies out. Later, we heard, the terrorists killed at least one, a little boy, while walking from Leopold to Taj, just because he strained himself to see them. Later, we also got to know how they or their earlier fellow-terrorists entered the Taj. There are shops at the side of Taj Hotel that have entrances from the streetside as well as inside (see the green arrow-marked area in the map-image to the left, click on the image to see it enlarged & clearer). If I remember correctly since some months they used to be shut from the streetside and entrance only allowed from inside the hotel. The terrorists went to one of the these shops from the streetside. First there is a iron grill door with a lock, then a glass door entrance. The terrorists first broke open the lock of the iron door, then shattered the glass door, went inside the shop and then through that the other side of the shop that opens into the hotel they entered the hotel and went on to the lobby. They opened fire when inside."
Update 4 (11 pm, Bombay time): Its perhaps getting over now, although the situation at Oberoi/Trident Hotel is still uncertain.
Meanwhile, some of my thoughts on the hypocrisies of corporate bigwigs when journalists were questioning them today on their thoughts about the terrorist attacks. Ratan Tata, who directly or indirectly, owns the Taj Hotel, blamed the government for not protecting the Taj Hotel. What crap! The government is what it normally is -- inefficient and inept. But what prevented his brilliant directors, managing directors, vice presidents and senior managers from posting strict security at all corners of the Taj Hotel, particularly when intelligence reports had given them the indication of being under threat. Why couldn't he spend a few millions extra to beef up the security and post gun-toting security guards at the back-side (where the terrorists seemed to have entered and even by making noise as they had to break the glass door of the shop) and at other corners of the hotel? Its typical of the corporate world to pass the buck of miserable failure on to the politicians and government bureaucrats. But my heart goes to the families of the employees (about 16-20) of Taj Hotel who lost their lives to the cowardly terrorist attacks.

life in general: terrorists attack locations in south bombay

(important updates to this post made below, before the updates whatever i have written i am not changing it but they were from very early reports and not comprehensive)

(thursday's update: new post here)

As I write this (11.50 pm of Wednesday 26 Nov '08) from my home in Kandivli, in suburban north-west Bombay, I am tracking web-based news (no TV at my home) of of terrorists having attacked a few locations in south Bombay (or town area as we Bombayites call it). Hotels Taj and Trident (earlier called Hilton/Oberoi), Leopold Cafe, VT/CST railway station, Colaba market are some of the places where gunmen are being reported to have opened fire randomly and also executed a few bomb blasts (not of severe intensity though).

Some detailed newsreports are here and here.

I spoke with a friend who stays near Strand road in Colaba and she tells me that they heard a loud explosion that seemed to come from the Colaba market side. This is the only bit of news that I have that the above-linked newsreports have not covered yet.

The image to the left is taken from here. It depicts an injured person being taken out from the lobby entrance of Taj Hotel near Gateway of India.




Update 1 (0035 hrs, Thu, 27 Nov):
Below see a quick snapshot of Wikimapia of the south Bombay area where the terrorist attacks have taken place. I have marked out four spots in white arrow marks -- VT/CST station, Taj Hotel (near Gateway of India), Cafe Leopold in Colaba, and Hotel Trident/Oberoi/Hilton at Nariman Point. Click on it to see it enlarged and clearer.

Update 2 (0121 hrs, 27 Nov):
Sad. Latest news reports are bringing out the horrors of the attacks. About 80 dead and over 200 injured is being reported here.
The five-star hotels have been under tremendous security in the last few months. I remember going through rigorous check myself at the Taj Hotel near Gateway of India when I had gone to attend a seminar about 7 weeks back. Except for the VT/CST railway station and perhaps 1/2 other spots, all the rest spots picked by the terrorists indicate an intention to target foreigners because hotels Taj and Trident/Oberoi and Cafe Leopold are all places where foreigners can outnumber Indians.
Update 3 (0200 hrs, 27 Nov):
My heart goes to the near and dear ones of those who have died in these ugly attacks and to those who have got seriously injured. Few questions come to my mind, in the case of the 2 hotels. If the gunmen have killed people inside, that is in the hotel lobby, then how come they were able to take guns and perhaps also grenades inside in the first place? The stringent security checks should have prevented that. Or, is it that the gunmen started firing from outside, overpowered or killed some security guards and forcibly entered the hotels' lobbies? Answers will come in next 1-2 days in the media, hopefully.
Update 4 (0226 hrs, 27 Nov):
Jeez! Its getting uglier. Now, a hotel in Juhu attacked; abotu two anti-terrorist force squad members killed, fire in old building-wing of Taj Hotel . Click here. This seems to be a very good site so far.
Update 5 (0302 hrs, 27 Nov):
Some photos are over here.
Update 6 (0356 hrs, 27 Nov):
Am signing off for now with this updated news report on The Times of India website. I have no TV at home & so caught all news only on the internet. I will pray that Bombayites and other Indians do not indulge in callous, ugly reactions to the tragic events of the last few hours. The minorities in Bombay ought not to suffer from any violent ugly reaction from extremist Hindu groups. I pray.

life in general: a trek to highest point in bombay's forest area

Outdoors is a great place to be in. If you are living in an Indian urban nightmare, outdoor activity also provides you with a chance to get away from your home/flat that has more likely than not to have toxic materials (like asbestos where labourers also suffer heavily) & toxic chemicals used during the construction that would be banned in other countries that India & China claim to be outpacing in terms of economic growth.
So (as I do sometimes occasionally, sometimes frequently) I was out yesterday from morning to afternoon, as a part of a Bombay Natural History Society-organised trek to the highest point of the Borivli National Park's designated forest area.
From the Park's Borivli-side main gate, we went inside by a vehicle on a 4 km-road to Kanheri Caves point and from that point we (there were about 40 of us in the group) trekked a distance of about 3.5 kms up to the highest point. I could motivate my 16-year nephew, Rahul, to join me for this trek. It was a first for him and he enjoyed it thanks to his positive approach and his damn good stamina!
Below are some pics: (top left and top right ones are mid-way through the trek, the top right one shows tulsi lake & vihar lake, the top left one has me with a ruffled-hair look), bottom left and bottom right pics are at the end-point of the trek, bottom left pic has my nephew in it with tulsi lake in the background). The pics are followed by a wikimapia snapshot of the area (the yellow circle is where we trekked and the green circle is where my home is, you can see as the bird flies it is very near but we are not birds so I have to go north to borivli by road, enter the Park gate and come south again). Click on a pic to see it enlarged and clearer.

life in general: goondaism recycled

Exactly a week back, fanatic followers of Raj Thackeray (Raj T), the founder of the split faction of Shiv Sena (SS), Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), brutally attacked some Railways-exams' giving students who had come from outside Bombay for giving the exams. Shocking though it was to see it happen, it was not the first time Raj T was stage managing such attacks against north Indians. This has been happening since about two years now. But this time the hue and cry was so much that next day, Raj T was arrested by the police and kept in the police lock-up for 24 hours. This was a simple implementation of the rule of the law and MNS hooligans went on a rampage holding Bombay, Thane, Nasik, Nagpur and Pune cities to ransom.
My heart goes out to the ones who, in the past many months, have been injured—or whose shops/property have been damaged—by MNS goons. But I don't get much shocked anymore by such violence. This is India's—and in this particular case—Bombay's and Maharashtra's ugly truth.
Raj T and his MNS have now replaced SS in such violent and extortionist techniques. Shiv Sena, under an ailing and aged Bal Thackeray is more or less dead now. The rowdyism of SS is now the rowdyism of MNS. Raj T is the son of Shrikant Thackeray (Bal T's brother) and Kunda (sister of Bal T's wife Meena).
During 1966-7, Bal Thackeray, and his newly-formed Shiv Sena, rose in prominence due to their violent agitation against south Indians. Just like Raj T is now building his political capital with the huge Maharashtrian voter base using the loss of jobs for locals due to north Indians, so had Bal Thackeray used the same excuse (but against south Indians) to build his fledgling SS into a larger political party. Subtle, yet shameless, encouragement and handing out respect to such goon parties is given by Congress party to Bal T in the 1960s and 70s and now Congress-Nationalist Congress Party alliance to Raj T. The Bombay police, and Maharasthra police, are, as always, puppets in the hands of the ruling parties (be it Congress-NCP, or SS-BJP, or in the future a potential MNS-BJP alliance).
The south/north Indians issue is just a ploy to gain political capital and Bal T never meant it to be permanent nor does Raj T mean it to be now. Sooner or later, these goons come back to Hindu identity politics. Two decades after his first agitation, Bal T, turned his violence against Muslims (the horrendous SS violence on Muslims in January 1993). I do not rule out Raj T doing the same 5-10-15-20 years from now. Such is one of India's ugly faces. The mindless violent reaction that one is currently seeing in Bihar and Jharkhand to MNS is another one. In fact, it is not just Bombay and Maharashtra where one such sees dirty political games. Go to Madras, Bangalore, Calcutta, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Baroda, Surat, Pune etc and one gets to see the non-locals being treated unpleasantly.

(An update on the above is in my 2 Nov '08 post)