It was a Wednesday night and we didn’t have much food at home. Although we talked about going out to eat, we were too tired. Eventually we scraped a dinner together and sat down to see the post-prime time news. That’s when we saw the first confusing shots of what would later be known as the November 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack.
It wasn’t for another hour that we realized how lucky we were that we stayed home. The curfew lasted only three days, but it was a month before I walked about Colaba aimlessly again. On Christmas day, The Family and I found that we were tourists in our own backyard, so to say. We walked past small restaurants which were suddenly infamous, past a familiar vegetable market into lanes which had appeared as blurry shots on TV screens across the world. Looking back at that now, I realize that lockdowns and curfews do not end when restrictions are lifted; it takes time for you to come back to normal.
The little lanes were still full of press photographers. Usually I like to talk to them; they are not in an easy profession. But that day they had no time off to chat. When I look back at my archives, I have more than twenty shots of the crowd of photographers jockeying for position without jostling. Today when I look at the photos I see professional rivalry, as well as the courtesy to let someone else rest a heavy lens on your shoulder to steady a shot. A very different world from the savage days that we had gone through. That walk bled some darkness out of us.
I studied BA in Wilson college from 1979 to 1982. Those years were some of the best years of my life and it really hurt to see the violence there. It must have been terrible for people living there not knowing whether they will come back home alive.
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Yes. Although almost all the random violence was over in the first three hours. After that they were holed up in the Taj for three days. The thing that has relevance today is that Mumbai took several months to come out of the curfew and siege mentality. I suspect this will happen with the lockdown.
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Yes.
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I agree it will take time. I don’t even want us to go back to “normal.” I know we will, I will (whatever that was) but some of the changes through this have been wonderful, in my opinion. But I have no business to run, kids to raise, nothing like that so even I think my opinion is pretty irrelevant when I’m no longer holding up the sky.
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The normal changes after every large event.
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You’re right. The real America died after 9/11/2001. I haven’t seen my country since.
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I was at Hyderabad that time and I vividly remember this day. My roommate and I were glued to the TV.
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I suppose that must have been true for much of the country.
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