The Siege: 68 Hours Inside the Taj Hotel (36 page)

Along the corridor in the Lavender Room, Bhisham recoiled from every shot that felt only inches away. He lay on the carpet, his mother sitting beside him on a chair, blocking out the sound, haunted by the sight of his school friend Gunjan Narang diving into cellars from where the most hellish sounds had risen. No one could have got out of that. Sick at having cursed Gunjan earlier, Bhisham felt his mind unravelling.

5.10 a.m. – the Taj kitchens

A reel of rounds pinged off metal surfaces close by. Chef Raghu, who had his back resting against a range, an Indian guest crouched on each side of him, knew instantly that one or more of the killers had found a way in. Seconds later, the gunman was standing in front of them, dressed all in black, but Raghu barely reacted, having already decided on his course of action. He looked into the face. It was not a man but a child. ‘Lie down,’ the youthful gunman ordered, as the Indian guests began to beg for mercy. Raghu whispered for them to stop, knowing it would make matters worse. They had to avoid making victims of themselves. The guests had no comprehension of the psychology of extremism, but coming from Mumbai, he felt as if he had a doctorate.

‘Face down,’ the gunman bellowed, before changing his mind. ‘Go on your backs. Turn to look at me.’ Raghu lay down silently as the guests rolled over on to their backs, offering money, wallets and watches. Raghu wished they would stop.
Ack, ack, ack.
Gunfire bounced around the confined kitchen and Raghu closed his eyes. One sweep and then another: he felt blood splattering his face. Was it his or theirs? ‘Raghu is dead,’ he said to himself, willing himself to remain motionless as the gunman closed in. Beside him two guests thrashed out their violent death throes.

Sunil Kudiyadi, who had somehow got back in, came running around the corner, stopping in time to see the terrorist in black, sitting between three bodies like a hungry rook, his gun resting on a bloody leg. He turned, spotted Kudiyadi and roared, ‘
Idhar ao
[come here]’, as the security chief pelted for his life in the opposite direction, followed by a plume of rounds.

Bhisham held his breath, blocking his ears. As he prayed for the gunmen to go away, he noticed that the Lavender Room’s door was now ajar. ‘How the hell?’ They needed to shut it but he was so paralysed by fear that nothing could raise him off the floor. He turned
to a man next to him and whimpered instructions: ‘The door . . . we need to shut it.’ If a gunman stepped in they would be the first to die. ‘
You
shut it,’ the man snarled with a look of disgust.

Bhisham took in the twenty or so refugees around him. Some had gone out of their way to make everyone feel safe tonight, acting collectively, making sure everyone had water before turning off the lights, telephones, air conditioning, transforming the private dining room into a dead space. He had done nothing and disappointingly he now began to cry, as an old lady arrived, supported on a crutch, having crawled solo out of the kitchens.

His mother’s friend Dr Tilu Mangeshikar, an anaesthetist at Bombay Hospital, had no time for soul-searching. Her hands were deep inside the abdomen of Rajan Kamble, the injured engineer. A bullet had entered through his back and exploded out of the front, leaving a gaping wound five times bigger. ‘You sure got shot,’ she said, jollying Kamble along. ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he whimpered, ramming his fist into his mouth, trying to stifle his crying. Dr Tilu kept him still, worried that his bowel and intestine would flop out. She pushed some fabric inside and held it in place by wrapping a tablecloth around his torso. She felt his pulse. At least his bleeding was under control. ‘We’ll manage,’ she said, as a grenade blast rattled the Lavender’s walls. Bhisham fired up his phone and sent a text, anything to distract his mind: ‘Evacuation aborted. Shooting in passage. Dnt know if commandos there anymore. Man shot in stomach. Mom with me. Shut lights. Waiting.’

The friend texted back: ‘Commandos and navy out there. Should be a matter of time. Dnt worry.’

He sent a message to a friend in Delhi: ‘This could be it.’ And five minutes later another: ‘So what :)’

The friend got back to him, alarmed: ‘Can’t get thru to you. Fire still on. Ppl jumping off. Are you there?’

Was he here? Bhisham was fast-forwarding through all of the misery that lay ahead of him, his mind a spinning zoetrope of dreadful scenes.

5.15 a.m. – the Data Centre

From the second floor, the Chambers assault sounded like bulls stampeding. Florence Martis listened from her bolthole beneath the desk, imagining the slaughter. With the chair pulled up, phones cradled under her chin, Roshan, the Samaritan who had rung in earlier, remained on the line, calling her name continuously. He had to stop her slipping into unconsciousness as another cloud of smoke was drawn into the room.

A strip of emergency lights flashed on and off, revealing the smashed door. She could see through a tiny window that dawn was breaking and knew she would soon be fully exposed. She concentrated on Roshan’s voice: ‘Florence, I am still, here for you. Don’t forget me.’

She could hear wood snapping and then boots squeaking. Someone was stalking through the room, getting nearer. ‘He’s searching,’ she said to herself, holding her breath, her back pressed against the wall, as a gunman entered. She caught a glimpse of his boots and watched them come towards her. Now she could also see the barrel of a gun. ‘R-o-s-h-a-n,’ she mouthed into the mobile. ‘The gunman is in . . . someone is . . . in the room.’

He wore black trousers. She could smell his sweat and fire. He searched across the desk, his hips just inches from her face, then swivelled around and crunched out, through the busted side door. Florence, her heart pounding, drifted off into a world in which everything looked as if it were stretched out like putty. Another phone trilled in the mid-distance. Was it her father? ‘Dad?’ What had happened to him? He had told her that he was on his way. But that had been hours ago.

5.16 a.m. – the kitchens

In the bone-cold meat store on the first floor, Faustine Martis was hiding alongside several Taj staffers when his phone began to trill.
Oh, God, he thought, whipping it out with trembling hands, looking aghast at the shiny new handset, a gift from his family. He had no idea how to shut it off.

When it eventually stopped, Faustine stared at the others, apologizing, wondering if the walls were thick enough to have smothered the sound. His fellow staffers watched as Faustine gingerly pulled aside the hessian curtain to peek out of the glass porthole and into the dark kitchens beyond. The frosty glass reflected his own face, and he rubbed at it, before realizing that someone was looking in.

Ack, ack, ack.

9.

Allah Does Not Want You

Thursday, 27 November 2008, 5 a.m.

Amit Peshave was still stuck at Bombay Hospital. An hour ago he had managed to establish that the missing wife of the injured British guest, whom he’d brought to the hospital, had been found alive, but was still trapped in the Taj. Now, he ranged around the white towers of the hospital, where the injured and dead piled up in corridors, desperate to rejoin his marooned friends and colleagues. He texted his boss, Hemant Oberoi.

The Executive Chef was insistent: ‘Stay put at the hospital.’ He did not reveal why, saying nothing about his own incarceration in the darkened cellars or the Kitchen Brigade massacre. The terseness of the message compounded a feeling of foreboding that had kicked in when Amit received the call an hour before about Thomas Varghese’s point-blank death.

He went outside for a smoke, conscious for the first time of dawn breaking. He was just thinking about how a new day brought hope, when sirens screamed and an ambulance pulled up, the doors swinging open even before it came to a stop. Wandering over, he stared at the comatose and bloodied figure on the stretcher and started. ‘My God.’ It was Hemant Talim, the Golden Dragon chef, his buddy from Abbas Mansions. The last time they’d spoken was several hours previously, when Talim had been in Chambers. An orderly shouted out: ‘Liver, kidney and thigh.’ Amit stared at the chef. Was he lost already? He whispered into his ear: ‘Hemant.’

Amit had an idea. ‘Doctor, we need help. This man is dying.’ He found an orderly. ‘Where are you taking him?’ Amit took out a pen and found some paper, noting the ward his friend was being admitted to. This is what he would do for everyone who turned up. Inside a chaotic hospital, with 800 beds, those who lobbied hardest received treatment first.

He waited by the steps, checking every arriving ambulance. Where was Rego Jr, his protégé, who had promised him the pizza of his dreams? Where was Kaizad Kamdin, the Parsi giant from banqueting? Behind the ranges in Chambers and the banqueting halls, he was known as
bawa
, affectionate slang for a Parsi. A weekend hockey player, Kamdin could hold the line tonight, Amit had no doubt. He read back through his texts to check what time he had last heard from Kamdin and other colleagues, when a third ambulance drew up. Amit ran over, heart in mouth. He stared at the body but it was no one he knew. Where was Chef Vijay Banja, Oberoi’s generous, loveable deputy? What of Chef Zaheen Mateen, the rising star from Zodiac?

As the dawn spread its slippery light over the city, Amit had found his purpose. Hemant Oberoi, the kitchen God, needed him here to save his colleagues. A motorcycle came by with three men on it. In the middle, he saw a semi-comatose Nitin Minocha, his shattered forearm cradled in his lap and his face as white as the canvas sail on a Mumbai clinker.

‘Water,’ Minocha croaked, as he was helped down and collapsed. ‘Who else?’ Amit urged. Minocha simply shook his head and Amit marked his admission in his log.

When Minocha came to, he was lying alone on a bed. Something caught his eye: a black spot on his breast pocket. He pulled out his Golden Dragon chopsticks and saw they had been smashed in two. Minocha was overcome by a feeling of euphoria: a bullet heading for his heart had glanced off them. On his chest was a tender, fist-sized bruise.

5.30 a.m. – the Control Room

At the police Control Room, near Crawford Market, news about the Kitchen Brigade slaughter was filtering through, and Crime Branch’s chief, Rakesh Maria, was incredulous. ‘Never before have we stood down and waited,’ he raged. ‘We are being attacked from a position of strategic advantage – and we’ve not even regrouped.’ He had been repeating the same observations to whoever would listen for several hours as a picture of debilitating terror sank force morale.

The Control Room felt like a tense, airless vault, everyone trapped before glowing screens since the assault had begun. Exhausted phone operators lifted their heads momentarily to hear him out before returning to their headsets.

Maria felt claustrophobic and frustrated, emotions he had experienced many times before in this über-political force. It had happened before he got a handle on the serial blasts inquiry of 1993 and again in 2003. But he would never admit to these misgivings publicly. Self-criticism was actively discouraged, the state institutions preferring to create glycerine versions of events that ultimately stifled the truth.

Still, irked by Gafoor’s decision to stand down and put all his hopes in the National Security Guard, Maria grappled with the line of command. Why
was
he pinned down in the Control Room doing a job that someone else could have done – and perhaps better? As Joint Commissioner Crime he should have been out there fighting in the streets and in the Taj lobby, rather than stuck, high and dry, liaising with the force across the city. The Commissioner was still in his car parked near the Trident–Oberoi.

Seven hours in and no one had made a go of it. Maria needed to shake things up, so he called the Crime Branch inspector he had sent down to Nair Hospital to shadow the interrogation of the captured gunman, Ajmal Kasab. ‘Bring him to Crawford Market,’ he ordered. The inspector was nonplussed. Surely the police had got what they needed from the first interrogation, by Additional Commissioner Ghadge? He also passed on a warning that doctors were
saying the prisoner’s condition had not been stabilized, so they could refuse to release him.

But Maria wanted his turn. He blew up. ‘Bullshit,’ he shouted. ‘I have three good reasons to interrogate the prisoner: Kamte, Kakare and Salaskar,’ he raged. ‘Bring him here even if you have to put a fucking gun against the doctor’s head.’ Crime Branch would be handling the criminal inquiry and, he would argue if challenged, it was only right that its chief ask the questions. Maria signed off with a warning: ‘Do
not
lay a finger on him and make sure you have sufficient backup when you are in transit. We cannot afford a fuck-up.’

At Nair Hospital, doctors were furious. Ajmal Kasab’s patient’s notes were marked: ‘Discharged
against
medical advice.’ The inspector called Maria to warn him but the Crime Branch boss was unrepentant: ‘This is no time for the fucking Geneva Conventions,’ he shouted.

Half an hour later the disoriented prisoner arrived in the courtyard of police headquarters and Maria called on his way down. ‘Take Kasab to the AEC.’ This was to be his first ploy, interrogating the prisoner in the Anti-Extortion Cell, Salaskar’s domain. The risky manoeuvre of bringing Maria’s only prisoner to Crime Branch in a volatile city still under attack was becoming an act of vengeance as much as anything else. ‘Now we will see how he feels,’ Maria said, running down the stairs and emerging blinking in the courtyard, where for the first time in seven hours he inhaled the chill air, his eyes stinging in the thin light.

A small gathering of heavy, uniformed cops stood stamping their feet outside the AEC, surrounding a diminutive figure wearing borrowed plastic sandals. Maria nodded to his men. ‘My heart is telling me I should strangle this guy, here and now,’ he hissed, looking at the shivering prisoner, ‘but my brain is telling me that he is the only link to this open case.’ Ever since Ajmal had been captured, voices all around Maria had proposed the old Mumbai story: one for the boys. He should be allowed to run before being shot. Some wanted to hang him, making it look like suicide.