The Siege: The Attack on the Taj Mumbai

by Cathy Scott-Clark

  Bob smiled. All night, he had been trying to figure out which kind of military Ravi was. ‘Pilot,’ he said to himself, as he grabbed his commandos and headed off to the Brabourne Stadium, where the cricket tournament was supposed to have taken place. Now they were out of the hotel they had nowhere to stay. They would contemplate the night in the hush of the empty bleachers.

  8

  The Shadow of Death

  Thursday, 27 November 2008, 3.40 a.m.

  Outside the hotel a cheer went up as news of the successful Tower evacuation reached Taj staffers. Until now everything around them served as a reminder of how they had lost control of the hotel. Although the Tata group’s emergency administration point had shifted from the Gateway to the safer environs of the President hotel on Cuffe Parade, Karambir Kang remained outside too, seeing, smelling and listening to it all. The Souk story was a fillip, and ranging distractedly up and down Apollo Bunder he received several more pieces of encouraging news.

  The fire brigade had just entered Best Marg, the tree-lined lane alongside the south wing of the Palace, and extricated a handful of guests from the city end of the sixth floor. Not everyone had died up there. There was also news of Sabina Saikia, the food critic, who had been staying just a few feet away from where Neeti, Uday and Samar were trapped on the sea-facing side. She was reported to be sending texts or making calls, which suggested she was still alive.

  Her friend Ambreen Khan had received several texts while she sheltered to the north of the hotel, at a friend’s apartment off Pedder Road. At first she had stared at them in disbelief. She had checked the number and sender’s ID. She thought she was hallucinating but they were definitely from Sabina’s phone. ‘Incredible!’ Ambreen studied the TV pictures of the blazing Taj and re-read one text. ‘You once told me about a dream you had,’ her friend had written. ‘I am the most popular girl in town. We are by the sea and I am lying on a charpoy. On one side of me is Shantanu and you are on the other.’ Ambreen sometimes felt like the invisible partner in their marriage, a conduit to their children, passing on messages from a distracted mother. ‘Shantanu is asking everyone to visit one by one.’ There was a long pause before another text. ‘My stomach is hurting, and my mobile phone is the only light, but I am thinking about this dream. In it you rolled over on the charpoy to face me and you said: “You will die.” ’

  Ambreen gasped. Was this really happening?

  In the lobby, Sunil Kudiyadi regrouped with his Black Suits. Exasperating news had come that the big guns of the National Security Guard (NSG) had only just left Delhi, meaning it would be many hours more before they reached the hotel. Buoyed by the Souk triumph, the Black Suits decided to go it alone one more time, attempting a second evacuation, this time bolstered by the MARCOS. Kudiyadi texted Chef Oberoi. ‘Please come down to the lobby if you can. It is clear. Gunmen are on upper floors.’

  King of a business predicated on infinitesimal tolerances, where the distance between the knife and a dinner plate is measured by a half-bent thumb, Oberoi noticed as he rode the service lift down to the ground floor that his usually pristine chef’s whites were bloodied. He rubbed at the stains, trying to suppress a mounting feeling of dread at what he might see on his first foray outside the kitchens since 9 p.m. the previous evening.

  Taking a deep breath, he slid back the lift gate and emerged through a service door that, when closed, appeared to be a marble panel. Checking to see if the corridor was clear, he crept out into the darkened lobby, a waft of burnt wood hitting him as he clocked blood tracks by the entrance to the Harbour Bar. When he reached the police command post next to Shamiana, Karambir Kang and Kudiyadi were waiting. As they shook hands, Karambir quietly revealed his family were probably dead. Oberoi was horrified. The General Manager had said nothing during their frequent phone and text exchanges and so he had presumed that Neeti and the boys were safe. He could only guess at the pain Karambir was feeling, but this was not the time to dwell on it. They had to weigh up a plan. Joined by the Joint Commissioner of Police and a MARCOS commander, they sifted through their options.

  The MARCOS wanted to leave the NSG to clear and lock down the Tower. It was a complex operation that they were not trained for and they had the wrong equipment and insufficient men. So where to focus their energies? The guests locked into the Zodiac and the Starboard Bar on the ground floor were safe enough for now, having barricaded themselves in. Those trapped in the function rooms on the first floor with the Banqueting Manager, Mallika Jagad, were a more urgent case, but she was reporting that their corridor still rang with grenade explosions. How was a 23-year-old keeping control of these veteran executives? ‘Alcohol,’ she responded dryly. ‘I’ve a great single malt that is helping to incentivize them.’

  That left the Chambers. Invisible to the world, but easily accessed through the service corridors, the hotel’s private club was the obvious choice for evacuation, especially as among those stranded there were politicians and assorted tycoons with powerful voices. ‘OK,’ said Karambir, ‘let’s do the Chambers.’ Preparing to assist, the JC called through to the police Control Room, requesting backup. Commissioner Gafoor, still stationed in his car outside the Trident hotel, flatly refused. ‘You have the MARCOS. Stand down until the NSG arrive.’ Only Kudiyadi’s Black Suits would go into the fray – armed with their radios and supported by a small unit of marine commandos.

  Chef Oberoi headed back through the invisible marble door, adjacent to the Harbour Bar, tying it shut it behind him with a napkin – the broken lock was one of those items on a long snagging list that never got seen to. Taking the old service lift, he stepped out into his domain that still smelled reassuringly of lye and candied fruit. He worried that such a large number of people could not be taken out through the main lobby as the gunmen were still roaming the sea-facing Palace corridors. He and his staff would shepherd the Chambers group through the hotel’s backstage areas and out via the Time Office on Merry Weather Road. Now all he needed was volunteers from the Kitchen Brigade.

  In Merry Weather Road, Sea Lounge’s head waiter, Faustine Martis, was trying as hard as he could to get back into the hotel. Catching wind of the successful Tower evacuation, he buttonholed a reporter for the Hindustan Times: ‘Who’s out and where?’ The reporter said: ‘A hundred and fifty or so from the Tower so far.’ But no one from the Palace. Faustine looked forlorn and rushed towards the Taj’s staff entrance. ‘They are planning something new, too,’ the journalist shouted after him. But he didn’t hear.

  A Black Suit caught hold of Faustine trying to enter. ‘You’re going the wrong way,’ he told him, gently turning him around. It was the fourth time they had knocked him back and on each occasion he had given the same desperate story: ‘My daughter’s inside on the second floor.’ The Black Suit asked him to be patient: ‘Please, sir. We will get to everyone.’ But Faustine wasn’t waiting: ‘She’ll be dead by then,’ he shouted. ‘The room is already filled with smoke. The door’s gone too.’ He was tearful and determined.

  When a small column of police appeared shortly before 4 a.m., Faustine tagged along, and as they reached the glass security box, he darted down the one-porter-wide stairway. He had done it. Now he intended to exploit his knowledge of the cellars, the locker rooms and vaults to reach the first-floor kitchens. From there he could use the service lifts to head for the Data Centre. Somewhere near there his daughter was waiting for him.

  4 a.m. – the Chambers

  Inside the Chambers library, the New York financier Mike Pollack was agitated. The longer he, Anjali and their dining companions remained in the dark, the more pessimistic he became. Pollack admired the Taj staff for getting them this far, especially Chef Oberoi’s unshakeably positive number two, Vijay Banja, a jovial character with a mop of unruly hair who had helped them escape from Wasabi. But it was obvious to Mike that the Chambers was only a respite. He was a fan of Mumbai, a season-ticket holder. But the security forces had to get themselves into gear.

  All around him
mobile phone screens glowed in the darkness. Some of the conversations made him feel like his teeth were getting drilled, including that of an Indian MP, who seemed to be giving a live TV interview. ‘We are in a special part of the hotel on the first floor called the Chambers. There are more than 200 important people: business leaders and foreigners.’

  Pollack whispered to Anjali: ‘Can you believe it? This fucking idiot MP is blabbing our exact location to CNN or something.’ Friends in the US began texting to say that the Indian MP’s interview was already being reported. A siege had just become something far more deadly. All of his fears came to a head and, impulsive as always, he called Anjali’s cousin, who was the legal guardian of their two boys. ‘Things are looking bad. Please take care of them if we don’t get out.’

  Anjali pulled Chef Banja to one side. It is my job to take care of you. Was there a plan? ‘Don’t worry,’ he reassured her, taking her hand. ‘I’ll die before I let anything happen to you.’

  If hell is other people, then the journalist Bhisham Mansukhani was plumbing its depths too. Ensconced in the Lavender Room, along the corridor from Mike and Anjali, he was observing a hostile confrontation: a guest castigating a waiter for failing to provide the right charger for his mobile phone. What a prick, Bhisham thought, before recognizing the angry man as Gunjan Narang, someone whom he and the newlywed Amit Thadani had been at school with. Even then Gunjan had been a bully. After the buzz of arriving in the exclusive Chambers had subsided, Bhisham was beginning to feel nervous. He had been in the Taj for almost six hours, forced to listen to the intimate and fatuous, eavesdropping as some guests lambasted their contacts in the upper echelons. One man was heard trying to raise a helicopter from the Indian Air Force that he suggested could hover over the Chambers terrace.

  Bhisham kept telling himself that the only unexpected boon was that he had avoided another big fat Indian wedding. Only Thadani could have talked him into coming to one of those, a request from a childhood friend that had forced him to renege on his personal oath never to do the assembly of ceremonies, feasts and parties that most posh weddings had become. He prodded Amit on his Black-Berry. Nothing had been heard from him or Varsha for hours. Bhisham tried his friend in the Press Club: ‘Is it true that they are going room to room shooting?’ Another friend, a writer at The Times of India, texted back better news: ‘Fire brigade dousing fire.’ Maybe Amit and Varsha were safe after all. Then another journalist friend called to conduct a live interview for an Indian satellite channel. ‘We’re in Chambers,’ Bhisham announced, before wishing he hadn’t. What was he thinking by giving away his location?

  His train of thought was interrupted by a sensational whisper: Souk had been evacuated with no casualties. He felt a glimmer of hope and began texting friends once more. ‘4.10 a.m.: Waiting for evacuation.’

  In the Chambers library, close to where Mike’s party was sitting, the yacht owner Andreas Liveras noted a flurry of activity, shaking his head. For the last couple of hours he had remained on his chaise longue, keeping in regular touch with Nick Edmiston out on the Alysia, assuring him everything was under control. ‘Remesh,’ he said solemnly, speaking to his trusted aide, who sat on the floor beside him, ‘we are staying put. Running is a fool’s mission.’ He laughed. ‘These people can’t even help themselves.’

  It wasn’t that Andreas was cruel. Remesh told everyone that he couldn’t wish for a better boss. But strangers found his directness obnoxious. He had always known what he wanted and worked on other people’s indecision. These days, if you were not straight out of the starting blocks, Andreas talked over you, the legacy of having struggled to build his fortune from nothing, one cake at a time, the catering millions augmented by those derived from the yacht-chartering game. If anything, Andreas was too full of life to be dragged down by other people’s poor judgements and ineffective choices.

  What he had in mind now was an armed escort. ‘We will wait for people with guns,’ he told Remesh, fielding calls from his four worried children in London. ‘Mr L., they are planning to take foreigners,’ Remesh warned between calls. ‘You tell them you are Syrian.’ With his Cypriot complexion, Andreas could get away with it. But his mind was elsewhere. He had had an idea. He would get his story out, kicking the British government into heaping pressure on the Indians, precipitating a speedy rescue mission. Maybe the SAS would be mobilized. The best way of starting this particular fight would be to call the BBC, he judged.

  Within minutes of having explained his predicament to the news-room in London, where it had just turned midnight, he was patched through to the reporter Matt Frei, who conducted a live interview on the rolling BBC News 24. ‘I came to have a curry in the Taj Mahal hotel, which is the best restaurant here,’ Andreas explained, as the BBC showed footage of dead tourists being taken out of the Taj on luggage trollies, including the Canadian couple shot by the pool.

  The besieged hotel was the top story in the world right now, and Frei was delighted to have an eyewitness inside. ‘And then what happened?’ he prompted. Andreas continued: ‘As soon as we sat down at the table we heard machine-gun fire outside in the corridors. We [got] under the table. [Waiters] switched all the lights off. The machine guns kept going. Then they took us [out] into the kitchen and from there, into a basement, to come up into a salon. There are two or three salons here and there must be more than a thousand people here.’ The number he plucked from the air was large enough to attract attention, a typically bravura performance.

  Frei tried to get the facts straight: ‘Andreas, where are you?’ The interviewee paused, irritable: ‘I am in a salon in the hotel. We are locked in here. No one tells us anything. People are frightened. The last bomb exploded forty-five minutes ago. The hotel is shaking every time a bomb goes off. We are looking at each other and everyone jumps, living on their nerves.’ The bulletin coming to an end, Frei interjected: ‘We have to leave it there. Andreas, good luck.’ The BBC signed off. Had he done enough to grab Whitehall by the collar?

  Moments later, they heard a rumpus, shouting and barging coming from the Chambers foyer. Liveras closed his eyes, sitting back on the chaise longue. Whatever was happening, he was having no part of it. Bhisham texted a friend: ‘People in hall.’ An evacuation was starting. He was going to take his chance. He roused his mother and her friends.

  A Taj security officer walked between them, issuing instructions. ‘Turn off your phones. Take your change out of your pockets.’ The evacuation was happening right away. ‘We are going to get you all out. Please be ready.’ Bhisham and his mother moved towards the kitchen exit, along an unlit corridor. ‘Form an orderly line.’ After all the inaction he now felt eager but drained. Ahead, he heard raised voices and people jostling and pushing. ‘Can you see those foreigners jumping the queue?’ someone shouted, as a group of Europeans forced their way ahead. Bhisham spotted the school bully Gunjan again, who was now with his family.

  ‘Everyone hold steady. You’ll all get out,’ the Taj Black Suits urged, trying to keep things fluid and affable. But the mood was darker than in the Tower, where diners had elected leaders and scouts to escort them. ‘Everyone will make it, if you form a line. Turn your phones off. Absolute quiet.’ There were a hundred more guests here than in Souk, and they were narrating their own exits: calling, texting and Tweeting.

  Down at the front, through the open door, Bhisham could just about make out Chef Hemant Oberoi, who held his hands up for silence. Next to him was Chef Banja, who had kept up everyone’s spirits. Before them stood the white-jacketed chefs de partie, with their grey neckerchiefs, the most senior and accomplished in the kitchens, and their sous-chefs. Also present were the blue-, grey-and brown-uniformed apprentices, the plongeurs or dishwashers, and the marmitons, the young kitchen boys who scrubbed out the deep casserole dishes.

  Chef Oberoi marshalled his Kitchen Brigade, explaining that in a few minutes they would begin escorting guests through the kitchen, down the stairs by his cabin and out of the Time Office staff exit. H
e needed volunteers to form a human chain around the evacuating guests in case of any unforeseen disaster.

  Nitin Minocha, the Golden Dragon’s senior sous-chef, who wore a neatly clipped soldier’s moustache and had a pair of chopsticks perennially in his top pocket, stepped forward. He had already shown tonight that he could keep his head, having locked down his restaurant and concealed diners, before evacuating them to Wasabi, and then out of the firing line into Chambers. Chef Banja joked that tonight Minocha would become ‘a soldier in whites’, aided by Hemant Talim, his sous-chef, who also volunteered. Effervescent Talim, who was Amit Peshave’s friend and former room-mate, had worked at the Taj since 2002 but was still so youthful that in the kitchen he was known as ‘the Chicken’. As a result of working on the wok station he had developed a formidable forearm and was the hotel’s premier arm wrestler.

  Oberoi clapped Talim on the shoulders just as Thomas Varghese, a Syrian Christian, who was head waiter in Wasabi, raised his hand. Varghese, master of the night shift, was a favourite in the kitchens as he defended the Taj staff in the employee union and he could manage his restaurant almost single-handedly: eleven teppanyaki seats, nine sushi places, and twenty free-standing tables.

  Chef Oberoi called out for Boris Rego, the quick-witted sous-chef from Shamiana. Amit Peshave’s ‘Indefatigable Rego’ had escaped when the gunman had shot up the coffee shop earlier in the evening and fled through the kitchens to the first-floor service area. For the past three hours he had been helping muster guests in Chambers. Now he stepped forward, as did Kaizad Kamdin, a 6 foot 4 inch Parsi who worked in the banqueting halls and was known universally as Brother Kaiz, and Zaheen Mateen, a lithe, hot-tempered Rajasthani who worked in Zodiac Grill.