Friday 28th November 2008

The siege continues. Back home, newspapers report as if it's all over. But this is a terrorist attack that goes on, and on, and on. Gunshots are still fired and people are still trapped in Nariman House. Like the men and women who dropped from the Twin Towers, bodies are slowly discovered, people in the Taj Hotel slowly crawl from under their beds and call home. Some are safe, some never were. Some are still trapped, trying to make their way out, climbing down bedsheets and ripped hotel curtains.

The Western newspapers proclaim another attack on the West. The British, American and Australian Foreign Offices call their people out of Mumbai. But there is no whisking away or warning for the vulnerable Indians, even though a hundred of their nationals are dead, compared to a handful of Westerners.

America and Britain are calling this battle their own. It must be Al-Quaeda, they say, because Westerners were rounded up and targeted. There is little mention of the fact that terrorist messages also voiced anger over the Muslims in Kashmir,

We have been voicing our fears about our own status here in the house in the last 48 hours. Our people have been targeted on the same soil on which we stand. But in the newsroom here today in Delhi, we realise that it's not our battle at all. We wonder why the newspaper isn't employing our services instead, since it's our countrymen who are dying. Until we realise that the story is not ours to own. The bodies being dragged out of hotels are Indian. The police who have dies in shoot outs are Indian. The troopers keeping seige are Indian; the people climbing out of the windows are mostly Indian, the people on the streets, cheering soldiers and voicing their disgust and anger, are Indian. The reporters here in the office, glued to the television screens, tapping away madly, anxiously speaking on their mobile phones which ring constantly, are Indian.

A senior reporter for our newspaper is somewhere in the Taj Hotel. No one has heard from her since she spoke to her husband, over 24 hours ago, telling him she was hiding under her bed, listening to a man, carrying a gun, creeping around her bathroom. Whether or not she is still there, nobody knows. Western reporters are standing outside, or are being flown in, staying at a safe distance.

The Taj Hotel has been painted as the playground for Western millionaires, a symbolic target for the Islamic Mujahedeen. But what has never been mentioned in the press is that the building was, in fact, built by an Indian entrepreneur, JN Tata, after he was thrown out of another five star hotel for being too 'native'. It was a monument to Indian pride and industry, not to Western affluence. A couple were celebrating their wedding with 200 guests, and two days ago found themselves, instead, cowering in their bathtub. There were far more Mumbaikers going ahead with their everyday lives on Wednesday than there were Westerners on holiday.

This is not a war on the West. It's too easy to forget that the 'West', in a geographical sense, doesn't exist anymore. The world economy exists as much in Bombay, in Dubai, in Beijing, as it does in London or New York. India is as much a target of hatred as downtown Manhattan. Bombay is not the stage for a battle between the West and the terrorists. It is the battle.

A CNN report today showed an American reporter, standing outside the Taj Hotel, amidst a group of angry, drunken Bombay men. They asked why she was here. They asked with hostility what others in India, watching their battle unfold, are asking with genuine curiosity.