Thursday 27th November 2008

Two weeks ago, I sat in the lobby of the Taj Mahal Hotel in Bombay. Elsa and I had spent the day wondering around the hotel and around nearby India Gateway, talking to foreigners about their reasons for coming to the city. Weary backpackers, their faces pasty with sunblock, walked in and out; a German man who who had just arrived in India told us about that morning's sightseeing tour, sporting his socks, sandals and ill-fitting khaki shorts, a tilak pasted on his perspiring forehead. We were out on the terrace observing the middle-aged couples fighting over the breadbasket, and single travellers nosing through novels, when a few members of the England Cricket Team, here for a press conference, giggled and waved at us. When we went over to wish them the best of luck they became coy, turning towards their tikka hamburgers.

Back in the lobby that evening, I waited for a friend to pick me up for a party. Perching on the edge of a couch, and trying to remain inconspicuous, I was joined by a gentle Arab-looking man who struck up conversation. He was originally from Baghdad, he said, from a fairly humble family, but had lived in India for decades before making some lucky investments in property. Now, he lives in Holland Park, his two sons American college-educated. He was staring around the lobby of the Taj concernedly, craning to look behind the huge display of oriental lilies that scraped the gold mosaic-ed ceiling. He was looking for a man, he said, that he hadn't seen for forty years; his old housekeeper when he lived in India. His earnest eyes opened wide. He was rich now, he said, and laughed. After he'd left his service, he studied for an engineering degree and now had a business of his own, a family, and two grown up children. His life had completely changed! And now, they were both in Bombay on the same day, the master and his former-servant-made-good. They were going to meet, in the lobby of the Taj Mahal Hotel, at 6 o'clock. They had their whole lives to catch up on. My ride came, I wished him the best, and waved goodbye.

As I write, the Indian Army are in the last stages of a siege in the very same lobby. Less than 24 hours ago, armed gunmen burst in, looking for Americans, English, Jews and failing that, any foreigners, shooting indiscriminately and throwing grenades. Screams filled the air, and the smell of dust and burning, the sight of falling golden plaster, the sound of smashed glass. People hung out of upper windows, frantically calling on their mobile phones to relatives and other people. Scores of people were trapped by gunmen, some of them allowed to escape when they could prove they were not British or American. Guests hid under the beds in their hotel rooms as gunmen lurked in their bathrooms. Some of these are still missing, including prominent Times of India journalist who called her husband several hours ago and has been silent since. Downstairs in the cellar, a 73 year-old British businessmen cowered in the cellar, on the telephone to the BBC, before being shot and killed. Up in the lobby, Indian staff were picked off arbitrarily. Blood covered stairs and hallways that for years had been polished to perfection.

A few hundred metres away on the bustling main bazaar, Leopold’s Café, a traveller’s haunt for decades, is pockmarked with bulletholes. Two weeks ago, we had sat in here, talking to giggling British backpackers about their days as extras on Bollywood sets, watching Italian women drinking their afternoons away with a yard of beer, ordering Indian, or Chinese food from the grumpy waiter. Today, it is empty, shattered, silent, shaken.

The terrorist attacks in Bombay today have shocked the world. But they have shocked India more. And a country that is struggling, and failing, to contain its own internal terrorist threat is powerless against an international one. It has not the capacities in security, nor intelligence.

Before we’d learned of today's recent attacks, we left the house early for a day trip to the Taj Mahal – the original one this time. The road to Agra is precarious – and not only for the upturned lorries shedding their loads. Roadside cafes are set up to overcharge tourists for weak coffee and rubbery toast, men at stoplights peddle miniature Taj Mahal snow domes, and every other car passenger rubbernecks to smile and wave at the foreigners in the back of the taxi. When we arrive, we are surprised to walk straight up to the designated tourist ticket desk, when all the guide books had told us we were bound to wait in line for hours. We pay our fee (at a 750-rupee premium for foreigners) and go to the security desk. A man there empties out of the contents of my bag and makes two piles, “allowed,” he said to my purse, “allowed,” to my sunglasses, “allowed, allowed, allowed” (novel, SLR camera, notepad) “not allowed” (novel number two, for some reason) “not allowed” (iPod earphones). The fact that a bomb is much more easily disguised as a five year old clunky camera than a tiny pair of earphones does not seem to cross his mind.

India has too nascent a security culture to deal with the burden of terrorism. Bombay is incredibly vulnerable: the perfect, if unexpected, target. A ship docking in the harbour, whether full of terrorists or fishermen, goes undetected and unnoticed, and a step onto the shore brings its passengers right into the heart of the city, its tourists and its bustle. A couple of hundred metres away is the Taj Palace Hotel, looming up to face the dock, guarded by two smiling footmen in turbans who point the way through the same wooden ‘metal detectors’ in place in every public building checkpoint, which beep no matter what the entrants are carrying. They're shuffled through regardless. At the entrance to the Bombay Taj Hotel, the guards even hold your handbag as you go through, not opening it to look, and passing it back to you with a bow. When confronted with armed terrorists, they would have been thrown down like ninepins. At the train station the same applies. Terrorists would not be noticed until blood smeared the entire floor. At Leopold’s customers were sitting targets through open windows, and police, if called, would have to shake the dust off their shoes before leaving the station, if they even answered the phone in the first place. Today, at the Taj Mahal in Agra, less than a day after tourists were targeted 1000 kilometres away, guards are just as nonchalant. If terrorists had come here instead, none of us would have stood a chance.

And so, today, as we walk through the‘metal detector’, we are lightly patted down by a female guard, and pushed out to view the giant white mausoleum. Wandering around the fountains, we take pictures for Indian couples on honeymoon. A gang of boys want their photos with us, and a gaggle of young women in saris laugh and wink at Karsten. The strange lack of white Westerners still hasn’t occurred to us. We walk around, squinting in the sunlight reflected from all angles off the white stone. A gang of Muslim schoolkids surround us “Handsome! Handsome!” they shout at Eva. “Pretty! Pretty!” they chirrup at me. Eva looks put out. “Howayu? Howayu?” waves a toddler, prompted by her father. The reception we get as Western Tourists is, as usual, a mixture of curiousity and ridicule, treatment that’s both offputting and enjoyable at the same time.

Then, the moment comes: a call from home, and we realise what has happened. Bombay is in tatters, people are dead, terrorists are involved. And Westerners are the targets. We are practically the only white faces, and every face, Indian, Muslim, for a moment, becomes a menace. The innocent attention we arouse becomes something frightening, and the lack of security is no longer a joke. Our vulnerability is exposed.

Only a handful of Westerners were killed in the attacks in Bombay, compared to a hundred Indians. We are no less objects of hatred to terrorist groups here than we are at home. But India has not the means to deal with the threat, or the actualisation, of terror.

And no one is more afraid in this instance than Indians, who over the last five years have suffered bombings and shootings that have killed hundreds, if not thousands of people. Overtures to the West have resulted in no assistance at all.

Today, we feel that fear for the first time. Suddenly, we are the targets, and we understand what it is like to feel vulnerable with no one to come to our aid. Ordinary people, meeting long-lost friends, swimming in the pool, arguing over dinner, backpacking on their gap years are objects of hatred. Ordinary Indians have lived with this same threat for years. Now that perhaps Westerners as well as Indians have become casualties, the West may offer intelligence, training and technology. Doormen in turbans may be replaced by trained officers, and makeshift wooden arches by something more technologically sensible. Perhaps the international community, finally understanding India’s terror, will listen to its plea.