T'is with a troubled mind and heavy heart that I write this post. For as I type, my home of 18 years is under siege. Blood is splattered across its walls, and flames engulf it. Colaba, my heart, my home, is being held hostage.

Two nights ago, as I returned home from work, I received a phone call from my friend Richa. She was in the neighborhood, and wanted to meet up, would I come have drinks with her at Cafe Leopold, our favorite haunt? Tempted as I was, I had had a long day, and was rather exhausted. She tried to persuade me, but I had to decline. I bid her goodbye, and head to my room to rest my tired self.
Little did I realise the weight of that 'goodbye'.
A little shy of an hour later, feeling a little more human post a hot shower, I contemplated joining Richa after all. As I opened my wardrobe to pick something appropriate, however, I heard it. What was that? Fireworks? Man, those were loud ones. And rhythmic. I heard loud voices. A wedding procession? Why weren't the fireworks stopping? Why did this sound so much like...

Gunfire. People screaming. I looked out my window to see people running on the streets, panicked and screaming. The gunfire continued. Survival instincts overrode all others, and I locked my windows and doors, and rushed to the hall to warn my hostelmates. I didn't need to. The sounds had been loud enough, the sights clear enough. I watched as girls blurred past, locking doors and windows, sealing the main gates, getting our oblivious little watchman indoors, and blocking the entrance to the terrace.

As yet unsure of what exactly was going on, however, we ventured to look out upon the streets through the windows. Nothing in the world could have prepared us for what we were about to see. Across the street, Cafe Leopold was shattered. Shards of glass were sprayed upon the sidewalk, and even from a distance, we could see the blood. And the bodies.

None of us said a word. We couldn't have even if we tried. Faces paled, and trembling fingers reached for cellphones.

I dialed Richa's number. The call connected, and rang. And rang. And rang. My knees showed signs of giving way. I sat down. And dialed again. Across the hall, a girl gave a low scream and dropped her cellphone as tears cascaded down her face. Her brother was inside Regal cinema, and the gunmen were inside. Another girl was on the verge of collapse, speaking to her sister. She was in Leopold's, and had narrowly missed a bullet. I dialed Richa's number again.

A few rings down, a shaky voice answered. It was a friend of Richa's, who had been with her at the Cafe. Neither of us could say a word. A few tense, silent moments later, she spoke. Richa had been shot. A bullet to the ribs. She was unconscious, and barely breathing. I could feel the blood drain from my face. And the ground shook beneath my feet. Beneath everyone's feet.

Through the window, we heard more screams. And sirens. And then we saw the night sky glow orange. Aghast, we watched as flames engulfed the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel.
Finally summoning up the courage to move, we turned on the television and tuned in to the news. "Mumbai Under Siege" -- large, bold red letters filled the screen. A flurry of images followed. Victoria Terminus (call me as anti-MNS as you please, I refuse to refer to it as Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus when Shivaji had nothing in the world to do with it!) floors bathed in blood, scores of injured travellers being rushed to safety. The Oberoi hotel, its lobby in flames, with guests being held hostage inside. The Taj, in flames. Cafe Leopold, ridden with bullet-holes and shattered glass.

Colaba. Until now, the safest place in all of Mumbai. Colaba. A haven in the midst of all the chaos that ever struck Mumbai. Colaba. My home. Under attack.

The next couple of hours passed in an out-of-body blur. Frantic phonecalls from friends and relatives were answered, fears allayed. Yes, we were alright. Yes, we were indoors.

Yes, we were about 200 meters away from it.

Another explosion. The floor trembled beneath us. Cops came around telling us to batten down the hatches, and turn off the lights. Within minutes, the hostel was blacked out, and we were in our beds, too spooked to even consider falling asleep. Sirens wailed outside, and the night was punctuated with gunfire and explosions. Some of us cried. Some cursed. None slept.

When daylight came, we saw smoke still billowing out of the Taj, firefighters hard at work trying to slay the raging beast.

My phone rang, and the words I heard echoed like a gunshot. Richa had succumbed to the gunshot. I hung up, unable to speak. I was supposed to be there with her. It could have been me. My roommate echoed similar sentiments. She and her boyfriend were out for dinner, and normally dine at the Taj. For some reason, they decided to dine at Gaylord's instead that night. It was sheer luck that the two of us were alive and well.

There were those not as fortunate. My roommate's sister-in-law lost her parents and brother at the Taj. She herself lies battling for her life right now post 2 bullet wounds. Friends and acquaintances who were hotel staff at the Taj and the Oberoi never made it out. Stories poured in of narrow escapes.

The news channels had little else to speak about. Images of gore and destruction flooded the screen, leaving us all with a rather sick feeling. This was huge. And we were right in the middle of it all.

The hours dragged on. The insanity didn't stop. As I write this, 40 hours have passed. And there are apparently terrorists still on the loose in the city.

In the midst of it all, the famed 'spirit of Mumbai' pushed the envelope. Cocky citizens walked the streets, and some even brought their children along to the scenes of terror to watch the show. Several ended up shot, some right in the head.

The city has lost some of its top police officers. Hundreds of citizens. Heritage. Peace of mind.

To those who have spent the last 40 hours in torment. To those who have laid down their lives in service. To those who were taken so cruelly from the world. And to those who have been left behind to pick up the pieces.

Love. Light. And peace.




R.I.P Richa Sharma -- 23rd April 1984 - 26th November 2008

Today started off particularly frustrating! My dear friend Venman decided to bombard my paraplegic self with several YouTube links to these excerpts from 'So You Think You Can Dance'. Now I know he meant nothing of it, we share YouTube links in daily conversation (happening, aren't we?). But to watch those men and women glide across the floor and gyrate and shimmy and shake and all that... was torture!

Don't get me wrong, I love to watch dances. And I love to dance! If it weren't for the risk of being carted off by the men in white coats, I'd choose to dance down the streets rather than walk. Rather, that's precisely why it was torture.

This back injury [see previous post] has kept me from dancing for over a month and a half now. And as I watched the contestants strut their stuff, taunting me with their swishy skirts and anglicized jhatkas and matkas, I couldn't take it anymore! I wanted to dance. I needed to dance!

And so I raised myself out of the comfy haven that is my sofa, swapped my bunny slippers (cut it out with the snickering) for my glittery ballerina shoes, and turned up the music. Loud!

I started by learning to moonwalk (courtesy tutorial videos on YouTube. Hooray, YouTube!). Turns out I'm a fast learner. Within about 20min I was moonwalking about the house to fetch my juice, doing little moonwalk circles, the works!

But there's really only so much one can moonwalk to satiate your inner Ginger Rogers/Rakhi Sawant/Catherine Zeta-Jones/Shakira/whomever you choose to dance like. So off went the ballerinas, on came the steel-heeled stilettos (and my back brace). The song was switched to 'Jazz Machine', and I just let go. And how!

I shimmied, I shook, I twirled, I kicked, I gyrated... like I hadn't done in far too long. I'm not going to compare myself to the SYTYCD contestants, I'm not anywhere near that good. But who cares? I was having the time of my life!

The tracks kept changing. Hispanic, Arabic, Bollywood, disco, jazz, Bhangra... It was psychotically brilliant!

By the time I was done, my pulse was racing, I had broken into a sweat, and I was short of breath. It was the most amazingly orgasmic feeling in the world!

And yes, I needed to pop a painkiller right away and then lie down. But it was worth it! Thanks VenMan! ;)

Today I celebrate(?) a month-and-a-half of being incapacitated. Long story short: autorickshaws and Mumbai's potholes in the monsoons; together, they're a surefire recipe for an injured back.

The worst part about an injury of this sort, is that it gives you a lot of "alone" time. You're pretty much confined to your bed, barely permitted to even move about the house to fix your meals, you can't step out to meet friends... The first few days would've almost been a welcome relief, if it weren't for the pain. After all, people in the metropolis long for such sabbaticals from work and other activities. 'Me' time is something we all want and need, but rarely ever find.

But that's the catch. It's alright for a few days. Much longer than that, and you start to feel the itch. Metropolitan people aren't used to sitting still for long, or not meeting people. To deprive them of their hectic schedules is akin to torture!

First, the unbearable boredom. Where you park yourself on the couch and watch every soap opera, movie, talk show, commercial... even the reruns! Trust me, there's really only so many times you can watch The Holiday, regardless of Jude Law (or Cameron Diaz, depending on which side of the fence you are). I began to speak with a British accent after the 15th time. To make matters worse, since there was nobody else around, I was speaking to myself in a British accent!

Then it starts sliding. Nobody's available to talk on the phone, you run out of food the one night you really don't want pizza...

I can't go on, this is just too ugly. And my upper lip's getting all stiff again.

Bollocks!

Oh my Lord, I've awakened from the dead! Well, feels like it anyway, when I look at the date I last posted.

A dear friend of mine chided me recently, telling me I ought to write more often, for "fans" like her. Well, fair enough. I'm a huge fan of hers too, in more ways than one. [Yes, Princess, I'm talking about you :) ]

A long time ago (17 years, to be precise), in a land far far away (it's actually not all that far away, but I love a little poetic license now and then), is where and when I first encountered the princess. Ours wasn't the type of meeting that legends are made of, but I've often found that the greatest stories... journeys... friendships, all start remarkably unobtrusively. Back then we were just two little girls in our frilly pink frocks, trotting about the merry-go-rounds. Turns out we weren't even very close (so she tells me, I must confess to having the worst memory regarding most of my childhood). And as was commonplace with our people, we never got to know each other too well either. My journey took me to distant lands, leaving behind friends and memories alike.

Many, many moons later, when technology opened magical portals of communication across the globe, is when the real magic started. Along came a message one day, from a name that tickled my memory, yet stopped short of ringing a bell. I knew the name, I thought. Yet couldn't find a face to connect to it, nor memories to associate with it. I admit, extremely regretfully, that it took a lot of help from common friends for me to finally realize that I had received a scroll from none other than the little princess I once played with, so many years ago.

Murphy's Law rang true yet again, and in stark contrast to my sketchy memories of her, she remembered events and details with astounding clarity (including the fact that my mother used to load my lips with Vaseline!). Lucky for me though, she never grudged me my amnesia (bless her!).

But the real surprise was yet to come.

Turns out the little princess I once knew was on a conquering spree. Since the last time I had met her, she had made herself a household name in the entertainment industry, and it was only getting better. TV shows, movies, awards... it was all happening. And the irony of it all is, I had to hear of it from friends. Never from her. Not once did she blow the royal trumpet about all that she has achieved, or all that she is clearly capable of doing.

And you would expect a media darling to be rather deficient in the cerebral region, right? Wrong again. The princess juggled her career and her academics better than the court jester with his plates... and topped her university! And it wasn't just textbook smarts. She's arguably one of the smartest women I have the privilege of knowing, and our multiple conversations on the most inane topics have cemented her position.

But the real icing on the cake... This smart, beautiful, successful young woman is a remarkable friend. It has been barely over a year since I received that fateful scroll, and already she's one of my dearest and closest allies. She's high on my list of In-Case-of-Emergency contacts, and a true 4 a.m. friend. And we haven't seen each other since we were 7 years old! She's been my shoulder to cry on, and my guardian angel, and a partner-in-crime.

She doesn't need to be, with the fame that she's achieved. It would've been a smooth move to leave all us lesser mortals behind while she made her way into the limelight. I've seen it happen. And I've seen her fan club websites. There's no dearth of people who would be only too glad to "make fraandsheep" with her. ;) Yet she understood one of the most basic dogmata of life - "You'll never get where you're going, if you forget where you're coming from". I don't know whether she made that decision consciously or not, but I know this... All of us who know and love her, still know her as the girl we grew up with (excluding myself, for as I explained earlier, I was denied the opportunity to actually grow up with her). She's not a star when she's with us. Not even close. She's as mortal and insane as the rest of us, and believe me, that's a tall order!

She says she's a fan of my writing. I'm humbled. For I am a fan of her determination, her ambition, her intelligence, her personality... I could go on.

But beyond being another in her long list of fans, I'm her friend. And I say that with the utmost pride.

Although I cannot name her for sake of anonymity, I dedicate this post to the absolutely amazing girl whom I call "Princess". And to friendship.