Gunmen's siege still haunts city

There is one thing that hotelier Karambir Kang has been unable to do, one thing he has not wanted to do.

He would rather remember the family he lost, his wife, Niti, and their sons, Uday and Samar, as they were - happy and vibrant, full of life.

Remarkably, after their deaths, he discovered that, on the day the militants struck, his family had visited the hotel photographer and posed for happy, carefree pictures.

That is how he remembers them now. He has no desire, therefore, to enter the suite on the sixth floor where they perished.

"I have not entered that room - it's not something I have done. Even in the aftermath I did not go in. I did not see the bodies. I refused to do this," says Kang.

"To me, the last memories I want to remember are of them still alive."

Twelve months after 10 Islamist militants swept ashore and laid siege to the Indian city of Mumbai, leaving more than 165 people dead and a nation stunned, the historic Taj Mahal Palace Hotel - the hotel Kang remains general manager of - is buzzing with the sound of workmen.

Staff apologise to guests for the sound of drilling and the clatter of hammers as carpenters and plasterers hurry to rebuild damaged restaurants and interiors, but the truth is they rather like the noise.

They say it is the sound of recovery, of the hotel coming back to life - the sound of defiance.

In the lobby of the 107-year-old building where four of the gunmen ran in spraying automatic fire, a marble plinth lists the names of the 31 people who died here.

"For now and ever you will inspire us," it reads.

Hotel officials, Kang among them, seem genuine when they say the restoration of the hotel, opposite the Gateway to India memorial, marks the efforts of those caught up in the violence to rebuild and regroup.

But such upbeat talk of recovery goes only so far. The shock waves of those attacks, when for 60 hours a highly trained team of militants, apparently from Pakistan, terrorised the city, continue to resonate deeply.

Relations between India and Pakistan, which at the time had been definitely improving, have been set back by years. Pakistan insists it has done much to move against those responsible for planning the attacks.

In a move that may help improve the stand-off, Pakistan this week charged seven men, including the alleged mastermind Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, said to be the operational commander of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), or "Army of the Righteous", which is believed to be behind the attacks.

Others charged include Hamad Amin Sadiq, who worked on raising funds.

Yet India says the militant infrastructure remains in place and that key figures linked to the events of last November remain free to go about their business.

The events of November 26 have also left lingering doubt and anxiety, both regionally and beyond. In these pressing times, who now sleeps entirely at ease in a large hotel in any major city? In our post-9/11 world, these events have created new uncertainty, fresh angst.

Of course, those suffering the hardest are those bearing personal loss. When the militants struck, Kang worked without sleep to try to save his guests.

Even after his family perished from the fire, trapped in their room - he had been speaking to his wife by phone until the very end - he refused to leave the hotel, insisting that he could help save the lives of others.

At the time, his behaviour appeared remarkable, robotic even.

Sitting in the hotel's Sea Lounge which looks out over the flat ocean, Kang says during those 60 terrible hours he received strength from his mother.

When he called her to say that commandos had broken into his family's suite and found them dead, huddled together in the bathroom, his wife cradling one son, the body of the other lying beside them, she had told him he must do whatever he could for those still alive.

"I thought about it for a minute and I thought, 'Yes, that is the right thing to do'," he says.

After the siege, many people told him he should move away from Mumbai. He thought about it but decided to stay. "If my family died here ... I think it's my moral duty to be here, maybe more than that - something deeper," he says.

"It's important for me to oversee this task of rebuilding and see [the hotel] better than before. But also that I act in a way that makes my family, who are no longer, proud of me. Perhaps [I need] to redeem myself."

Redemption, from what?

"You play over in your mind everything - 'What if ..."' he continues. "But it was a helpless situation."

Less than five minutes' stroll from the seafront hotel, the workmen have been less busy at Leopold cafe, a popular hang-out for foreigners and locals alike.

The restaurant was one of the first locations struck by the militants and 10 people were killed, two of them waiters.

Unlike at the Taj, the bullet holes and cracked mirror have been left as they were, a perhaps unnecessary reminder for those who work at the restaurant but a draw for tourists.

Nearby, touts offer "terror tours" of the various locations attacked by the militants.

"It's not a question of forgetting. It's not forgotten but we go ahead with our lives and we make sure this does not happen again," says Farhang Jehani, one of the owners of the Leopold.

But is security any better, are the police any better trained, better prepared?

In the aftermath of the attacks, the Indian home ministry introduced several changes including the establishment of new regional hubs for the National Security Guard commandos.

One of the woeful failings of the authorities when the militants struck was that it took more than 10 hours to fly the "black cats" from their base in Delhi to Mumbai to confront the gunmen. (Officials were unable to find a suitable plane for them.)

Additional Commissioner Deven Bharti, one of the policemen who have interrogated the sole surviving militant, Ajmal Kasab, the 21-year-old "highly motivated terrorist" whose trial is still ongoing, says numerous changes have been introduced locally in the aftermath of of the attacks when the first police to encounter the militants were carrying old rifles and one or two bullets, if they were armed at all.

Commandos are now in each of the city's five sectors, and there is a mobile response van in each of the 87 stations with police armed with automatic weapons.

These have been assigned the role of first response.

But he readily admits to the failure by the security forces, in particular a "failure of imagination".

"One should remember 9/11," he adds.

"We never thought that 10 people from Pakistan would be landing in Mumbai and engaging five targets. I don't think there's anywhere in the world where militants have taken up five targets."

The reorganisation and retraining has involved closer co-operation with the FBI and other international groups. Yet not everyone is convinced that the security situation has markedly improved.

Jehani, from Cafe Leopold, has placed a guard at the front of his restaurant and installed CCTV but he recognises that defending such an establishment against well-armed, determined militants is an all-but impossible task.

"I think security is better, but not 100 per cent," he admits. "What can you do? You see what is happening in Pakistan with attacks continuing every day. When the terrorists want to strike, they strike."

But at times Mumbai remains ill-prepared, as if it simply does not care. Watching the busy scenes at Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus - the railway station still better known by its Colonial-era name, Victoria - it is difficult to imagine it as the scene where Kasab and a colleague mowed down at least 52 people and injured scores more.

The waiting area, slick with blood and downed bodies in the aftermath, is now full of passengers waiting for trains.

Sebastian D'Souza, photo editor of the Mumbai Mirror and the man who rushed into the station and was rewarded for his dedication with a now-iconic image of Kasab, points out where he hid when the gunmen came looking for him.

He saw a group of policemen huddled in the corner and shouted at them to fire back at the two gunmen but no one did. Some of them ran.

"They could not match their guns," he says.

Standing amid the mid-afternoon bustle, D'Souza says the city rapidly returned to how things were, despite the carnage.

"People are always bothered about their own lives, everybody has to go back to work."

On the way out of the terminus, D'Souza points out the frames of electronic security gates at the entrance. None of them is plugged in; none work.

The commuters rush past without pausing to look.

- INDEPENDENT