Inside The Taj On 26/11

Two days after four terrorists attacked Mumbai’s Taj Mahal Palace & Tower, Vasant Prabhu learned that one of the con­stables ”“ Rahul Shinde ”“ who defended the hotel on the night of November 26 had died. Prabhu broke down. “I didn’t know him at all, but for the few hours I was there we ”“ the police, the hotel staff, the guests and I ”“ were in it together; we had forged a bond stronger than any other.” Prab­hu, who works with The Indian Express, was the only journalist inside the Taj on the first day of the terror­ist strikes. His photographs published the next day in the newspaper revealed to the world the gruesomeness of the operation and the intent of the attackers.

The short, wiry 51-year-old was, in fact, the right man at the wrong place, but he went in anyway. Prabhu reached the rear entrance of the hotel about 20 minutes after the shooting began and as he stood there deliberat­ing his next move, he saw two policemen sprint inside the Taj. Prabhu followed them, gesturing to the security guards at the hotel that he had come with the cops. The policemen, Vishwas Nagre Patil, a deputy commission­er of police, and constable Amit Khetale, says Prabhu, thought he was a photographer employed with the hotel. “When I heard the explosions inside the Taj, I knew this was no ordinary gang war. But the sight of the cops reas­sured me, I thought, ”˜Chalo, ab pistol ka sahaara hai’ [”˜I can depend on their pistols’] and followed them inside.”

DCP Nagre-Patil cautiously peers out from behind the walls of the corridor on the third floor of the Taj after an exchange of fire with a terrorist who had taken up position on the floor below

For the next two hours, Prabhu followed Patil, Khetale and two of the Taj’s security officers, as they cautiously moved up the six floors of the her­itage wing, their backs kissing the walls, crouch­ing along the corridors, asking curious guests to get into their rooms and stay put. “We heard bullets being fired and grenades being exploded at various locations, and the acoustics of the Taj enhanced the effect.” As they were combing the third floor, the policemen spotted one of the ter­rorists who were on a floor below them and fired at him. The attacker fired back. Prabhu, who was just behind Patil as they edged their way forward along the staircase, says there was time enough for him to see a youth wearing a red cap, base­ball style, spray bullets at them before his group ducked to a man. The next moment, as the cops tried to fire back, the youth had disappeared into the Taj’s labyrinthine embrace.

Prabhu thought of his wife, Vrushali, his eight-year-old son, Gourish, and his colleagues and also about how each picture he clicked could possibly endanger the lives of the people whom he tailed. “I tried switching the flash off and shooting but that didn’t amount to anything, and I desperately wanted to take as many pictures as possible for my paper. In the end I took my chances, responsibly I would think, because I wanted to let the world know how bad it was inside.” The photographs Prabhu took with his Nikon D100 show, apart from the bloody carnage caused by the terrorists, the desperation of the guests and hotel staff who armed themselves with iron rods and liquor bot­tles as they prepared to take on the intruders.

Patil accompanied the policemen and the Taj staffers right up till the sixth floor, the hotel’s topmost, before they made their way back to the lobby via a “creaky, narrow and probably disused staircase” and the poolside. After spending some time in a housekeeping room along with other guests, dur­ing which time he responded to missed calls from Vrushali and his colleagues, Prabhu finally got per­mission to leave from the policemen stationed out­side the Taj. “I told my wife I was at office watching television and told her I’d take care of myself.”

Prabhu stayed back at his office for three days, shooting pictures of the siege at the Oberoi and Trident Hotels and at Nariman Bhavan. Ten days later his wife read his first-person account in The Indian Express’ sister publication, Loksatta, a Mar­athi daily. “She hugged me and cried and I turned philosophical.”

Prabhu says that he wishes the attacks had never happened, but they did and 26/11 at the Taj was the biggest assignment of his life. “Whenever I think of that night at the Taj, I always think of one of my idols, James Nachtwey [American photojournalist and war photographer]. If I’ve even accomplished ten per cent of what he has, I’d think I’ve done a good job. It wasn’t war out there, but it was just as bad.”