Rhetoric in abundance one year after 26/11

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Sipping a fresh lime soda on the night of November 26, 2009, after a never-ending day covering events all around south Mumbai one year after 26/11, I thought of what someone told me in the course of that day. 'We break our own laws with impunity, and insult our police force. There will be another 26/11 in India, because here we all think the nation is someone else's problem.'

As often happens when action is missing, rhetoric was in abundance one year after 26/11. Politicians, the public, all spoke out forcefully against terror. The symbolism of the day was everywhere, on the bullet riddled walls of Colaba, flags on the streets, photographs at every turn, and memorials at every corner.

But what are words worth? At Nariman House, where I was, the prayer meeting was attended by Jews from the US, Isarel, and Mumbai. The benediction in Hebrew, and Rabbi Moshe Karlotsky's moving tribute to the dead, his news about baby Moshe (now 3 years old), left many people weeping, and a lump in everyone's throats. Shashi Tharoor's slick speech hit the right nerve, and Israeli ambassador Mark Sofer's aggressive stance struck the right note.

And I thought again, what are these words worth? In the afternoon, I walked into Nariman House for the first time. I have seen the photographs and video of the destruction inside from one year ago, but to enter the building I covered so intensely last year, and to see it in much the same state, left me speechless. Unlike the Taj, Oberoi, Leopold, and CST that have all been restored before being open to the public, here, Nariman House nakedly exposed the scars of last year. One of the bedrooms was even piled up with linen, clearly a year old. The riddled walls and steps, the gaping holes in concrete, were, as Tharoor put it, a horrific reminder of the extent evil can do. It was clear the wealthy Chabad Lubavitch movement, with enough funds to buy any number of Chabad buildings, had left it like that on purpose. Even as they promised that 'Chabad will be back, bigger and better than before', here was a most pointed postscript from the Israelis: we will never forget, and we will never forgive.

Our team has been going through hours of footage and on-air recordings of the three days of the seige, this time, with the 20-20 vision that hindsight affords us. Through our live reports, live press conferences by security agencies, and the political establishment, the utter confusion of those days is now crystal clear. Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh saying there were 20-25 terrorists at large, NSG head JK Dutt saying there were 5-6 terrorists at Nariman House (a point I was guilty of echoing too), three top cops dying 3 hours into the attack, a host of completely bizarre stories being circulated by locals and finding its way on air (one of them, terrorists ordering chicken tikka for delivery!), and at my location, all of it ending with a public stampede in Colaba, just after the final assault at Nariman - it was too bewildering.

The only light moment that emerged out of that evening, for me, was ironically in the stampede itself, worth mentioning because it was the only comical anecdote I had in the tragic days that followed! At one point right in the middle of my live report with Sagarika Ghose in the Delhi studios, I was pushed around/molested by the drunken mobs, gone wild with news of the siege having ended. Ritesh my video journalist, stood in front of me, and Karan, my husband, behind me, valiantly trying to stop the unruly mobs from pulverizing us.

My live report was cut short mid-sentence as I fell in the melee. I yelped, and Sagarika said, 'Raksha, are you ok?' And then Karan's voice floated over the airwaves, for all to hear, 'Don't worry baby, I'm holding you!' Twice. I got a few phone calls after that enquiring, 'Are you ok?' And then immediately, 'Who was with you?'

It made us laugh afterwards.. Still does. But watching all this confusion replayed out on our tapes this past month, makes it clear how top cops D Sivanandan and Rakesh Maria have no choice but to now admit to their utter 'failure of imagination' (as they've both termed it in the last 2 weeks), as the establishment woefully remained always one step behind, till the end, unable to grasp the method in which we were attacked - fractured and all the weaker for the great losses it faced.

I'm told a good journalist must be always cynical, refuse to be taken in by rhetoric, and must reflect the skepticism echoed by the public at large. I agree fully. But as the Mumbai police puts up a show of strength one year later, with its '200 crore upgradation' and new weaponry, and commandoes slithering up and down the Oberoi and the Air India building, I find myself inclined to be optimistic. Union Home Minister P Chidambaram gave us a lot of assurances yesterday, one of them that terror attacks have already been thwarted in different parts of the country, thanks to better intelligence post 26/11. As someone who lives in a city that is a perpetual target, I'd like to believe his words are not worthless, that they're worth our collective safety.

A year has passed, and maybe next year, 26/11 will not be as big an 'event' as it was in 2009 - now, after all the rhetoric and symbolism is done with, the central question simply is: are we safer today than we were before? Truth be told, it will take another 26/11 to find that out.