The private yachts spread on the Arabian Sea, just across the promenade facing Taj Mahal Hotel has been rather quiet this year. The venue for celebratory spins after successful deals had begun to take a knock as the Indian stock markets tanked in cue with the meltdown.
But the eerie silence on the waters on Thursday morning was something else. This was much more than the gloom of the markets. Only fire engines and police sirens pierced that deathly silence from the hotel to Radio club and smoke billowed from the India?s first insignia of high-life, an edifice of a proud Mumbai. As daylight broke, tourists and cabs evacuated from all the hotels.
Previous night, while strolling near Colaba causeway, the initial reaction was to shrug off the incident as yet another bomb attack. For the by now resigned Indians, bomb attacks are convenient, boom and then the debris is cleared, and things are done and dusted. But approaching the Taj Hotel the picture changed in minutes. It was around 10 pm and the staccato gun shots rang out over Colaba and similar noises reverberated at The Taj and The Trident.
This time it was not the ubiquitous bag that was abandoned in the train or bombs worn by fidayeen , it was terror unleashed. Two dozen boys loaded with state-of-the-art combat paraphernalia, and obviously not in the right state of mind, has placed the nation at ransom and hits it where it hurts the most when India is most vulnerable to such a hit. Terrorism has a face and a new monster has arrived.
As the night progressed and the enormity of the crisis sunk in, foreigners in evening dress joined fund managers, students and Parsi families in disbelief, scurrying around Colaba not knew what had hit the place. Cabs were fizzing across with nervous excitement.
A suave European couple from Taj, who had just stepped across to taste Kebabs on Battery Street, stood absolutely stunned in the middle of the road. One could see fear in their blue eyes as they rushed through looking for an unknown sanctuary in an unknown land. Suddenly, the cabs became scarce and the blasting grenades conveyed the message that this was to be a long night.
The convivial crowd was doing only one thing?looking up to Mumbai?s two best-known landmarks as the terrorists took over inside them. India?s financial capital had joined the world?s big league of top terror targets. It could now be difficult to take a spin in the Sea.