Hans Rustad Hva var det Mumbai-terroristene ville ramme? Folk ser ut til intuitivt å forstå hva terror handler om, at det ikke gjelder rasjonelle mål men noe udefinerbart, som handler om menneskesyn og sivilisasjon. Terroristene har en usvikelig nese for hva som betyr noe for menneskene, og vil flerre det opp, som for å vise at disse verdiene kan knuses.
Taj Mahal-hotellet var ikke bare et luksushotell og en institusjon. Det var også et stykke kulturhistorie og et symbol på indisk flerkultur. Newsweeks Farred Zakaria er selv fra Mumbai, og han åpner sitt essay om Mumbai med personlige minner. Det var noe dyrebart som ble ødelagt.
My first memories of the Taj Mahal hotel are probably of when I was 8 years old, going to the Sea Lounge restaurant with its lovely view of Mumbai’s harbor to eat sev puri, a savory Indian treat. I also remember passing through its grand ballroom a few years later, while it was being decked out for a dinner in honor of the president of Bulgaria—crystal chandeliers, ice sculptures, bouquets of roses, platters of shrimp carted around by liveried waiters. My family would celebrate special occasions at the Golden Dragon, one of the best Chinese restaurants outside of China. The Taj is a fixture in the life of Mumbaikers (or Bombayites as we used to call ourselves). Last week, those memories came flooding back as I watched from New York, and saw the Taj hotel on fire.
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This time, the tragedy is also personal. My mother’s office is in the Taj hotel (she is the editor of the Taj Magazine). Luckily she was out of town on the day of the attack. My brother-in-law and niece, however, were in their apartment, which overlooks the Oberoi, the other hotel that was attacked. A dozen commandos took over their apartment, positioned snipers at the windows, and began giving and receiving fire. (My niece is keeping the bullets as souvenirs.) And as with 9/11, I know people who have died. The general manager of the Taj hotel, a young man, lost his family.
Angrep på flerkulturen
Terroristene angriper sameksistensen mellom folkegruppene i India. De angriper også en toleransekultur som har utviklet seg gjennom århundrer. Deres ideologi er eskatologisk, final: det finnes bare ett svar.
Orienten har tradisjon for utveksling og mangfold, for live and let live, som salafister og islamister hater.
Det uhyggelige er at denne retningen har vunnet slik innpass i den muslimske verden i vår tid og fortrengt en mer tolerant versjon av islam.
Anosh Irani hadde et beveget innlegg i Nytimes om hva Taj Mahal-hotellet har betydd. Iranis familie tilhører zoroaster-religionen som stammer fra Iran, og det samme gjorde familien som grunnla hotellet. Slik har menneskene forflyttet seg og skapt noe nytt på fremmed mark. Det er denne bevegeligheten som er Orientens sjel, som salafismen er en dødelig fiende av. Den betyr mangfold og toleranse og har vokst frem i århundrenes løp. For salafistene og jihadistene i Pakistan utgjør India en trussel og provokasjon. Totalitære systemer tåler ikke mangfold, og vil overalt forsøke å utslette det. I bunn og grunn er det det Mumbai handler om. Det er Indias mest vitale by.
AS I watched the Taj Mahal hotel breathe fire, I remembered my grandfather, Burjor. For more than 30 years, he was the florist at the hotel, ordering roses flown in daily from New Delhi.
Like the Taj, his black Fiat, a broken dinosaur of a car, was a landmark in itself. Filled to the brim with cane baskets for his flower shop, and home to several brown cockroaches, he parked it in the same spot every day — right in front of the hotel’s main entrance.
I essentially grew up in the hotel. And I would have been there on Wednesday night, browsing in its bookshop, and at the Leopold Cafe nearby, if it were not for the last-minute distraction of a soccer match in my neighborhood.
My family lives about 4 miles from the Taj, in a Parsi colony called Rustom Baug. The colony was developed exclusively for members of the Zoroastrian religion — the same religion that J. N. Tata, the man who built the Taj, belonged to.
It is one of the quietest and most picturesque locations in Mumbai. It can feel like it’s a world away from the city. Except when it’s not, like when the attacks started.
Autodidakter
Bestefaren drev blomsterbutikk, men var levende opptatt av naturvitenskap, og stimulerte barnebarnets kunnskapstørst.
The morning after the siege began, I read the following story in one of the papers: Moments before the terrorists opened fire in the main lobby of the Taj, a 10-year-old boy had entered the hotel to use the washroom. When he heard the shooting, he stood paralyzed in the center of the lobby until a man whisked him away and they hid in Nalanda, the bookshop in the Taj. They switched off the lights and sat in the darkness for nearly three hours.
There was a time, not so very long ago, when I could have been that boy. Nalanda is my favorite bookshop in Mumbai. My grandfather took me there every Sunday when I was a boy. While he cajoled me into buying books on science — though he was a florist, nuclear physics was his passion, and he was also fluent in Japanese — I sheepishly picked up copies of the Tintin and Asterix series as well as Amar Chitra Katha comics, full of fables and magnificent illustrations of demons and celestial beings from Indian mythology.
Thankfully, the boy’s story, like the Amar Chitra Katha comics, had a fairy-tale ending. He was reunited with his parents.
Både over Fareed Zakarias og Anosh Iranis tekster hviler sorgen over noe som er tapt. Noe dyrebart som er knust. Det er dette dyrebare og umistelige terroristene var ute etter å knuse. Det var deres hensikt: å vise at forestillingen om kultur og sivilisasjon er en illusjon.
