Author: Ankur Chawla
Publisher: Rupa Publications
Pages: 164
Four years since time stood still.
Four years since November 26, 2008, the day on
which terror attacked Mumbai on multiple fronts and left death and destruction
in its wake.
Four years since the terrorists sought to break the
spirit of a whole nation by attacking carefully-selected targets across one of its prime cities and unleashing
fear and death everywhere.
Those who lost their dear ones on that day sought
closure recently when Ajmal Kasab, the lone terrorist captured alive, was
executed by the Indian government.
Against this backdrop, we see the launch of 14
Hours: An Insider’s Account of the 26/11 Taj Attack by Ankur Chawla, a survivor
of the attack. An operations management trainee at the hotel at the time of the
terror attack, Chawla’s book seeks to capture the 14 hours that he was forced to
spend in the Taj Mahal Palace and Hotel, hiding and in fear. The book, however,
leaves a singularly insipid taste in the mouth.
The style of writing is banal, and it is really
hard to believe that the author could actually have spent 14 nerve-wracking hours,
fearing for his life. As a piece of reportage, it merely consists of Chawla
recounting the events of that night, without giving us any understanding of his
feelings as he lived through that horrific night. The fact that this wasn’t an
ordinary game of hide-and-seek but one in which they were hiding from the raw fear
of death hovering very close doesn't come across to the reader.
Outside the Hindi news channels were going berserk
with their pronouncements of maut ka
tandav (dance of death). The English news channels, only slightly
restrained, drew our attention to the game of mayhem that was being played in
the stately halls of the Taj. And yet, Chawla, caught in the cross hairs of that
bloodbath, remains curiously unmoved. His narrative is devoid of emotion.
There is no deep sympathy expressed for Karambir
Kang, the general manager of the hotel then, who lost his wife and two children
(not three, as Chawla has noted) that day.
The Prologue smacked of self-promotion. Chawla
started the book by launching off into a detailed description of how he came to
do a course in hotel management and how he landed a job at the Taj, as if it
were a piece of chick-lit he were attempting.
There are some instances which are funny in spite
of the gravity of the situation and Chawla has done a good job of describing
these. These incidents include the refusal of the casual hire to part with his
phone even though the phone that Chawla is giving him is four times more
expensive and the case of another casual hire who is able to fall fast
asleep in the midst of the extreme threat.
The cover depicts an image of the iconic dome of
the Taj on fire. It is an image that has seared our consciousness.
Unfortunately, the narrative fails to live up to the expectations created by that image. Besides the casualness of
the narrative, the book also suffers from many typographical and grammatical
errors. Through the course of one telephone conversation, Chawla’s mother
refers to him as betaji.
Instead of a lengthy prologue, the book would have
been better served by an epilogue briefly describing the casualties at the Taj,
and the attempts made by the Taj to help those in need of help.
Somewhere in the middle of it all, however, the
pace did pick up. It is only then that the gravity of the danger they face
seems to assail a lot of the people within. Until then no one is really sure of
what has happened, and understandably so. We on the outside had recourse to the
media which kept us informed, but for those on the inside, it must have been
even more frightening considering the fact that for a long time they did not
know what they were up against.
Chawla has also managed to bring out the details of
the thousand and one things that are required to keep a 5-star hotel running
well.
If only Chawla had avoided the chatty tone and
sought to infuse more sensitivity into his account, this would have been a book
that I would readily recommend to others.
This review is a part of the Book Reviews Program at BlogAdda.com. Participate now to get free books!
No comments:
Post a Comment