Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clarke matched technical data with personal stories to recreate 26/11 in The Siege .
The book is remarkable not only for its investigative acumen but also for its extraordinary human stories.
At Jaipur Literature Festival 2014, Levy spoke to
Our idea was to write a book that is (long pause) embedded in the emotional experience of the attack, but also meticulously rooted in detail and to achieve that goal in the shortest number of pages possible.
With a book like this there’s no point reaching only the lecturers and the cognoscenti. We wrote this book for everybody. Therefore we chose an accelerated style… we wanted the narrative to be pounding (hits table) and to draw people through it and to create a catalyst for change, because otherwise it will become a reference point for libraries etc. And I have done that previously (in books like Deception , 2007 ) but wanted to do something different here.
The problem with 26/11 is that it has not been talked about enough in the right way, the emotional horror we lived with, just as everyone else did. Afterwards there was a meagre post-mortem.
Especially at the government level?
The government level was nebulous. What the government did at the state and central level was to bury it as quickly as possible under 3,000 feet of earth. Like I have said many times, there was no post-mortem worth its name.
There is no facility in India for lessons learnt. That is why… write a short number of words, reach the maximum number of people and trigger a debate on how society can transform afterwards.
Many people have dragged us into debates about India and terror etc... but the most important thing about this book is humanity. And the human stories. Ordinary people quite often do extraordinary things. And that matters to me as much as any of the other theoretical debate on the meaning of it, or the relationship with Pakistan. Or Pakistan’s funding of jihad. All those things are significant but the emotional half was so important for us.
Everyone talks about Mumbai’s resilience. But do you feel the offside can be forgetfulness?
The resilience is with the people. And the forgetfulness is with the government. What we say is Mumbai saved itself and of course the government wouldn’t have that debate.
You are very critical of the RAW and NSG… there is that really sad scene of a cop throwing a plastic chair at a terrorist when his rifle jams..
You say me but the sourcing for this comes from RAW and IB. You say I am critical, but what we are reflecting is the contempt felt within IB, RAW and NSG for the performance and that contempt manifests itself in the outspokenness of many individuals who want their stories told. Within NSG, RAW and IB. People who rang me up and said why didn’t you talk to me?
And that is the reason so many people came forward. It is not just our view, it is the view within the institution because there is no system to reform and no amnesty offered for forthrightness. And no climate created for honest debate.
The level of detailing in the book is incredible. From Sabina Saikia throwing up on a Taj butler’s shoe, earlier in the evening, to a guest scolding a staff member for handing him the wrong charger, when the siege was on. How do you access those details? How do you get people to speak through that trauma?
Through the interviews you have to build a relationship that goes on for days, months, years, and you have to live with those afterwards. And people will be in touch for many years. You are not running in there, taking one quote and leaving. In really good interviews an alchemy happens.
You go in as a stranger and after a very short amount of time, you become something else. That could be a friend, a confidant, a confessor, a psychoanalyst, a political agitator, a commentator.
When did that happen to you?
It happened to scores of people I talked to about Sabina. She is such a divisive figure. Happened with the brilliant banker K.R. Ramamoorthy (who was taken hostage by the terrorists). Amazing guy. One of the good guys in banking. He has to be coaxed out to talk. And when he does it is just a brilliant stream.
And he had never told his story to anyone before?
Yes, not to anybody. Finding the time and right place for those transformations is crucial. Suddenly you feel you are in there completely. The downside is a lot of the fear and pain transfers to you. And you have to carry it faithfully and let it not oppress you, have to package it away, otherwise you can’t function any longer.
Which was the toughest part to piece together?
NSG was the toughest part to tell. Because the establishment did everything they could to prevent us from the telling of it. To persuade people to talk was difficult. Pain wise (long pause) I am not going to single out names because it was private things said by different individuals.
But there are people who I sat down with who were still very broken. And the reason is because there is no adequate closure.
There were many who feel their issues haven’t been taken seriously by anyone in authority. And the treatment of survivors at the end of it was just remarkable. Many people who came out were herded into police stations, taken into buses, without reason, and told to wait for hours before they could go home and take a shower and talk to their loved one. Their ordeal was viewed as inconsequential by the authorities. Very little empathy. That is a bad thing.
Did you know from the start that the Taj would be your focus?
No. We went to see various people in the Mumbai police on how to tell the story. Rakesh Maria said to me, “The only story you should tell is the complete story. If you tell everything then people will get a real idea what the police went through.” And I said to him, “That was what the Pradhan commission should have done. That is not our job. Our job to synthesise the essence of Mumbai without diluting it.”
We decided to confine it within a landmark that was representative of the city. And where you could account for a wide range of people from blue collar workers to multimillionaires, it has that everyman quality. There are critics who said we disrespected CST victims, but if you are part of the wait staff at the Taj your story is not being told either.
Was there a lot of information you have, that you haven’t told?
We have told less than half of what we have. Lots of stuff we agreed not to publish. Information that helped us to understand things but might not be acceptable in print. Stuff that could be hurtful for relatives.
And there is stuff we are developing for future projects.
For example?
One of the most important things is development of intelligence from 2006 to 2008 and how that came about. We are looking at that.
How do two people write a book?
We don’t write it together. We have a very detailed plan. We have different ideas. We split a book in half and go off in different directions. We have one room when we both are in the same country we write in and we don’t talk to each other, we send emails to each other. We do four-five chapters each. Or alternate chapters. Then we swap over and edit each other.
And you have to do that with good grace, otherwise you do tit-for-tat. Have to promise faithfully not to carry any excess baggage into the editing room. Don’t want to carry domestic rows into editing and needlessly slaughter each other’s characters for retribution.
You didn’t wash the dishes… there goes your chapter..?
You are right (laughs) there are times when Cathy is really mean and I’ve lost a whole chapter. In The Meadow (2012) I lost a whole chapter. I put it into a drawer. We have a room of wonders where we keep all the stuff we have cut. It is in these files. And we have had meetings in such situations, chapters she has cut, characters I have butchered. But we don't hold grudges.