Editor’s Corner
December 19, 2008
Unraveling Mumbai
By
Andrea Pitzer
The November assault on the Indian city of Mumbai began with terrorists arriving at a local dock, then fanning out to hospitals, hotels, and a Jewish community center. Even as the last of the attackers seemed trapped in the Taj Mahal Palace hotel, they moved from floor to floor and continued killing patrons. For those of us observing the carnage from outside the city, the multiple, shifting locales kept a clear sense of events from emerging.
But just one day after the siege ended, The Sunday Times weighed in with “Mumbai: city of death,” a powerful narrative on the attack. Using direct quotes from nearly twenty eyewitnesses and weaving in details from many more, a team of six reporters created a comprehensible storyline that provides details on the dead and injured yet moves quickly into specifics, relating the moment before shooting began in one cafe, when “about 9.30pm, a waiter weaving through the closely placed tables suddenly dropped his tin tray.” Other remarkable passages include the life-and-death role technology played for individual prisoners in the siege, and how easy it was to recognize surviving British hostages returning home, as “they were the ones with no luggage.”
A less overtly narrative piece out the same day from the BBC online complements the Times story through its focus on the sea passage and arrival of the terrorists. “How Mumbai attacks unfolded” ticks off evidence like a police report but still gives readers a sense of specifics: “One of the top investigating officers told the BBC that the gunmen… split up into four groups and took the city's rickety black-and-yellow Fiat taxis from the fishing colony at Cuffe Parade.”
Putting together even a rudimentary storyline for Mumbai so soon after the attack is no mean feat. And for those of us who had been helplessly watching the attack unwind, trying vainly to assemble the pieces, such an effort shows the service narrative journalism can provide to readers in the wake of tragedy.