Carl Hoffman on the Mumbai Attacks

My phone pinged about three am last night as news rolled in about the attacks in Mumbai. I'm safely ensconced behind the high walls of the British High Commission in New Delhi, 700 miles away, but it was shocking - one of the places hit was Leopold's, a venerable bar and restaurant in Colaba where only ten days ago I'd eaten lots of meals and whiled the nights away over cold Kingfisher beer.

Leopold's is a rarity in India, a relaxing bar and café where tourists and middle-class Indians mix; it's on a corner, with wide, open doorways. You can sit under the high ceilings and fans at 30 or so tables covered in plaid cloth and read the Times of India or watch the throngs walking by outside or strike up a conversation with someone. I shared a table one evening with the chief electrical engineer of the Mumbai commuter trains; one afternoon at lunch I talked to a Dutch filmmaker. It's been around for more than 100 years; it's the center of action in the sprawling Mumbai novel Shantaram. And I stayed at a small guesthouse two doors down.

Apparently grenades were lobbed inside. At ten or eleven o'clock Leopold's would have been full, every table taken, with music throbbing and a mix of Indians, West Africans and westerners dancing and drinking upstairs, sellers of bangles and leather sandals and tobacco on the sidewalk outside, the air warm and humid and smoky. Apparently 101 people have died so far, with more than 250 injured, though I haven't heard any casualty figures form Leopold's.

The New York Times website mentions the symbolism of the attack on the Taj Mahal hotel, writing that "It's the aorta through which anything glamorous, sentimental, confidential or profitable passes in Mumbai." But somehow the attack on Leopold's seems even more cynical, insidious. The Taj is a center of power and money; Leopold's just conviviality, curiosity and intercultural mingling on a much less elite scale, and that makes it even sadder and more shocking.