Relive the experience: 26/11

Watching ‘The Attacks of 26/11’ movie was not only a thrilling experience but also a traumatized one. It frightened to the fact that it was based on a reality. The movie gave an implication that of a fear. One could visualize the terror encompassing the real past. It was to relive the dread trauma.

The first half of the movie revealed the horrifying replicated version of the real-life violence that emerged in several places of Mumbai on 26 November 2008. The ferocious onslaught of attacks directed in the movie readily produced the same terror. It gave a threatening experience of a reality. The shoot out at Leopold café, Taj Hotel, Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus carried out in the movie gave a near death experience of terror happened then.

The second half of the movie focuses on the actions of the police forces to stop the terrorists while the latter attack the Cama hospital. The brutality of these attackers depicted in the first part of the movie remains not only the same but is aggravated with repugnance.

The movie tries to justify with the victims of 26/11 by visualizing the execution of kasab in front of them. It tries to sooth the disturbed sentiments of the whole humanity while advocating the meaning of Jihad and Shahdad of Quran to the attacker kasab by a Hindu on humanitarian grounds.

The story commutes through the mouth of Joint Commissioner as he recounts the 26/11 attacks in his report in front of his senior officials. The storyline captures the participation of Joint Commissioner Rakesh Maria played by Nana Patekar and Kasab by Sanjeev Jaiswal as its major focal points.

The question that could be raised against the movie is that it does not deal with the attacks of Oberoi Trident as well as the Nariman house. Also the movie focuses the execution of Ajmal Kasab, the only terrorist captured alive with the police leaving out the others. It does not display the final assault that ended there because of the operation taken out by NSG Commandos through helicopters.

‘The Attacks of 26/11’, thus doesn’t throw light on the entire incident yet surely captures the fright of that terror that shook the soul of the entire world. The movie is Ram Gopal Varma’s attempt to perhaps relive those tense moments, and pay a tribute to the martyrs who lost their lives while encountering the terrorists.