We slept deeply through the night, having by then already been conditioned to the sporadic bursts of gunfire and explosions, the tramping on the roof, the stampeding up and down the stairs, until sometime in the morning when a series of blasts such as had not been in the repertoire until then jerked us to alertness. We threw on some clothing and headed out of the apartment. The door to your bedroom was still closed as we had left it the night before. Why trouble you? Let the child go on dreaming in her purity and innocence.

From our rooftop we had an unobstructed view of commandos rappelling down on ropes dangling from a helicopter onto the roof of Nariman House. At street level, a commando brigade stormed the building through the front door. The fighting raged through the afternoon into the evening, so prolonged and intense for a battle between such a reputedly crack battalion of well-armed warriors and by most accounts such a small band of unseasoned guerrilla amateurs that I was almost leaning toward giving some serious credence to Varda’s paranoid conspiracy theory about enemy infiltrators and ammunition stockpiling. Rocket fire boomed from Chabad house, windows shattered, black smoke and tear gas poured out, walls crumbled exposing the bullet-riddled wasted interior, soot smeared walls, furniture broken in pieces illuminated like a postapocalyptic movie set by floodlights aimed from surrounding rooftops. Toward night what sounded like a bomb exploded, set off by the gunmen according to sources, rocking buildings up and down Colaba Causeway to the Sassoon Docks, sending everyone diving for cover.

When darkness descended the fighting finally waned for the first time that day. For a brief otherworldly moment, we were encased in the unaccustomed texture of silence. Then great cheers burst out from the throng of onlookers now packing the streets and alleyways, celebrating on surrounding rooftops and balconies. The commando heroes were filing out the door of the war zone of Nariman House grinning jubilantly and waving their arms, flashing thumbs up signals and V’s for victory, graciously bending down to accept kisses of gratitude from exquisite little girls, in training as sex slaves. The siege was over, the insurgents were dead. So thorough had been our commandoes’ sweep that not one perpetrator had escaped alive to terrorize ever again, the populace was assured.