Kabul: I guess I was in luck. Driving by the Park Palace Guesthouse with an Afghan friend around three hours before the shootings, in which four Indians were killed on Thursday, I nearly stopped by to take a look.
The reason was plain nostalgia. Some years ago when I lived in the Afghan capital, I had nearly taken up residence at this centrally-located hostelry favoured by foreigners. It was home to many Indians on assignment as capacity-builders in Afghanistan and the atmosphere was said to be convivial. One day I had nearly paid an advance for a long-term stay. I was therefore curious to see the place again. It is just possible I would have come back for a pleasant evening as a classical Indian music programme was planned, as I would learn later, after the tragedy.
But my Afghan friend was smiling and pointing to the watch. Around 9 at night, the phone rang as I was working in my room. It was the Indian ambassador, Amar Sinha. “Where are you staying?” he came straight to the point. “Why?” I asked, even as I told him where I was. “Firing is on at Park Palace right now, and I just wanted to be sure,” he hurriedly rang off.
Amar is a cousin but brotherly love wasn’t going to detain him. At the cost of being thought a nuisance by India’s top official in this country, I called him back in five minutes. But the available information was still too sketchy to go on. I scanned the BBC and Al Jazeera TV. They didn’t have much to say. I fell asleep thinking what might have been if I had taken the wrong turn.
Besides the Indians, an Italian and an American were also killed. The wife of the deceased Italian died too. She was apparently not an Italian citizen. There is some speculation about a Briton. Confirmations are hard to come by. The police is tightlipped as the investigation has been taken over by the National Directorate of Security. The Indians who died were capacity-builders drawn from among retired officials from the audit and agriculture sector, as well as an NGO.
