Twitter provides riveting stories of Mumbai attack

Arun Shanbhag, a 46-year-old American of Indian origin who lives in Boston, where he teaches at Harvard Medical School, was visiting his parents in Mumbai when the squads of gunmen stormed luxury hotels and other city landmarks.

Shanbhag wrote on this blog that he slept through the attacks on Wednesday night, but he has since provided a gripping and emotional eye-witness view of the events around the Taj Mahal Hotel.

He has maintained a running blog on his website at arunshanbhag.com, supplemented it with messages on Twitter at twitter.com/arunshanbhag and even uploaded pictures to photo-sharing site Flickr at flickr.com/photos/shanbhag.

Shanbhag’s first message on micro-blogging service Twitter was Thursday morning: “Mumbai Blasts: Taj Hotel is a block from my house! Hostages still inside; still burning; smoke is pouring from windows; pics later.”

That was followed by “Front of our building is staging area for Fire Engines” and “Parents are trying to keep me inside the house.”

Shanbhag did eventually manage to leave, posting pictures on Flickr of the Taj Hotel in flames and the carnage left outside the Cafe Leopold.

“NOW I am MAD! Seeing the Dome of the Taj light up like a bon-fire! I AM MAD! MAD! MAD!” Shanbhag wrote in one Twitter message.

“NOW I am overwhelmed! Finally tears, in torrents! I am very, very sad!,” he added in another.

While Shangbhag provided a sober and personal account of the events, some of the thousands of messages being exchanged every few seconds by some of the six million users of Twitter reflected the chaos and uncertainty of the situation.

Like in the game of telephone, a seven-member South African security squad which helped rescue 120 guests from the Taj Hotel was transformed by some Twitter users into a 120-member team of elite South African commandos.

Twitter users swapped real-time messages at a breakneck pace as the events unfolded, whether it was seeking information on family or friends or exchanging links to the latest breaking news stories.

There were even unconfirmed reports that the Indian authorities had tried to stop people posting to Twitter because of fears the information could somehow be used by the militants still holding hostages.

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