And while its hot economy ranks this city as the richest in India, it’s not so easy to buy a drink. Local authorities just boosted the legal drinking age to 25 as part of an attempt to battle addiction to drugs and alcohol.

The policy isn’t going down so well with some young people.

“I’ve never been asked for an ID, I have friends who have been, at times, but then you get away with it anyway. And purchasing alcohol has never been an issue, even a 10-year-old could buy alcohol. You give them money, they give you alcohol, that’s the way it works.”

The city we’re looking for is Mumbai. It happens to be home to many of India’s vineyards and alcohol distilleries. So it came as a surprise when the government there raised the legal drinking age. Chhavi Sachdev reports.

(Photo:Chhavi Sachdev)

So for disable people, whose access to education, jobs, and transportation is already difficult, finding a partner is even more so.

In Mumbai, the best option is to turn to Prabha Panse, a former teacher of the hearing impaired. 80-year-old Panse runs the JeevanSathi Marriage Bureau that has been arranging matches for people with disabilities for over 20 years.

“After retirement, my daughter was getting married,” Panse said. “So I was looking for a good boy. One day I thought, these disabled people, what must they be doing? They must have some marriage bureau. So I made enquiries, and in all of Bombay there was no such marriage bureau. So one day I just put an ad in the Times of India and said “apangankarta marriage bureau” (all disabled people). And so many people came to me.”

Since 1989, Panse has received families with matrimonial prospects at her home-office on Mondays and Wednesdays. She charges a one-time registration fee of 500 rupees, (approximately $11). If the family is poor, she waives the fee.

Registering According to Disability

Prospective brides and grooms are classified and registered according to their disability. She has a dozen college-ruled notebooks filled out in Marathi, Hindi and sometimes English. The people are listed according to whether they’re physically handicapped, blind, deaf, or have a learning disability.

“First they have to register their name in this one, in their hand writing,” Panse said. “Either father mother or child can do it, then I require one photograph, that’s all. Then I show the other files. If a boy puts his name I show him girls’ files. Then deaf person – with deaf person, handicap in legs or hands, that is different file. Why? It’s better, no? They understand each other very well, very well.”

Panse said she’s set up between 400 and 500 marriages; the registers are mere aids, though. She said that matchmaking is a skill, or a feeling.

“I get some idea inside me,” Panse said. “I get intuition, because I come to know that this will be good match for him or her. But after that I don’t do anything, they go see each other with their parents and then they let me know.”

Grandmother Figure

Panse is, in a sense, a grandmother-figure scheming to marry off an entire a community of her single children.

36-year-old Shailesh Kulkarni is one of her clients. Shailesh was born with cerebral palsy and walks with two canes. He signed up with Panse in 2006 after having gone through many traditional matchmaking services.

“As my father was getting old, the thought of marriage came to our minds,” Kulkarni said. “So I started look out for girls but it was a very difficult thing. We had enrolled ourselves in various marriage bureaus but we were not getting a proper match because they were saying ‘you are walking with two sticks,’ and the other party was very hesitant to go forward. Overall they were judging.”

Panse, by contrast, is not judgmental at all. She has a great sense of who will work with whom; most of her clients are, after all, from lower to middle class homes and have traditional values. Looking at Shailesh’s background, lifestyle, and personality, she recommended his family get in touch with a girl who also has cerebral palsy. Vinita is two years older than Shailesh, and her speech is less clear but she can walk without a cane. They recently celebrated their second anniversary.

“In our Indian society people think of marriage and they think, ‘huh, he’s handicapped, how will he cope?’” Kulkarni said. “But Prabha Panse told me everything happens and companionship teaches you a lot of things.”

Panse shows no signs of slowing down, but she’s afraid of what will happen when she can’t carry on. There is no other marriage bureau for the disabled in the city. But for now, she tells me she loves her work. And she still remembers the first wedding she arranged.

“Aye, what to say? When the first marriage was done, she gave me a ring and I was so happy. She has one daughter, also, and she sent me the photos. Now I’m used to it! All the while happiness.”

(Photo: Trakesht)

Anchor Marco Werman talks with senior ProPublica reporter Sebastian Rotella about the trial in Chicago of Tahawwur Rana in connection with the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Rotella has written extensively on this case in the Washington Post.

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• Sebastian Rotella’s reporting on the Rana trial

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston. A Chicago businessman is set to go on trial on Monday. Tahawwur Rana is accused of helping plan the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India three years ago. Those attacks killed more than 160 people. The trial could shed light on two organizations. One is a Pakistani militant group called Lashkar-i-Taiba, it’s been blamed in the Mumbai attacks. The other is Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI. Rana’s testimony could give clues about suspected links between the two. Rana himself is not the big fish.

Sebastian Rotella:  ’He’s really sort of the lowest ranking of the suspects in the case, but he’s the only one in U.S. custody who’s still facing charges.’

Werman: That’s Sebastian Rotella, he’s a senior reporter with ProPublica. He points out that Rana’s former friend, David Coleman Headley is the key player. Headley has pleaded guilty in the case, and Rana is alleged to have provided material support to terrorism by helping Headley do reconnaissance for the Mumbai attacks.

Rotella: ‘Rana allegedly provided his immigration firm as a cover for Headley to do reconnaissance. Headley set up an office of the immigration firm in Mumbai and spent, by his own admission, two years doing intensive intelligence gathering for the Lashkar-i-Taiba terrorist group and officers in Pakistani intelligence to set up those Mumbai attacks.’

Werman: How strong is the case against Rana?

Rotella: Obviously the defense would tell you that it’s not strong. The defense has admitted in the case of Rana that he did, and Rana himself admits it, worked with Headley with this immigration firm. Headley was working with them, and they were in close contact; they’re boyhood friends. To the extent that he was aware that Headley was involved in some kind of surveillance or intelligence gathering, the defense claims that Rana did not know that it was a terrorist plot in Mumbai, but that Headley was working with Pakistani intelligence. And in fact there is documented intelligence of communications between Rana and a man who the U.S. government alleges is a major in Pakistan’s ISI spy agency. So there’s certainly I think even on the part of the defense an admission that Rana knew that Headley was involved in this kind of activity, but obviously they deny the terrorism charges. The defense would argue that he was duped into doing this and now Headley is testifying against him as part of a plea deal to avoid the death penalty. The question is whether that whole conspiracy can be connected back to Rana and build a convincing case against him. But what’s also interesting about this case is what we’re going to learn about that whole underworld, where spies and terrorists and military people converge.

Werman: Well you kind of alluded to it there. What is the significance of this trial? I mean, how does it fit into the bigger picture of possible connections between Lashkar-i-Taiba and Pakistan’s intel agency, the ISI?

Rotella: Headley is one of the most remarkable and mysterious characters to have popped up in a terrorism case in some time. And what he does is sort of throw open a doorway to an underworld that all of us who’ve covered this have heard about, but with unprecedented detail. What Headley alleges is that there was a very intense almost symbiotic relationship between the ISI and Lashkar. He describes Lashkar chiefs, each of them having an ISI handler; he describes funding and training and outfitting of Lashkar by the ISI; and he describes a plot against Mumbai in which he gets a separate training after his terrorist training from Lashkar. He alleges that his handler, who is identified in the indictment as Major Iqbal, trains him in espionage techniques and gives him about $28,000 to set up this office in Mumbai and carry out two years of meticulous, sophisticated reconnaissance of the terrorist targets, and also collecting separate military intelligence. So he essentially describes this terrorist attack as an operation carried out in tandem by the Pakistani intelligence service and Lashkar. And of course that’s explosive because this is a terrorist attack that was explicitly designed to kill Americans, to kill westerners, to kill Jews. So it’s an allegation, not just of the Pakistani intelligence service sort of looking the other way or protecting terrorist groups, but participating directly in an attack intended to kill Americans.

Werman: Right, explosive indeed. I mean, how credible though are these allegations, and what kind of other testimony is likely to be revealed in the course of the trial, do you think?

Rotella: That’s the other reason this case is so fascinating and dramatic. It comes down to Headley, and obviously his credibility is going to be at the center of this. He’s someone who obviously admits to having been a double-agent. He worked as a DEA informant for a long time. He admits to having worked for the ISI; he admits to having worked for Lashkar; he admits to having worked for Al Qaeda and he’s a former drug addict, so there’s a lot of questions about him. But the U.S. government has taken him very seriously and has done an enormous amount of work in an investigation that has literally spanned the world gathering corroborating evidence. And they have testimony of other witnesses; they have intercepts of his conversations; they have e-mails, photos, voice samples of his handlers. You know, the U.S. government took an unprecedented step in this case where they a filed an indictment against this Major Iqbal, against whom there’s a lot of evidence in the case file that he was a serving member of Pakistani intelligence. All of that would suggest that the U.S. government feels that Headley is a credible witness, because he’s going to be front and center on this. But that’s what this trial is going to be all about: how strong, how convincing is this evidence? What are we going to learn, and how concrete will it be about the extent of these kinds of connections?

Werman: Sebastian Rotella is senior reporter with the investigative news organization ProPublica. He’ll be covering the trial when opening arguments begin on Monday. Sebastian, thanks very much.

Rotella: My pleasure.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

The Jagaji brothers have been running the family business for more than 2000 years (Photo: Chhavi Sachdev)

It seems fitting to meet the Jagaji brothers in one of Mumbai’s oldest office buildings, musty with old files and oppressive wooden cabinets. The Jagajis don’t work here — they’ve come to meet two sets of cousins — and to update the family tree.

Jaga is the brothers’ title. Nihalchand Jaga is 40 years old. Radheshyam Jaga is Nihalchand’s younger brother: he’s 38.

For the last two millennia, since the year 9 AD, the men in the Jagaji family have criss-crossed the country to update their books. The Jagas are the genealogists for the Maheshwaris — a small merchant community within a larger clan of the caste of Marwaris from the state of Rajasthan.

There are 72 original families in the Maheshwari clan. The brothers have kept track of all their births, deaths, and marriages.

Nihalchand and Radhayshyam have made Mumbai their base for a month. They’ve stayed with other Maheshwaris and updated the records for 400 families in their cloth-bound books tied in string.

Nihalchand Jagaji said it isn’t an easy job.

“Our ancestors used to travel the width and length of our country on camel. It would take a month to reach Bombay; they’d stay six months, travel around, collect lots of money and information and then return home the same way.”

Travel now is easier. But the brothers still spend fall, spring and winter on the road. In the summer and during monsoon season, they regroup in their hometown of Bhilwara and enter the notes they’ve gathered into big books called “ayiaans.”

In Bhilwara, they have 72 of these ‘bayiaans.’ Radhayshyam Jagaji said each one is about the size of a large coffee table book, weighs 110 pounds and is immaculately kept.

“Even now, if you look at the books that are hundreds of pages long, you won’t see a single strikeout or change, everything is exact and that’s what our work, our reputation is based on,” Jagaji said. “We have only facts and they’re all correct.”

His brother, Nihalchand, added: “The old records were written on leaves, then bricks, in the moodi language. The last four generations have transferred all the records on to these paper ‘baiyaans.’ We make our own pens and our own ink, which doesn’t fade or smudge because it’s made from ground charcoal ash. We then put tobacco leaves between the pages so they don’t get insects.”

The brothers said once upon a time their books were tantamount to law — admissible as proof of lineage and land ownership. They produced a laminated letter and court summons from the 1930s when their grandfather presented evidence of an adoption to help settle an inheritance dispute.

In the times of kings and noblemen, landowners and feudalism, it was your lineage that decided your vocation as well as how you dressed, what you ate, what language you spoke and whom you married. And Nihalchand Jagaji said he and his family were crucial.

“In earlier times, there were no weddings without consulting us. Not only would they ask us for suitable matches, but also ask us to verify that a family was a true Maheshwari family. Now people are educated and choose their own spouses. Today, only 50 percent of the families are still interested in arranged marriages in the clan.”

Now, with old traditions waning, the Jagajis have had to improvise. Nihalchand and Radhayshyam have come up with a sort of “who’s who” book for the Maheshwaris, each featuring 500 families with bios and photos, telephone numbers, and business information.

Vinay Somani is one of many cousins who have offices in the old Mumbai office building.

“[What they do] isn’t really important but it’s interesting,” Somani said. “It’s sometimes nice to have a sense of history; it’s nice to see how families evolve. I’m actually gratified that there are people who’re doing this. You can’t make a lot of money doing this so it’s got to be driven by passion, or commitment. Maybe they feel that as a family they’re destined for this.”

But commitment is waning among the next generation. They don’t want to travel across the country updating records, even if transportation isn’t as punishing as it once was. The Jagaji brothers expect their sons will convert the records into English and do most, if not all, of their business on the web.

Today’s Geo Quiz is for all of you who take your laundry to a laundry mat. We are looking for a place where you will find the largest outdoor laundry mat in the world. And we are not talking about some facility where washing machines and dryers are lined up in one big room and you must feed the machine. We are talking about wading through rows and rows of open-air concrete basins with water knee-deep to wash those dresses,shirts, sheets and saris. That’s a clue right there.

So which place are we talking about?

The answer to today’s Geo Quiz is Mumbai, India. Mumbai is the home of the Indian Stock Exchange and the country’s movie industry – Bollywood. But despite all the glitz and glamor, in this fast-paced city, many residents still rely on something a bit slower and less high-tech to keep themselves looking good and in clean clothes. Elliot Hannon explains.

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By Elliot Hannon
In the heart of India’s financial capital, Mumbai, Ganga Ram wades into a concrete trough filled knee deep with water. He plunges a white dress shirt into the blue-ish grey pool before lifting it over his head and whipping it clean and dry on a concrete slab.

It’s a grueling way to do laundry. But here at the Dhobi Ghats, at what’s considered the world’s largest outdoor laundry mat, Ram and some 10,000 other workers hand wash half a million sheets, shirts and saris every day.

The Dhobi Ghats is a throw back in this city that’s home to India’s stock exchange. The 23-acre plot has more than 700 concrete tubs and was built by the British a century ago. Wedged between a railroad and a busy overpass, hundreds of clotheslines droop with damp clothes.

Dirty laundry is delivered to the Dhobi Ghats from hotels, homes and hospitals every day. Even though more and more people can now afford washing machines of their own, Ganga Ram said the technology doesn’t compare.

“My hand washing gets clothes cleaner than a washing machine,” he said, “because I get all of the dirt that a machine misses.”

But a washing machine is quick and convenient. So to keep pace, Ram’s workday starts at 4 am.

He washes a thousand garments each day. For each shirt he earns 7 rupees, or about 15 cents. Ram picks up and delivers the clothes himself.

To keep things straight he writes the address in the collar or on a tag. Once whites and colors are separated, Ram begins drowning and slapping each shirt. He scrubs stains with a small brush. He puts the clothes through a spin cycle in a small electric dryer and then hangs them out to dry.

Finally, the clothes are pressed with wood irons and packed for delivery. Ram’s day ends at 10 p.m.

For Ram, as with many of the others here, the Dhobi Ghats is a family tradition. Entire families live here and pitch in.

The 50-year-old Ram lives in a small concrete room that is just feet from the tub he rents for $45 a month. His father washed clothes here, just as he has for the past thirty years.

But Ram said his two sons live 400 miles away in Hyderabad, where one is a college professor and the other is studying to be an electrical engineer. So Ram will be the last of his family at the Dhobi Ghats.

A few times every year, the streets of Mumbai turn into a carnival and recently, the guest of honor Ganesh, the elephant headed, roly-poly god of new beginnings. After 10 days of a homestay, families and communities accompany him to his final immersion in water, where his Earthen form breaks down and returns to the earth from which it came.

If that sounds poetic, I am overstating the case. The festival is far from serene. It’s a garish, uproarious mess that wreaks havoc on traffic as well as mental peace for the duration.

For 11 days, you find yourself humming these aartis or prayers Idols of Ganesh are set up on his birthday – Ganesh Chaturthi. It’s a state holiday in India so people can go ‘Ganesh shopping’ at their local warehouse and markets. Which Ganesh statue you bring home is a matter of personal taste. They can range from six inches high to several feet tall, all blessed by a priest.

Neighborhoods also come together and set up mandals or stalls. Prayers are conducted every few hours and the zealous even set off firecrackers.

For 10 days, Ganesh is treated like a revered member of the extended family. At the end of the festival he is loaded onto a truck and trundled to a designated beach. On day one, five and seven the smaller immersions, or visarjans are relatively quieter affairs. On the last day it’s on a much larger scale.

Last year, nearly 19 billion idols were immersed over the course of the festival. This year, officials estimate that the total reached 21 billion.

There is a final cry of ganpati, or father, hurry back next year from the participants on the beaches before Ganesh is lowered into the water. For some people that’s an interminable wait, but for us Mumbaikars, the peace is short lived.

Slideshow: Chhavi Sachdev
Photos: Lauren Farrow
Editing: Steven Davy

• Chhavi Sachdev on Sonologue

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN:  I’m Marco Werman and this is The World.  The images are indelible.  Flames rising out of luxury hotels, tourists and guests being shot in plain view, panic and bloodshed.  Today, a verdict came down in the November 2008 attacks in Mumbai.  A judge in that city found a Pakistani man guilty of murder and waging war on India.  The trial judge declared it was not a simple act of murder, it was war.  The Pakistani national is named Mohammad Ajmal Kasab.  He’s the only one of ten gunmen to have survived the attacks that killed more than 160 people in Mumbai.  Kasab will be sentenced later this week.  He could face the gallows.  Preety Acharya is a journalist with the Mumbai Mirror.  She was in the Taj Hotel when the attackers started killing people at random.  Preety, how do you feel about the verdict today?

PREETY ACHARYA:  It’s not a surprise because there were many evidences against him so we all knew that they would be guilty.  And we are waiting for the sentence and I think he’ll be getting the death sentence.

WERMAN: Is it possible for you ever to forgive these people who staged these attacks?

ACHARYA: No.  It’s not only me.  Nobody from the city, nobody from Mumbai, nobody from India will be able to forgive these people.

WERMAN: And so if this man, if Kasab does face the death sentence, would that be able to give you some sort of closure to this case?

ACHARYA: Yeah, but the thing is if you talk about the common man, they want him to suffer.  I spoke to a few people as a journalist today and all of them said he should suffer.  He should not get death sentence, he should get the life imprisonment and he should face the worst consequences.

WERMAN: In other words, they’re saying death is too good for him.

ACHARYA: Yes.

WERMAN: Remind us, Preety, of your own experience that day in 2008 at the Taj Hotel, which is where you were when these attackers started their rampage.  What happened to you?

ACHARYA: - – I saw that there is some firing that took place in Colaba [PH].  And I rushed there as a journalist and then somehow I managed to enter Taj from the other side and in the beginning when I entered, I didn’t know that what exactly was going on.  I knew that there is some attacks, but then after that happened, I realized that it was a big problem.  But by the time, I was not able to come out of the Taj because the firing was going on, the terrorists were throwing the grenades inside the Taj, so I was there for almost six hours and it was a kind of experience which I’ll never be able to forget in my life.

WERMAN: Did you lose anyone in the attack?

ACHARYA: Yeah, the few cops who died, as I am a crime reporter, I knew them very well.  So that was a loss for us.

WERMAN: Did you feel today, with his guilty charge, that somehow a weight has been lifted from the city of Mumbai?  Or do you feel that Mumbai has already moved on?

ACHARYA: We all talk about the spirit of Mumbai, but the reality is that we haven’t any other option, we have to move on.  After this trial it doesn’t mean that we are happy or we have forgotten the incident which took place.  We have moved on, but the thing is we don’t have any other option, we have to move on.

WERMAN: Preety Acharya, a journalist with the Mumbai Mirror and a survivor of the 2008 attack on Mumbai by Islamic extremists.  Preety, thank you very much for your time.

ACHARYA: My pleasure.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

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MARCO WERMAN: It was a year ago that terrorists attacked the Indian city of Mumbai and killed 166 people in the process. Today a Chicago man was charged in connection with that assault. Federal prosecutors say David Coleman Headley conducted surveillance on potential targets in Mumbai. He’s now been charged with conspiracy to bomb public places in India, to murder and maim people in India, to provide material support to foreign terrorist plots, and other offences. Jeff Coen is a reporter for the Chicago Tribune. He’s been following the ongoing case against Headley.

JEFF COEN: He was charged in October – I don’t know if your listeners remember – with surveying a newspaper in Denmark for a possible attack to sort of respond to cartoons of the Prophet Mohamed that that paper published in 2005. And today charges were upgrading against Headley to include the Mumbai plot.

WERMAN: And so what is the connection that federal prosecutors found between that Denmark case and the attack in Mumbai?

COEN: Well the connection is a terror organization in Pakistan called Lashkar-e-taiba which is the group that’s blamed for the Mumbai attacks. Essentially Headley is accused of being what amounts to a scout for that organization based in Chicago. He traveled to India, beginning in September 2006 and took photographs and visited a number of the sites that wound up being attacked last year. And then he went on to be a scout again for the newspaper attack which was eventually thwarted.

WERMAN: And what was the evidence against him?

COEN: The evidence against him is a lot of e-mail traffic and other communication with some figures in Pakistan which are linked to Lashkar and they know that he was actually underwent some partially training beginning in ’02 in Pakistan and then when he eventually began to settle in the US he changed his name from Daood Gilani to David Headley to try to avoid any suspicion and avoid you know headaches when he traveled because of his name. And then he just sort of bounced around the country. Settled in Chicago a few years ago and began traveling from here for these missions.

WERMAN: And the charges against him there are quite a few of them. Are they all going to stick?

COEN: Well we’ll see. I mean he’s … . This is also today was the first time it’s confirmed that he’s a cooperator. So on some level some of these allegations are based on things that he is telling the authorities here in the United States now. So presumably at some point we might see some kind of a plea from him or he’ll try to come up with some kind of an arrangement where his penalties is lessened a little bit for his cooperation. But he’s talking about apparently these missions that he went on and who his contacts were and you know to what extent he was a member of Lashkar.

WERMAN: Right and let’s go into that connection with Lashkar-e-taiba. What is the evidenced that he has any connection with them at all?

COEN: Well the evidence I think chiefly is now going to be statements that he’s making that he is in fact what they’re alleging. But they have you know chronicled some of his movements travel wise so they’ll be able to corroborate things he says by knowing that he was in fact in Pakistan at certain times. And it looks like his pattern basically was to go to a site, scout it out, take pictures, make notes and then travel from the site back to Pakistan and speak with figures in Lashkar and help them with planning before he returned home. So they’ll be able to sort of follow and there’ll be a paper trail of his travels that will corroborate things he says.

WERMAN: Is David Headley unique in Chicago or are there any signs that he’s got other collaborators?

COEN: Well we do have one other Chicago man charged in the newspaper case. A man named Tahawwur Rana who was kind of an interesting figure here because he owned an immigration business which Headley was sort of working for as a front. He was traveling purporting to be a representative of the immigration business and Rana also had Halal meat packing facility in the suburbs here in Chicago. So we do have one other person connected to it who’s here. Today authorities also charged a retired Pakistani general with being the contact person in Pakistan related to the newspaper attack. So he remains at large. But in terms of Chicago in general we’ve had some terror cases, or terror funding cases really, before form here. I would say what makes this one unique is it’s sort of a reversal of you know authorities sort of fear in the United States is to have operatives coming in to perform attacks here. These are people who are based here and were really being exported to their locations to help plan and even help others carry out attacks.

WERMAN: And what now for David Headley? What happens next in this?

COEN: Well David Headley as a cooperator doesn’t have any firm court dates coming up. He remains in custody here. He’s in no position to get anything like bond so he’ll remain in some kind of a secure facility in Chicago while they work the investigation.

WERMAN: Jeff Coen, a reporter with the Chicago Tribune in Chicago. Thanks very much.

COEN: Thank you.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

• BBC coverage
• In pictures: Mumbai one year after
• On The World: India Muslim community

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN:  I’m Marco Werman and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston.  The people of Mumbai, India held tearful memorials today.  They were remembering the attack that militants launched against their city one year ago.  It was November 26, 2008 when ten gunmen staged the attack.  They hit the city’s biggest train station, luxury hotels, a Jewish center and other sites.  The raids killed 166 people.  Fursaj Jahani owns one of the places that was hit, the Café Leopold.  Jahani says he and other shop owners in Mumbai are back in business one year after the terrorists struck.

FURSAJ JAHANI:  We wanted to prove to the world that we won, they lost, we pull the shutters up, we’ve opened again.  You know people that had come twenty years back, thirty years back, they came back.  These are the people that supported me, supported this place to bounce back.

WERMAN:  The Pakistan based book, Lashkar-e-Taiba is blamed for masterminding the attacks.  India broke off talks with Pakistan after the violence.  Yesterday, a Pakistani court indicted seven Pakistani’s in connection with the siege.  Shashi Tharoor is India’s Minister of State for External Affairs.  He’s urging Pakistan to prosecute, convict and punish the attackers. He also says Indians should feel pride in their country today.

SHASHI THAROOR:  Today where of course we remember our grief and our mourning, a day in which a horrendous loss of life a year ago will continue to stir our consciences and our hearts.  But it is also a day to salute the courage and the bravery of so many people, our security forces, the police and then the ordinary human beings, the hotel workers, people who went out of their way to save the lives of innocents.  Let the message go today from India to the rest of the world.  India will not be terrorized.

WERMAN:  That seems to be the mood at the Trident Hotel, one of the targets of the militants.  The BBC’s Tinku Ray is there.

TINKU RAY:  I’ve spoken to people here at the hotel.  Many of them here were actually present when the gunmen entered the hotel last year and the stories are so harrowing and so eerie, I actually had nightmares last night but thankfully, it sounds like none of the staff actually left their jobs.  Both of them came back within a few days of the incident ending and people basically have really, really bounced back.

WERMAN:  I mean those scenes, those dramatic scenes are unforgettable, the scenes coming from the security cameras at some of the city’s cafes and the train station and the, of course, the gunmen storming the Taj Hotel and where you’re staying, the Trident.  What is the sentiment now among the Indians who came back to their jobs and are now working in those places?  Any sort of heightened sense of vigilance among them or it’s just kind of business as usual?

RAY:  Oh, security is just amazing at these hotels now, Marco.  You’re talking about airport type security and both of these hotels which were struck, the Taj and the Trident, have spent millions of dollars on increasing their security.  Cars are not even allowed to enter up to the doors.  You have to have your bags scanned and then you are frisked by security personnel.  It’s amazing.  But, shockingly, the station which was also attacked, this is the main station here in Mumbai, has practically no security.  I went there yesterday and we’re talking about a station where millions of people go through every single day and there was not a single bit of security to check people, stop people and I think it’s impossible to do so, that’s the main thing.

WERMAN:  Now Tinku, another target of attack was the city’s Jewish community and I’d like us to listen now to some comments from Rabbi Abraham Berkowitz who is in charge of rebuilding Habbad House.  It’s a Jewish center where six people were killed last year in these attacks.  Here he is explaining why instead of rebuilding the destroyed center, it’s been moved to another location.

RABBI ABRAHAM BERKOWITZ:  Our immediate security concerns take us to a discreet location and I must say that there hasn’t been one week that we haven’t had continued activities and we are not giving up and we won’t go away.  We will not let terror ruin our way of life.  We just are doing it very carefully, with very important steps to be taken.

WERMAN:  Rabbi Abraham Berkowitz there in Mumbai.  Tinku Ray, you said there was no security at the train station, a contrast with the elaborate security at hotels in Mumbai.  The fact that the Jewish center has moved to an undisclosed location suggests a lack of faith in Indian security forces.  Do the Jews of Mumbai feel safe?

RAY:  Well Marco, I think it’s not really a lack of faith for the Jewish community.  I mean you heard Rabbi Berkowitz, who’s from Brooklyn, he’s come here to take over the center from the Rabbi and his pregnant wife who were killed in those attacks last year and he said that the Jewish community in India has never been attacked by any of the communities here so they’ve always felt safe.

WERMAN:  And a year after these attacks, what is the plight of the city’s Muslims?  Do they feel threatened at all?

RAY:  Well that was a really surprising thing.  Following the attacks, there was absolutely no backlash and nobody in Mumbai or even India blamed the Muslim community for these attacks and especially after it was discovered that these gunmen came from outside of the country.  In fact, there were rallies and protests and marches in which people from all communities came together.

WERMAN:  The evidence points to the Pakistan based militant group, Lashkar-e-Taiba being behind the attack and many Indians claim the Pakistani government hasn’t cracked down enough on the group or at all.  Is the Indian government satisfied that Pakistan is taking steps to ensure similar attacks aren’t in the works?

RAY:  There’s always been this uneasy relationship between the two countries, Marco, India and Pakistan, ever since partition.  Every time there’s an attack in India, Pakistan is automatically blamed. I think this time there has been a lot more cooperation between the two governments and just yesterday we saw the Pakistani government charging seven people in connection with these attacks and I think that’s a very positive step to be taking by the Pakistani’s and I think we’ll have to see how things develop and whether the dialogue between the two countries can now resume at some level at least.

WERMAN:  Tinku Ray, one year after the attacks in Mumbai.  Thank you very much for speaking with us.

RAY:  It was a pleasure talking to you, Marco.

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