Javed Akhtar during a practice session at the Gateway of India on Sunday. (Express photo by Amit Chakravarty)To mark the 10th anniversary of the 26/11 terror attacks, the Nariman House in Colaba, the home of the Chabad Lubavitch in Mumbai, is set to inaugurate a memorial to the victims on Monday.
Rechristening a part of the five-storey building — where six persons died during the attacks — to Nariman Light House, a terrace memorial here will for the first time become a permanent site paying tribute to all the 166 victims. Names of all victims have been written on plaque amidst an artificial water fall.
“It was one of the hardest times for Mumbai… Our Jewish leader said we must translate tears into action. So we have built a water fountain memorial and planks describing all six sites where the attacks took place,” said Chaya Kozlovsky, wife of Rabbi Israel Kozlovsky.
The memorial will open to the public in a few weeks. In phase two, the fourth and fifth floors will be converted into a memorial space to depict the Jewish way of life of the Holtzberg family. Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and wife Rivka were killed during the attack, even as their then two-year-old son Moshe was saved by his nanny and cook.
In the next one year, the fifth floor will be converted to show how the Holtzbergs lived before the attack with the room of Baby Moshe still preserved with wall paintings his mother did. “When the attack happened, Moshe was in his crib on the fifth floor. Nobody knows how he reached the second floor where his parents lay unconscious,” said Rabbi, who has been handling the Nariman House since 2014.
The fourth floor continues to bear multiple bullet holes from the siege. “We will try to recreate what happened in the Chabad House that night,” the Rabbi said.
Eliav Nahlieli, the chief architect of the project, said one room will have complete darkness and a ray of light to symbolise hope, while another room will be painted bright white to show the world is a better place if united. “I have done several museums, but this is a unique project. We are trying something very different here,” Nahlieli said.
