Anjolie paints a tribute to Black Cat heroes of 26/11

The Mumbai attack is over 100 days old but the five-day-long,high-voltage commando action is fast becoming a favoured theme for script writers,authors and even artists....

The Mumbai attack is over 100 days old but the five-day-long,high-voltage commando action is fast becoming a favoured theme for script writers,authors and even artists.

First among them is celebrated painter Anjolie Ela Menon,who has just completed a giant-sized abstraction on Operation Black Tornado,soon to be put up at the headquarters of the National Security Guards (NSG).

Menon first presented a maquette (smaller version) of the painting to J.K. Dutt,who recently demitted office as NSG Chiefhe was the one who approached her for a canvas on the 26/11 operation. The maquette now has a place in Dutts living room.

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The artist told The Sunday Express that while she had first thought of doing an impressionistic work showing the Taj Hotel in flames,she eventually settled for making the Black Cats the focal point of her painting,which is almost five feet high.

We should not forget our heroes like we have forgotten the heroes of the Kargil war, she emphasised. For me,the NSG Black Cats were the heroes of the Mumbai operation,the reason why they alone dominate the canvas.

Menons evocative painting on the 26/11 operation has a weapon-wielding hooded commando standing tall in the centre,with two commandos in slithering position as a backdrop.

Interestingly,Dutt says that soon after speaking to Anjolie Ela Menon,he decided to put his own impression of the attack he commandeered on canvas. The result is a mounted line-drawing,which has also been hung in his living room along with Menons work.

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Dutts own work of art shows the three Mumbai properties which the NSG freed of terrorists,with bullets at the bottom drawn to match the number of terrorists neutralised in individual buildings. The NSGs symbolthe Sudarshan Chakrais drawn inspirationally at the top.

For me,doing the painting was part of the de-stressing process I needed after Black Tornado, Dutt said. For weeks after the operation,I would get up at night and remember the horror of the charred rooms and dead bodies. Now I have these two paintings for solace.

Ritu Sarin

Ritu Sarin is Executive Editor (News and Investigations) at The Indian Express group. Her areas of specialisation include internal security, money laundering and corruption. Sarin is one of India’s most renowned reporters and has a career in journalism of over four decades. She is a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) since 1999 and since early 2023, a member of its Board of Directors. She has also been a founder member of the ICIJ Network Committee (INC). She has, to begin with, alone, and later led teams which have worked on ICIJ’s Offshore Leaks, Swiss Leaks, the Pulitzer Prize winning Panama Papers, Paradise Papers, Implant Files, Fincen Files, Pandora Papers, the Uber Files and Deforestation Inc. She has conducted investigative journalism workshops and addressed investigative journalism conferences with a specialisation on collaborative journalism in several countries. ... Read More