SONYA FATAH

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Joanna Harries is reconsidering her decision to spend a year in Mumbai.
December 01, 2008

SONYA FATAH, THE TORONTO STAR

MUMBAI–When Joanna Harries was deciding whether to head to India or Pakistan after learning she had been selected for the Acumen Fund’s year-long fellowship program, she opted for India.

“I said `no’ to Pakistan because I figured it would be a dangerous place for a woman,” the Toronto native said.

The irony of that decision isn’t lost on her.

Harries, 28, arrived in Mumbai two weeks ago. She was at a reception at the Cricket Club of India in the south of the city when the news of the attacks reached her. “There was absolute chaos. Everyone was stranded in south Mumbai and wanted to get out. There were 10 to 12 people in each cab, and we knew that bombs had gone off in some cabs but we couldn’t do anything.”

She and her colleagues made it to the safety of their homes in the northern suburbs, but the experiences of that night and the past few days have left her rattled.

Harries, who worked as a brand manager with Unilever in Canada and the United States, was married last year but didn’t want to pass up the Acumen Fund opportunity, so she and her husband are spending the year apart. Acumen, which also operates in Pakistan and Africa, is a non-profit social venture fund that invests in “sustainable and scalable” businesses to tackle poverty.

In Mumbai, Harries has been working for DIAL 1298, a private ambulance service operating in a city starved for good public medical care. During the three-day siege in Mumbai, DIAL 1298 played a significant role in aiding government, police and hospital officials.

Its 51 ambulances, half outfitted with state-of-the-art advanced life support, some charged by solar panels, scurried from location to location ferrying hostages from the city’s two premier hotels.

“I spent the night in the call centre just watching and trying to be helpful, talking to blood donors, and watching what was going on, on television … I don’t know how to evaluate what has happened. In Canadian terms, this number of deaths never happens.”

These are days of second thoughts. She says she feels fine, but she is questioning whether being in Mumbai, away from a new spouse and the safety and security of home, is a smart decision.

Her family in Toronto is deeply concerned about her safety. Although they understand her reasons for being in India and taking on the fellowship, they would be happy if she returned home to Canada, Harries said.

“I’m going around talking to many people – Indian and otherwise – to see what they think. I feel safe in my apartment but I don’t want to spend the rest of my year here holed up in there.”

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Charles Cannon, left, spoke of ordeal. Larry Koftinoff, of Kelowna, B.C., turned to meditation during hotel siege.

December 01, 2008
SONYA FATAH, THE TORONTO STAR

MUMBAI–Days after they escaped the besieged Oberoi hotel, many of the surviving members of a meditation group are still traumatized by their experience.

Lured to India in search of spirituality, the group of 25 meditation practitioners from Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand instead found themselves in a prolonged terrorist attack.

By the end of their 45-hour ordeal, two members of the group had died and three – including Montreal actor Michael Rudder who was shot three times – were recovering in Bombay Hospital.

The remaining three Canadians, Helen Connolly of Toronto, who was grazed in the arm by a bullet, and Kelowna, B.C., couple Larry and Bernie Koftinoff, are well and looking forward to returning home.

The group’s leader, known to members as Master Charles Cannon, told reporters yesterday of the harrowing hours during which the group mustered its strength, he said, to emerge from the experience feeling profoundly more spiritual.

Cannon, 63, paused from time to time to check his emotions as he talked about the group’s ordeal.

“As I sat in that room in the Oberoi hotel with the door barricaded and guns and bombs going off for over 45 hours … thinking that the next moment the door would be blown away and life would be ended, I kept trying to look into myself and see what sense I could make of the situation,” the American said.

In the end, he said, the experience was an “affirmation of life, of compassion, of love, kindness and of the oneness of humanity.”

Larry Koftinoff, 56, who introduced Cannon to reporters, appeared calm and composed. But he said some of the group’s members were starting to show signs of post-traumatic stress disorder.

“It’s this time when the post-traumatic stress starts – a lot of the women especially – now that they are now coming out of the shock that you’re in originally and realize what has happened.”

Koftinoff and his wife, Bernie, also turned to meditation during the siege.

“We had each other,” Koftinoff said. “For some of the other people, it’s harder because they don’t have anyone else there to help balance the tensions.”

The group arrived in India on Nov. 15 for a two-week meditation course under Cannon’s leadership. Cannon heads the Synchronicity Foundation, which he started up in 1983, as a “modern mystic” and a “master of meditation” after spending 12 years in India. The foundation, a non-profit organization, focuses on meditation and has a 180-hectare sanctuary not far from Charlottesville, Va. On the Wednesday evening of the attack, most of the group’s members had retired to their rooms after returning from a meditation session.

Rudder, Connolly and four Americans had opted to dine at Tiffin, a restaurant in the hotel, when gunmen entered the room and sprayed the guests with bullets.

Cannon said all six dove under the table for cover. Survivors watched in horror as the gunmen went table to table and sprayed bullets at those cowering underneath. Two Americans, Alan Scherr, 58, and his 13-year-old daughter Naomi, were killed while they held onto each other. Connolly held their hands and felt their lives ebb away as the attackers stormed the hotel.

After the gunmen left, a waiter whispered, “If you can move, follow me.” The surviving four – three of them with bullet wounds – crawled to safety and left through a back entrance. All four were taken to hospital, and Rudder, who was in critical care at first, is recovering and expected to be in Bombay Hospital for another two weeks after undergoing surgery.

For the remaining 19 members of the group, gun battles, explosions and the sounds of footsteps of terrorists running between the floors, continued for 45 hours before their release was secured.

Cannon, who was in his room with two of his assistants, broke the thick glass of the hotel window when fire broke out and smoke began to fill the air. In his room on the 12th floor, Koftinoff did the same.

“What was amazing was that a lot of people in Canada sent us a lot of prayers, energy and healing across,” said Gautam Sachdeva, who heads Yoga Impressions.

“We got calls and emails and heard about a lot of special prayers held for the group. People got together in ashrams and prayed for them.”

Despite experiencing loss and feeling low, neither Cannon nor any in his group seem to blame anyone for their ordeal.

Yesterday afternoon, Cannon visited the three members in hospital.

He said one of the injured women told him, “We are not the victims of terrorism, we are the victors over terrorism. We chose the affirmation of life, we chose love and we forgive.”

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