Sabina Saikia’s death numbs media fraternity

Shantanu Saikia had been dreading this moment. But it came to him nevertheless, just as it did to hundreds others who lost their dear ones to the dastardly terror attacks in Mumbai. Missing since three days, the body of Shantanu’s better half Sabina Sehgal Saikia was today brought out after the NSG cleared the heritage Taj Hotel of terrorists.

Back home in Delhi, Sabina’s death came as a shocker, leaving her friends, family and the capital’s arts community deeply saddened and numbed. Of particular reference here is the flutter her death caused at SAHMAT - the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust, of which she was among the most dedicated members. Ironical it seems that a woman who stood by communal harmony and secularism all her life finally went down to terrorists’ bullets.

Numbing as the experience is, the SAHMAT family today came out in the open to remember Sabina as the driving force and inspiration behind the “Artists against Communalism” events in Delhi in 1991 and later at Shivaji Park in Mumbai in 1992.

Sabina’s history tells us of how she travelled with the SAHMAT family to cities where the Anhad Garje - SAHMAT’s Sufi-Bhakti programme - was held in the immediate aftermath of the Babri Masjid Demolition in January, March 1993.

And then she was part of the Mukt-Naad in Ayodhya in 1993 held under very difficult circumstances. Mukt Naad was another event where some of the greatest classical musicians and dancers of India performed in defence of the country’s secular traditions, almost all under Sabina’s initiative.

One of the SAHMAT’s members today said, “None could refuse Sabina; she was such a beloved enthusiast of all these artists.” An acclaimed journalist and a food critic, Sabina was also the founder secretary of Spic Macay and learnt classical music with the doyens of dhrupad form of classical music - Ustads Zahiruddin Dagar and Faiyazuddin Dagar.

As a journalist later, she remained involved with the arts initiatives of her media organisation only to be led to the gourmet section later.

But with Sabina’s killing being confirmed today, all that has become history. She had gone to Mumbai to attend a wedding in a colleague’s family, but never returned. The last her husband heard from her was through an SMS, sent late on Thursday night.

“In her last SMS, she sounded very worried,” Shantanu had earlier said. About 20 minutes before that, hotel employees had received her SMS which said: “They (the terrorists) are in my bathroom'.”

The NSG commandos, who sanitised the Taj after the Operation Tornado today, confirmed the news of Sabina’s death.