“It was morning, like any other. I had no inkling that as the day progressed, my smooth-sailing life would hit a rock that would jolt me so violently that I would be wrecked from within, for a long time to come.” — Jui Karkare Navare

A story can’t exist in silos, is what Jui Karkare Navare learned as a child. She used to write for the children’s magazine ‘Tinkle’. By the end of the story, she felt readers should always have a better semblance of their protagonist than they did at the start.

And, her knack for achieving this hasn’t waned one bit, I think to myself, as I (finally) put down my read ‘Hemant Karkare: A Daughter’s Memoir’.

It’s been four hours of feverish flipping through this vivid retelling of the life and times of Hemant Karkare, the chief of the Anti-Terrorism Squad in Mumbai, and the bloodcurdling events of 26 November 2008, when Mumbai was rattled by a series of terrorist attacks.

But, as I virtually flip the last page — the memoir is available on Kindle — I shed the feeling of being a stranger in the sea of Karkare’s admirers. The memoir does that to you. It sucks you in. It holds your hand, not letting go for even a second as it takes you down a memory lane that a daughter has built for her dad, painstakingly, word by word.

The memoir doesn’t promise an easy read. It will confront you with the truth, causing emotions to resurge. But don’t stop. The antidote is to keep reading, I figure; at every bend, Jui delivers a promised anecdote, think of it like a metaphorical hug.

I was 10 years old in 2008 when the series of coordinated terrorist attacks, complete with machine gun and grenade assaults, sent tremors through my city. Not old enough to comprehend the gravitas of the chain of events — I won’t deny the dystopian visuals on TV terrified me — I remember earnestly praying: God, please let my Dad return home from work safely.

Little did I ever imagine that, miles away in Boston, another daughter was praying the same prayer.

Jui’s dad did not return home that day. He was martyred in the terror attacks.

Life, since then, to her, has felt like a giant time warp; the years dragged on, and grief overstayed its welcome. While Jui’s mental calendar matched pace with the world’s, it often found itself flipping back to 2008, running a hand across 26 November, attempting to answer questions she was too torn to ask. One particular memory on that day is circled in red, it’s marked out a space for itself. This was Jui’s inflection point.

On the morning of 26 November 2008 (it was morning for her in Boston, and evening in India, where the terror attacks were unfolding), Jui received a call from her sister who asked, “Jui, do you know that........

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