KEY POINTS:
Looking at the rosy-cheeked toddler playing in an Israeli living room, it is hard to imagine that just two weeks ago, and a continent away, he was wailing forlornly, his parents lifeless beside him, their blood staining his clothes.
Having escaped the militants who brought carnage to the
streets of Mumbai, Moshe Holtzberg is in the safe hands of Sandra Samuel, the Indian nanny who heard his cries and whisked him out of harm's way.
At the memorial service for his parents in the Indian city, his anguished cries for his mother reverberated through the hushed ranks of mourners.
Now the boy dubbed the "Miracle of Mumbai" is dancing along to songs ahead of the Jewish Hanukkah holiday.
"He is like a normal kid, just enjoying himself. He has gotten used to other people surrounding him," Samuel says. "He loves it here. He is in very good condition, just like normal. He is having his breakfast, lunch and snacks and he sleeps very well now."
The nanny and her charge are staying at the home of Moshe's great-uncle in northern Israel. In a few days, they are due to move to the toddler's maternal grandparents' home in Afula.
Samuel has been Moshe's live-in nanny since he was 10 days old. The 44-year-old has two grown-up sons of her own back in India, but no intention of abandoning her young charge any time soon. Israel will be home for six months, maybe a year.
Samuel dismisses the idea she is a hero, saying it is inconceivable that she would not have responded to Moshe's cry.
"How could any baby call a person's name and that person not go at once. How could it be?" And she voices deep regret at not having thought about the boy's parents - Rabbi Gabriel Holtzberg and wife Rivka - during the ordeal. All thoughts were on the child. "The baby was more important to me so I took him."
The Holtzberg family ran the Chabad Jewish religious centre and guesthouse in Mumbai, buildings that were to witness one of the bloodiest holdouts in the series of attacks that rocked Mumbai last month.
Seven people died there at the hands of the militants. And had Samuel's son come to collect her for the evening as he did most Wednesdays, that death toll would probably have included little Moshe. "God kept me there because God already knew what would happen, " is the explanation given.
When the militants' assault began, Samuel hid in a first-floor storeroom with a fellow worker, and stayed there until she heard Moshe calling her name, one floor above.
"He was just crying my name - 'Sandra. Sandra."' When she got to the room from which the cries emanated, she saw the child's parents on the floor. "They looked like they were asleep. I gave a look, picked him up and ran."
For the first four nights after the attack, Moshe would wake every night, wanting his parents. "He is not even asking for them now because he is too happy. He loves it here. He has swings, a garden, a see-saw," Samuel says.
The trappings may be those of an ordinary toddler, but the little boy enjoying them is anything but.
- INDEPENDENT
