Dr Tilu Mangeshikar, Anesthetist and Interventional Pain Physician holed up in The Chambers, Taj

Dr Tilu Mangeshikar had only counted on a brief appearance at her daughter’s friend’s wedding but was caught up in a nightmarish one-day ordeal instead. Reaching the Crystal Room at the Taj by 9.30 p.m. she had barely got herself a drink when the first volley of gunfire broke out. “We suddenly heard this loud sound and thought it was fireworks for the bride and groom. We were thinking ‘the baraat’s already here so what’s this tamasha?’ and assumed there was some surprise because they were locking doors. I couldn’t believe I was hearing firing inside the Taj. We were told it’s a gang war and that we would be safe as long as we stayed inside. But a bullet shattered the chandelier soon after and we were moved to the Chambers.”
As they crawled into the ante-room between the service passage and the Crystal Room she saw what she assumed was a soldier through the swing doors. “He looked young; he was carrying a backpack and a gun. We didn’t realise it was one of the terrorists till later.” Initially things were still under control. They were being fed and served, they found friends and were catching up, the men had even started watching television. “We were thinking as long as we stay out of the cross-fire we should be fine. My husband was giving Aaj Tak a sound byte. They gave us sheets and some of us even napped because the firing was going on in the distance.”
Chaos broke out when they were told that the building was secure and they would begin evacuating them from the Chambers. “There was a stampede trying to get out. I was disgusted. There were a lot of foreigners in our room and they just pushed people out of the way. I said to my daughter ‘it’s not like the Titanic is it, where they let the women and children go first?’” She had barely reached the end of the corridor when they were sprayed with bullets and the Taj staffers leading the way took the brunt of it. “I saw three cops disappear from the right where we were evacuating. And the only ones left were a few of us and the Taj staff. They asked us to head straight. I had barely walked a metre when they shot at us from a distance of six to eight metres. I turned and pushed my daughter back. Everybody ran back to the Chambers and that’s when Kamble was shot.”
Dr Tilu spent the next six hours trying to save Rajan Kamble’s life. Shot from behind, the inconspicuous entry wound had left a gaping hole in his abdomen. “I have seen my fair share of bullet wounds and this one didn’t look like it. I asked him if he had fallen on something but he insisted that he had been shot. It was obvious that they were using bad bullets. His bowels were spilling out. I had no idea what organs had been injured but I had to stop the bleeding. I figured no big blood vessel had gone but even if one had what could we do? Tying up someone’s abdomen so tight is problematic because they can stop breathing so I knew I would have to sit there and watch him and release his chest periodically.” And while the CM announced that the Taj had been sanitised, Dr Tilu, Rajan Kamble and innumerable staff and guests remained trapped inside. It was only at eight the next morning that they were finally released.
“We felt confident only when the commandos came. It finally looked like a rescue operation. I mean what 20-year-old can shoot women? And there’s no question of not knowing who you’re shooting at, we were right in front. They knew exactly who they were shooting at,” she says, aghast.
She isn’t ready to return to the Taj just yet, not after witnessing that kind of destruction. Her biggest complaint is that despite what happened security measures were still lax. They weren’t checked, questioned or debriefed and she was home in about half an hour. “The whole mentality was what happened to the terrorists? That’s not important, the police, army and navy are meant to look into what happened to the terrorists. The rest should have been focused on the casualties.”
This incident has restored her faith in the younger generation though. “There was a young chef on the lookout and another Taj staffer who was helping me take care of Kamble. At one point when they fired into the room her head was in my lap and she was shaking, that’s when I realised, ‘oh my god she’s just a child, she’s helping me but she’s just a child.’” Rajan Kamble was taken to J. J. Hospital but he passed away a few days later. Dr Tilu still struggles with the fact that she couldn’t get him out in time. “I should’ve tried breaking the glass and getting him out because ultimately it’s the time in there that cost him his life.”
One would imagine that confronting death on an almost daily basis would make this tragedy easier to deal with but even she lost her fortitude as she ran to Regal, breaking down once she was freed. But she is angry too, angry with the establishment that we vote into power and that fails to protect us. “At some point there should have been a command centre, so much work happens on the field abroad but it didn’t happen here. A country is like a large corporate and you have to run it like one. We were hopelessly unprepared,” she says.

Woldbeck and Arne Stromme survived the Leopold firing.

Norwegians, Line Kristin Woldbeck and Arne Stromme, are adventurous travellers who revel in exploring cultures. This was their fourth visit to India, a country they love. They had visited Rajasthan and Diu. They were in Bombay for a few hours to catch a flight to Delhi on November 27. Line had arranged to meet an internet pal, a 26-year-old Indian girl, on the night the terror struck. The latter had suggested Café Leopold as a dining venue. This was how the three of them were in the line of rapid fire when the terrorists burst into the popular eatery.
Line had instinctively ducked under the table pulling both her companions with her. “I was holding onto their hands when both of them got hit by bullets. I was soaked in blood and terrified but I managed to stay under the table. People were screaming, shouting for help and ambulances and moaning in pain. I know the terrorists came back three times from the front entrance firing volley after volley covering the entire place. The attack lasted around 45 minutes. I knew the police station was across the road and kept thinking the cops would come over to investigate the firing. Finally, after a lull, I started to crawl out backwards, very cautiously. The floor was slippery with all that blood and there was glass all over. I turned and looked up straight at another terrorist sporting a machine gun who was near the kitchen surveying the scene. I thought he would kill me but he was looking past me at the carnage. Perhaps he didn’t see me or else he thought I was Indian because of my tan, clothes and anklets. I quickly crawled back under the table. I stayed there until someone pulled at my arm and dragged me out. He was from the Military Police. They bundled Arne and me into a vehicle and took us to St George’s Hospital. I tried to see where my friend was but we got separated. I had felt her pulse vanish and knew she had died. Arne was in a bad way with his face and hand shot in the terrorist’s third strike, so I concentrated on getting medical aid for him,” recalls Line who had fortunately remembered to collect her handbag that was slung on a chair back.
Her handbag contained the telephone numbers of their medical insurance agents so she was able to take Arne to Bombay Hospital. Here, Arne received the best possible treatment. His face and hand underwent microsurgery and his wounds are healing well. They opted to stay in Bombay to heal with the city. Both of them consider themselves very fortunate to be alive. Line is still very nervous and reacts whenever she hears a sound like a gunshot or people running. Arne has been in the hospital all this time so he doesn’t know how he will react when he is outside amongst people again. At the time of going to press, the couple has returned to Norway.

Bhisham Mansukhani, journalist, holed up in the Taj for 12 hours

I was attending my best friend’s wedding. We heard gunshots for the first time at about 9.45 p.m. in The Ballroom. Minutes later, a bullet pierced the glass panel running along the wall behind the bar. The glass hit us and we were on the floor. We got under the table and when the firing abated we were escorted by the Taj service staff through the service corridor to the Chambers. I was holed up in the Taj Mahal Hotel for 12 hours with my mother and some 200 other guests.
There was near panic when the dome exploded at midnight. At about 4 a.m. an evacuation was called for. As we waited, people in batches of four were let out through the corridor to what I was given to believe was an elevator or stairway which the commandos had secured. As I got close to the corridor, we heard gunshots. It was the loudest I’d heard and I ran with everyone else. Everyone dispersed into different rooms. I ran into the Lavender Room but then four people ran out, as someone had been shot. An old security staffer of the hotel was lying shot on the staircase. I think he was a little ahead of me in the line before the firing began. My friend’s father, a doctor, bandaged him but had no medicine or penicillin. We shut the lights and the AC and bolted the door and stayed silent. I was sitting opposite the man who’d been shot and heard him call for help in agony. He was bleeding to death. My mother was in the room at the far end.
At that point, I thought we were not going to make it. In fact, I had little doubt that it was just a matter of time before the sniper from the floor above, came to our floor, going room to room, spraying us with ammunition. I took strange comfort in laying my head on the wall that separated the room from the corridor, knowing the bullet could pierce the wall and all that rested on it. I sent a close friend of mine an SMS saying this was probably it. The silence was constantly interrupted by gun fire exchanges, which almost always ended in a grenade explosion.
At about 9.30 a.m. the unexpected came to pass. We heard sharp knocking on the door – someone claiming to be the state police. No one wanted to open the door. Then a female voice from the outside was met with familiarity by the Taj service staffers inside and the door was torn open. The injured man was let out on a stretcher into an ambulance and we all had our hands raised as we walked through the corridor. I saw blood and spent ammunition on the very spot that I’d been drinking Coke and chatting away before midnight. On the corner of the service stairway, another pool of blood stood beside a rumpled commando cap. The effect of the blood was sharp and burning. I couldn’t keep my eyes open.
As we came down to the main lobby, the shattered glass panels and cracked tiling were grim reminders of the madness that had ensued. As we stood outside the lobby, two police vans were loaded with some of the survivors, as the second van exited the lobby entrance, there was more firing from probably the fifth floor and more panic. It wasn’t over. They herded us into a BEST bus, I was in the back, with four Russians, all of us crouched like tormented creatures. I sat up with my head between my knees, watching the hotel windows as the bus pulled away. The city was ghastly. Straight slivers of people, looking zombie like, populated the streets and a strange black car behind seemed like it was in pursuit.
We were taken to the Azad Maidan Police Station and let off in 10 minutes. Walking out with my mother, I felt no elation, no sense of relief, just a bittersweet blankness and cynicism. I later discovered that Gunjan Narang (we went to the same school) who was on the same floor as mine was shot dead along with his parents. I saw him on a couple of occasions that night but didn’t speak to him. They had been a bit ahead of me in the evacuation line.
There’s no time left to argue about whether Bombay is any worse than anywhere else. In today’s times, death is everywhere to be had. I’d like to borrow the closing words of the movie Seven: ‘Someone once said, The world is a beautiful place.
It’s worth fighting for....’
I agree with the second part.

Rohit Malhotra owns jewellery shops at the Taj and Oberoi along with his bothers. He and his wife Sarita were celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary at the Zodiac Grill on 26/11. What was meant to be a quiet celebration in elegant surroundings has become indelibly etched in their memories because of the chaos that erupted that night. They lost several friends and relatives. One of their shops was damaged by the terrorists. Thankfully, they made it out alive.
Rohit recounts: “We walked into the restaurant around 9.30 p.m. We had just settled down when we heard gunshots and a loud blast. We could hear people running helter-skelter in the lobby shouting that firing was taking place and that there had been a bomb blast. Immediately the staff took over. The doors were locked, barricaded with furniture and the piano and the lights dimmed completely. We were asked to remain wherever we were and advised to be silent.
We heard sporadic gunfire, exploding grenades and the distinc-tive sound of a fire raging nearby. Some other people were brought into the Zodiac Grill for safety through the service entrance via the kitchens. There were around 45-50 people in the Zodiac Grill that night. We were in constant touch with friends and relatives thanks to our mobile phones. The staff even found us a charger! We were aware of the gravity of the situation because people kept us informed. One or two people became hysterical but were calmed down by the staff. We were fortunate to be so comfortable and well looked after by the staff. They served us water, cookies, biscotti and sandwiches. The restroom at the Zodiac was handy too. I stayed put in my corner all night, confident that I would come out of the situation alive.
My confidence was vindicated when at around 5.00 a.m. the next morning we were all evacuated through the main lobby. As we were leaving, the restaurant staff who had been with us throughout the night thanked us for our patience! In the lobby, more staff members were lined up, smiling, to bid us farewell. The Taj and Oberoi staff were incredible throughout. Hats off to them for their calm efficiency.
My wife and I walked to the Regal circle where my brother was waiting. It was only later that we realised how fortunate we had been to come out of it all unscathed.”

In Memoriam

Ruby Randhawa, Teacher, B. D. Somani International School
‘Mrs Randhawa’ was one of the few teachers who seemed genuinely pleased to see me at Cathedral School. Bumping into her more often at the Taj than my alumnus, I quite enjoyed her quizzing us on our academic, professional and personal lives. From the frightening chemistry teacher I encountered in the ninth grade she had made a rather effortless transition to a friend in our final year. And one that wasn’t particular to just us. Saurabh Sekhsaria who got to know her better as a member of Cathedral school’s Nature Club – a cause she was extremely passionate about, organising both workshops and Save the Tiger campaigns insists, “I was too naïve to understand then but in the long run the lessons she taught me are driving me forward. The day we got our board results she sent us all a mail from the US enquiring on how we fared.”
That’s just the kind of teacher she was. Monica Bhatia who was taught by her at Chandigarh’s Sacred Heart School in 1981 recalls her as a young and vibrant teacher, straight out of college and full of enthusiasm. The sheer volume of her students who showed up at her funeral serves as a testament not only to the teacher but also the person she was.

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