As many of you may know, Ena and I were in Mumbai last week and were actually in Oberoi Trident hotel when the terrorists struck on the evening of Wednesday, November, 26. After a harrowing two days, we were finally rescued at noon on Friday, November 28.
Some of you wanted me to put down our experience in the Trident before memory dims. So here it is…
Wednesday November 26
"Boom" " Boom". It was 9:40 pm when two large explosions went off at ground level below our room 2716 in the Trident Hotel. Clouds of black smoke with an orange glow could be seen from our room window which overlooked the sea. Nothing else was visible. Soon the hotel's fire alarm went off and we ran out to the corridor to find out the cause of the explosions. A few of our neighbors, too, had come out in the corridor but none knew what was happening and there were no announcements from the hotel's PA system. The fire alarm soon stopped and as I stepped back into the room to switch on the TV to see if they knew what was happening, it was the start of an ordeal that we least expected.
Ena and I had flown into Mumbai on Friday, November 21 since I had agreed to direct a program for the
As we stood in the corridor deciding what to do – should we leave as at least one couple had decided- or should we wait and see what the event really was. Given the shape of the hotel and where we were, if there was a fire below us, the elevator would have to pass through the fire. If we took the stairs- and that was a big if since I could not really envisage climbing down 27 stories- would we have to go through a raging fire? We decided to stay in our room and see if we could find out what was really happening.
As I turned on the television, there was news that terrorists had entered Mumbai and were attacking the VT terminus, Taj and Oberoi hotels. The first clips also showed a fire which they reported was in the lobby of the Oberoi hotel. (The Trident hotel is the tall hotel next door to the shorter Oberoi hotel next door but since both belongs to Oberoi, this caused confusion in the media all during this period.) We too were often confused as the media would often report events in Oberoi while showing shots of the Trident and vica versa. We switched channels on the TV to see if we could find out what was happening outside our door.
One thing was clear that terrorists were now in the Trident hotel – but none knew how many there were and where they were. The explosions were followed by continuous rat a rat of gunfire from within the hotel below us. The hotel phones were now dead and our sole source of news was the TV. We were indeed lucky that the previous Sunday my cousin Lalit Khanna had loaned us his cellphone. This now became our only other source of information though we could not call out since, as we soon found out, all the phones were jammed. So we double locked the doors and sat inside the room waiting. We barely slept, watching on TV as the events unfolded through the long night. It seemed that another team of terrorists had entered the Taj Hotel and there were major shooting there as well.
Thursday, November 27
The news on the TV became grimmer as the scale of the attacks and the fatalities piled up. We could see the fire in the dome of the Taj hotel and heard reports of the deaths at the VT station and Leopold Café.
In the middle of the night, I thought that perhaps the intenet connection that we had might still be working. So I turned it on to find that indeed it was. I was able to send messages to our children and the family that we were safe in our room. Here are some excerpts from these emails
" Shibani: Just to let you know that we are both safe. About an hour ago there were blasts near our hotel --Trident hotel which is next to the Oberoi hotel-- but as of now we have not heard of any new developments. we are safe in our room – 2716. So dont worry. But Janet you may need to cancel your stay in Taj hotel.love from the both of us."
An hour later "We are safe in our room. But the situation is still not fully under control so that we are not allowed to leave the room. None of the phones are working. I have Lalit's cellphone which works occasionally --9920486268. Do call all over to inform them of our safety."
Then a minute later " If you see the photos, the Trident is the taller hotel while Oberoi is shorter in height. We have all the tv channels on in our room- so we are getting the same news. However there is no shots etc or anything in Trident that we can hear."
Email from Shibani " I know that but the news is focusing on the Trident. Apparently the gun battle is in your hotel!! Hostages have also been taken at the Trident and the Taj but they are looking for foreigners so that should keep you safe. Keep emailing me please."
Inside our room, there was little news of the events in Trident on TV till Barkha Dutt, a local newscaster, came on screen to announce that commandos were planning to use a brown building behind the Oberoi hotel as their launching pad to try and attack the terrorists in Trident hotel. In the next few minutes, the tv went off. A few minutes later the internet connection was also cut off. Now we were truly in the dark. Our only connection to the outside world was now our cellphone on which we could receive calls but could not call out. I think for some time people did not realize our predicament and there was a long silence in our room.
In the early hours, we hear some cries of women outside the door but I could see nothing through the peephole.. Thoughout the night though we kept hearing sporadic shooting sounds inside the hotel and we could see a crowd gathered on Marine drive watching the Trident hotel if we looked out of our room window.
Early Thursday morning, calls come from ONGC that they were sending a car with a security man and a doctor to the Trident who would take us to their guesthouse as soon as it was safe. I told Shivaji the security man to keep calling us to give us information on what was happening as we were now completely cut off. Shibani announced that she was going to call us on the hour every hour from
One mentioned that there was a ticker tape on tv channels stating that ONGC staff were negotiating with the terrorists to obtain the release of an ex director (me) of ONGC. We were furious as this only increased the risks confronting us as we had heard the terrorists were apparently going from room to room collecting hostages. Fortunately this was soon taken off.
We were advised by our friends to remain in our room till the commandos had complete control of the situation as it was probably the safest place to be short of a terrorist directly attacking our room. Other advised us to keep wet towels in case of fire.
On Thursday afternoon, Shivaji rang up to tell me that there was a fire in Trident hotel around the fourth floor below us and that the fire engines were battling it.
"If the choice for us is the fire or the firing of the terrorists" I told Shivaji. "I would rather take the risk of terrorists shooting bullets and descending the 27 floors than wait for the fire. So if the fire shows any sign of being out of control, you must call me immediately".
Fortunately, the fire was controlled within the hour and we remained in the room waiting for the commandos to come get us. By now Niloufer had contacted Rajagopalan, who used to the the chief secretary of
Our major concern besides the terrorists and the fire was the fact that we were on the 27 th floor. At every phone call, Ena would urge people to find a solution to this problem. "My husband is a heart patient and there is no way he can walk down 27 stories".
We had by then packed up our belongings and were ready to leave at short notice as we were told that the commandos would knock on our door and if we did not open the door in a few seconds, they would blast open the door with explosives. So we kept waiting. We would get regular updates on the phone reassuring us that commandos were on the way. We were to remain in this condition through the night.
At 9:30 pm, Lav Vadhera called to tell us that the situation was getting complex and more dangerous. And that the commandos were facing more resistance than expected. Clad in our day clothes, we slept fitfully through the night waiting for the rescue effort.
Friday, November 28
In the morning hours we were told that attention had now shifted to the Nariman house where a major offensive by the commandos was on the way and we would have to be patient a bit longer.
Throughout this ordeal, the two questions that were uppermost in every communication from our friends were "Are you all right ? And do you have enough food and water?"
We would tell them that we were safe as we were locked in our room and we would emerge only if there was a fire or if the rescue team came for us. As for food, Ena had earlier bought some fruits and some savories which we nibbled on through the day and were enough for us to survive on. And of course we had the mini bar which had water, soft drinks, liquor, chocolates and nuts. None of this was good food for a diabetic but fortunately I had an upset stomach during this entire siege and so it did not matter !
When Shibani and Akhil called I told them "We are both in good spirits, but some of us have more spirit that others!" By then Ena had drained the sole red wine bottle which was in the mini bar!
Of course, by Friday morning our stock of food was running out. We had a solitary apple left and we looked at it trying to decide whether that should be our breakfast, lunch or dinner.
At about 11 am, we received a call from the hotel – the only time that we had any communication from the hotel during this period – that a group would soon come to our door and would announce that they were from housekeeping. We were to open the door and they would then escort us to safety. Soon I heard activity outside the door, and saw four or five young men without any guns outside. I opened the door and identified myself. They then took over and told us to take all our luggage with us. They helped us into the one elevator that was working and took us down to the lobby.
As we passed the lobby, we could see bloodstains on the floor and glass scattered all over. We were handed an orange, a bottle of cold water and a diet coke as we were ushered to the nearby Air
As we waited for the ONGC car to come, I received phone calls from from family and friends as well as from R.S. Sharma, the Chairman of ONGC and his Director , Dr Balyan. Beyond the registration tables, there was a security cordon with hordes of anxious relatives and media persons. We were advised to wait till the car could back into the cordon so that we were not bothered by the media outside—indeed it seemed for a moment that we were more afraid of the media than the terrorists.
It was now 12 noon on Friday. We were soon in the car and the nightmare was finally over.
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When we were inside our room during this entire period, we had little idea of what was really happening outside our door. So I tried to piece together from various accounts what really happened in Trident ..
Two young men, dressed in jeans and green t-shirts, carrying backpacks and toting AK-47 walked through the main entrance of the Trident hotel at 9:30 pm on Wednesday, November 26. They were spraying bullets from their AK 47 as they walked in, passed the door scanner. They shot the security guard and two bellhops. The hotel had metal detectors, but none of its security personnel carried weapon.
The gunmen raced through the marble-floored lobby, past the grand piano into the adjoining Verandah restaurant, firing at the guests and shattering the windows. As people ducked and dived to the ground, they threw two grenades in the lobby shattering the glass windows that looked out into the sea.
At the end of the lobby, they burst into a bar called the Opium Den, shooting dead a hotel staff member. Then they ran after a group of guests who tried to escape through a rear service area. They killed them, too.
Schubert Vaz was a witness to this: "I was playing the piano as usual as I have for 27 years at the sea-facing lobby of the Oberoi, when I heard gun shots. As soon as I realized that gunmen had entered the lobby and shooting people, I ran into the Opium Den bar. They had already killed two bell boys. Other bodies were on the floor.
But the terrorists were going into restaurants and firing. Along with some Oberoi staffers and guests, we next ran into the computer room. We felt that was also not safe. We next headed for the back-up systems room which had batteries and so on. I could continually hear gunshots.
I called up my brother in law over the cell phone and spoke softly to tell him that terrorists had taken over the Oberoi, but not to tell my wife. If I was delayed, I asked him to tell her that a guest had invited me to play in his house after my duty hours at the Oberoi. If I did not come home by morning, it meant I was in serious trouble.
We were hiding in the back-up systems room when one of the terrorists entered. He started firing from his machine gun. He shot a 20-year old Oberoi management trainee Jasmine. She died. He killed some guests at point blank range.
I thought my time had come to die. I could see the image of my family flash before my eyes. At that time I prayed, "Lord, save me." The terrorist stopped firing. We were very lucky as for some reason he did not spray the room with bullets as he could have done with a machine gun. He just fired single shots. I could not see him, but could see the muzzle of the gun from where I was hiding. If he had sprayed bullets all of us in the room would have died.
The terrorist did not say a word while he was killing people. He was not angrily shouting, but appeared calm and methodical as he was shooting at us. That made him scarier. The terrorist left the room. I asked others in the room, including some foreign guests, to put their mobile phones in silent mode. We waited.
After about 30 minutes, we began to think of how to leave the hotel. We decided to leave for the Regal Room, and there we found our senior managers who were wonderfully helpful. They asked us to keep calm, and told us security forces will rescue us. We were then taken in groups out of Oberoi, to the nearby INOX theatre where we waited until morning. At about 5.30 am, I took a local train to my home in the suburbs."
The gunmen returned to the Verandah, climbed a staircase, dashed down a corridor lined with jewelry and clothes shops, and stopped in front of the glass doors of Tiffin Restaurant, a swanky restaurant with a sushi bar in the Oberoi hotel.
They killed four of six friends who live in south Mumbai and had just settled down at a table near the front door. One member of the group, a mother of two, threw herself to the ground and shut her eyes, pretending to be dead. The men circled the restaurant, firing at point blank range into anyone who moved before rushing upstairs to an Indian restaurant called
The manager of the
Restaurant workers there ushered guests closest to the kitchen inside. The assailants jumped in front of another group that tried to run out the door. "Stop," they shouted in Hindi. They corralled about 20 diners and led them up to the 18th floor. During this, some of the people managed to open the fire doors on the 14 th floor and escape. Others were not so lucky. One man in the group dialed his wife in
On the 18th floor, the gunmen shoved the group out of the stairwell. They lined up the 13 men and three women and lifted their weapons. "Why are you doing this to us?" a man called out. "We haven't done anything to you."
"Remember Babri Masjid?" one of the gunmen shouted, referring to a 16th-century mosque built by
"Remember Godhra?" the second attacker asked, a reference to the town in the Indian state of
"We are Turkish. We are Muslim," someone in the group screamed. One of the gunmen motioned for two Turks in the group to step aside.
One of the terrorists received a phone call asking him to blast all the people. Which they then proceeded to do in cold blood. About 15 people were killed. Some fell under the bodies and escaped. A few minutes later the terrorists walked upstairs to the terrace. Unbeknownst to the terrorists, four of the men were still alive.
All this happened in the first hour of the start of the carnage.
There was an eyewitness to all of this and his son tells the horrible tale" "On Wednesday night, my father and his two friends arrived at the Indian restaurant on the first floor of the Oberoi Hotel for dinner at about 10pm. They had barely sat down when they heard gun shots in the lobby of the hotel. The terrorists, armed with AK-47s, grenades and plastic explosives, had entered the hotel and were executing everybody sitting in the ground floor restaurant. Realizing the situation, the staff of the restaurant my father was in asked them to quickly exit through the kitchen. As the guests tried to rush into the kitchen, one terrorist burst into the restaurant and began to shoot anyone that remained in the restaurant. At this point my father was in the kitchen and along with his two friends rushed to the fire exit. They had barely descended a few steps when they were trapped from both ends by terrorists. The terrorists then rounded up anyone alive (about 20 people) and made them climb the service staircase to the 18th floor. On reaching the 18th floor landing they made the people line up against a wall. One terrorist then positioned himself on the staircase going up from the landing and the other on the staircase going down from the landing. Then, in a scene right out of the Holocaust, they simultaneously opened fire on the people. My father was towards the center of the line with his two friends on either side. Out of reflex, or presence of mind, he ducked as soon as the firing began. One bullet grazed his neck, and he fell to the floor as his two friends and several other bodies piled on top of him. The terrorists then pumped another series of bullets into the heap of bodies to finish the job. This time a bullet hit my father in the back hip. Bent almost in double, crushed by the weight of the bodies above him, and suffocating in the torrent of blood rushing down on him from the various bodies my father held on for ten minutes while the terrorists left the area. When he finally had the courage to wiggle his arms he found that there were four other survivors in the room. They communicated to each other by touch as they were too afraid to make a sound. My father moved just enough to allow himself room to breathe and then lay still. The survivors passed over twelve hours lying still in the heap of bodies too afraid to move. They constantly heard gunfire and hand grenades going off in the other parts of the hotel. They feared that any noise would bring the terrorists back. After approximately twelve hours, the terrorists returned with a camera and flashlight and joked and laughed as they filmed what they thought was a pile of dead bodies. They then moved to the landing below where they set up explosives. On their departing, my father decided that it was too risky to remain where they were due to the explosives. Along with the other three survivors he climbed the rest of the stairwell, where they discovered a large HVAC plant room in which they decided to take shelter. They passed the rest of the siege hiding in this room trying to get the attention of the outside world by waving a makeshift flag out of the window. They drank sips of dirty water from the Air Conditioning unit to survive. Finally on Friday morning they were spotted by a commando rescue team that was storming the building and were evacuated to safety and taken to the hospital."
After the first hour of blood letting, events become a little blurred as there are no eyewitnesses that have come forward as yet. What did the terrorists do next? Where did they go? One theory has it that they had a suite on the 18 th floor as their headquarter from which they would emerge to shoot randomly and try to set fire to the various rooms in the hotel. Gunfire would be heard through out the night from different parts of the hotel. At this time there were no commandos in the hotel and it seemed that the terrorists had complete freedom of action within the hotel.
Thursday
Again there is shooting and a fire starts in the Trident lobby but this is soon contained.
The pace of attack seems to slow during the day but with occasional bursts of shooting. By evening, commandos had gained access to Oberoi and were now searching for the terrorists.
All the residents were told to remain indoors – this was more through word of mouth and not by any public announcements. By this time, the internal phone system was working so that you could call out and to other rooms in the hotel.
This cat and mouse game between the commandos and the terrorists continued through the night.
Friday.
The NSG commandos cut off the Trident from the Oberoi and so the evacuation of the Trident guests could start at about 9 am.
Apparently the two terrorists were finally killed in the Oberoi but the NSG is not sure if there were still other terrorists still in hiding or if there were more bombs and booby traps that still existed. It is only by 3"30 pm that the process is completed and all the guests finally evacuated both from Trident and Oberoi.
The total casualty figures for Trident and Oberoi – 10 staff , 22 guests and 2 terrorists.
But this still does not account for any bodies that still may lie behind doors or in stairwells. Actually 2 bodies were found in a stairwell.
Many questions still remain even as this pieces together all I know from various accounts till date. Where were the terrorists after the initial shooting spree? How many were there? Did they drag guests out of their rooms to kill them? Did they have a list of whom they were targeting or was it all random? How many more did they kill?
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