They were inside the Taj Mahal Palace hotel in Mumbai when terrorists struck on the night of November 26, 2008. Exactly seven years later, today, two survivors of the siege that left 31 people dead at the hotel recall not just how lucky they were but the lessons they will never forget.
Two posts today on Humans of Bombay -- a page on the lines of Brandon Stanton's Humans of New York, which features human stories with every picture - that have been shared by hundreds, speak of that night. One is from a guest and the other from a chef at the hotel that night. Neither post names the survivors.
The only one to survive from a group of seven chefs who were killed while helping guests through an exit, the chef recalls how all seven of them knew all the exits but decided not leave and help guests.
"We had successfully helped a few guests when I saw the left profile of a terrorist in a red cap, who began shooting," he says in the post.
When the shooting ended, all his colleagues were dead.
For him, 26/11 is not just a day he escaped death and many around him didn't. "I won't look back on that day as just a terrorist attack, but a day when many brave individuals looked death in the eye to help others," he says.
“I was a chef in the Taj banquet kitchen when the gunshots started that night. Initially the news was that it was an...
Posted by Humans of Bombay on Wednesday, 25 November 2015
The other survivor featured on the page, a guest on the sixth floor, heard gun shots and thought people were bursting crackers over a cricket match India had won.
After a part of the hotel was set on fire, he decided to risk it and walk out rather than stay back and get charred.
"When I walked out of there alive, it put a lot of things in perspective for me," he says. "No matter what you do, you cannot buy yourself a life. In there, it was only about all of humanity fighting against the inhuman," he says in the post.
“I was in my Taj hotel room that night, when I thought people were bursting crackers to celebrate India winning a...
Posted by Humans of Bombay on Thursday, 26 November 2015