26/11 Mumbai Terror Attack: I Was There

This is a narrative account of a person who was present around the scene of 26/11 Mumbai terror attack and saw its effects firsthand. While he was recounting the entire story, it brought tears to my eyes to think of how much people lost that night. It's unbelievable to think of how anyone can resort to such mindless violence....

"I came back after consulting to meet my friend waiting for me at the hostel. It was around 9:45 p.m. I was extremely hungry, and my friend wanted to go to a restaurant called Bade miya, which is an open air roadside restaurant near Taj. I (thankfully) wanted to eat at a proper restaurant so instead we went to Olympia, the restaurant bang opposite Leopold cafe. While we were having dinner, we heard the sound of a large cracker and dismissed it as unseasonal cracker bursting (I was trying to recall if there was an Indian cricket match going on which we might've won). This sound was followed by gun firing, which we again dismissed as gang war (something Mumbai isn't privy to). However, as the firing neared our hotel, the manager (thankfully) put down the shutter and there were three rounds of firing on our shutter. I was irritated because we were being shooed away without dessert from the back door and everyone left grumbling, cursing various Mumbai gangs. We then saw that there were many bodies being transported in heaps in taxis, all of which were being directed to St. George hospital.

We rushed to our college, St. George Dental College, and initially we were being denied entry, but when we told them we were doctors, they let us in. A policemen heard us and told us to go to the hospital immediately, for they needed doctors there. We protested saying that we were only implantologists, but when we saw the blood stained floor, we realized that the place could use any kind of help. We realized that something major must have happened for such heavy casualties, so we put on our gloves and started helping out, but didn't know where to start. I saw some of my juniors from the hostel helping out a few patients, by giving them water or trying to wrap them in gauze in failed attempts to stop the bleeding. However, when the doctors there told us that there were some patients that would need to be operated on immediately, and so needed to be nil by mouth for the procedure, we could not even give some of the bleeding people water, despite their repeated requests.

What I saw that night at the hospital has been burned in my memory forever. I saw a little girl who had a bullet in one of her eyes. I saw woman on a stretcher who had a loosened upper arm while her lower right leg was completely detached and lying next to her left arm. She was in such a state of shock that she had not even realized that she had lost one of her legs. I saw a few men carrying bodies of people, some alive and some dead, on hand carts and wheeling them into the hospital, dumping them at the entrance and then running back again to get more people. There were hardly enough doctors to differentiate and pronounce the dead ones from the barely alive ones. I myself carted so many untagged dead bodies several times to the morgue. I saw an old man standing with a young boy (most probably his grandson) holding a bottle of saline that was attached to the boy's arm. He stopped me thrice to request me to see the boy and treat him. The first time I checked for the boy's radial pulse and didn't find any. Then I checked for his carotid pulse and didn't find any. But when I looked up at the old mans face, which had a slight glimmer of hope, I just didn't have the heart to tell him that his grandson was long dead. I simply told him that I would need to check with a senior before treating the boy and turned away embarrassed and upset. All of us were kept quite busy injecting pain killers.

Then a foreigner couple came, a man that was ceaselessly bleeding accompanied by his wife. I took out rolls and rolls of gauze and kept wrapping his legs with it but the blood simply kept spurting out by the gallon. I couldn't understand why the bleeding wouldn't stop, and he was so caked in blood, that I couldn't identify the spot from where the bleeding was occurring. Then, I saw a small hole on the side of his stomach. I asked him where he was coming from. He was in a state of shock, so couldn't answer so his wife answered that they were at V.T. station (the site of the blast). That's when I realized that there must be splinter in his body that had ruptured a major artery. I put in two of my fingers and still could not retrieve it. Then I used a tweezer and managed to get out a two inch thick shard piece. The man didn't react at all, nor did he feel any pain when I put the tweezer halfway through his abdomen, that is how much of a shock he was in.

We were there for a while at the hospital doing whatever we could, after which we came to know that the terrorists had arrived at Cama hospital. That meant that the terrorists could easily come here as well. Being the rector of the hostel, it was my responsibility to see to it that no harm comes upon my students. So I rounded up my students and asked them to go to their hostel rooms. I went with them to ensure that they reached safely. The attendants of St. George hospital came running to tell us that the sudden dearth in manpower had left them handicapped. I then had to again slowly send a few students to help out at the hospital. We saw a few panic stricken people standing with their luggage below the hostel. A few of them had large bags with them. Knowing by now that the terrorists had carried their bombs and ammunition in haversacks, and with mistrust rampant in the air, we couldn't afford to let these people stand right below our hostel. However, after their relentless pleading and seeing their hapless panic stricken expressions, we gave shelter to a few of them at our hostel (it was completely on my responsibility that they were staying back, yet another reason for me to not be able to sleep that night).

It was only the next day that I saw the news and the entire severity of the effects of 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks. The words kept flashing on every channel. The same scene where I was present just a few hours ago. When I got back from consulting, I came by train and alighted at the very same station where the blasts took place. At that time, (I'm assuming), I was at the train station, and the terrorists were somewhere around me when I reached V.T. I only got lucky by a matter of minutes.

Three days later, after relentless calls from my wife and my family I decided to take a train to Pune. I went to the station which was still unusually empty. And whoever was present was continuously eying each others bags and staring at the pillars and columns (lest they would need to hide and duck if anything happened. Even I had located my column). When my junior saw that I was going, he came running with two friends, who didn't have any luggage, nor for that matter money for the train ticket. But they were so desperate to go home, because nothing seemed more important than going home to family and seeing them alive and well, at that point of time.

One year later, news channels are still trying to show the gruesome scenes that have scarred people for life. There was even a news channel that wanted to do an interview called 'Brave Doctors' for all those people who were there and who had helped at the hospital that night. I turned it down when I realized that one of the people that had died that night, Maj Sandeep Unnikrishnan was my age. That's when I realized that the only people worth interviewing and lauding, are the ones that are already dead. It's appalling to think that a hand full of goons can enter a country, and take a good part of a metro hostage and terrorize an entire nation. At one end of the spectrum, there are people in the army who are in their 20s, an age when you feel you are immortal, dying for our country, and at the other end of the spectrum, we have youth, that are also in their 20s, that are too lazy to get up in the morning and go and vote on a national holiday. The 26/11 Mumbai terror attack was a much-needed wake up call, and this is the right time to sit back and introspect to see where we've gone wrong. Perhaps, only then, will our country truly become a developed nation. "Jai Hind!"