Then the security guys told us, we will evacuate you through the kitchen of the Golden Dragon, so we all walked out, through the kitchen and into the Harbour Bar. At the very entrance, someone was lying shot dead. We went past the body, up the spiral staircase to Wasabi, and by now we were about 200 people inside Wasabi. Then we went through the main kitchen area of the Taj, to the Chambers kitchen, and from there, out into the Chambers. So now we were directly above the lobby. The curtains were drawn, they gave us water, cookies, sandwiches, we sat and waited. One Italian lady, a diplomat, who had come to the Taj for a sauna, said she saw bodies all around the pool. Someone told us about a guy who had been eating at the Shamiana; he heard all the gunshots and went out to the lobby to see, and next thing, he had six bullets in his back. There were lots of foreigners in our group, many Indians, too, but luckily no children. But I did meet a couple in the Chambers, their clothes soaked with blood, and the man said, "I just lost my son."
After three hours of being in the Chambers, we were told to form a single file; we were going to try and leave the hotel through the Chambers kitchen. About half our group, 80-100 people, had exited and as they were walking down, there were gunshots, a German woman was screaming hysterically, "They are shooting!" I think it was a staff member who got shot right in front of her eyes, so the rest of us rushed back, lay behind chairs and tables, and put off the lights. Now there were only four of us from our original group left, two Indians and two foreigners.
The kitchen staff locked themselves into one of the conference rooms. Half an hour later, we heard shooting in the corridor of the Chambers, but no staff member was there with us now, the lights were off, the Chambers door to the front porch was locked with a chain, so there was no exit. We were absolutely shitting bricks for an hour or two. The TV had been made dead, phones were dead, maybe the police shut this all down, maybe it was the terrorists. The battery of my cellphone was running low. And who would we call and do anyway? We heard that there were people who made calls on their cell to other people elsewhere in the hotel, and the phone was answered by a terrorist who said, "Don’t call here again or we’ll kill these people."
An hour or two later, there was another bout of shooting, then a crash, as if bulbs were being broken. There was a large number of bullet sounds, like an AK-47 alternating with a small gun, then sounds of grenades, vibrations. It was all in the corridor right outside, with nothing but glass doors lying in between. Then finally it was daytime, we saw three sharpshooters on the terrace of the Chambers. Suddenly there was heavy shooting; it was complete mayhem. There were grenades, explosions, glass, plaster, all this in bright daylight, at 7.15 or so in the morning. Then some army guy called out, "Hands up!" and we were led out of where we had been trapped.
Along the floor, there were hundreds of bullets, some black, some brown; there was blood on the floor, blood on the walls, floors, shattered glass.... We walked down the stairs and came across fresh wet blood on the floor, a smear of a body being dragged through and kept out of our sight. Our eyes burned from the gunpowder in the air, there had been a complete shootout here. We were taken out straight through the lobby. I still haven’t slept, I can still hear all the gunshots and all those sounds in my head. It’s unreal and unbelievable...everything I’ve seen and been through.
