A photographer recounts the terror of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks

On a mildly nippy night in November, in the midst of a meeting with photographer Dhaval Dhairyawan's sister, I received a text message informing me of a gang-war that had broken out in Mumbai's Colaba area. We were seated in a coffee shop in Bandra and I requested the manager to switch to a news channel. Much to everyone's discomfort, I caught a glimpse of my guru Srinivas walking around, taking pictures of people helping a blood soaked man outside Leopold Cafe. When I called Raju Shinde of Mumbai Mirror he said, "sab chod, VT aaja!".

So I zipped through the streets on my Avenger and took the longer, yet faster route via JJ flyover that would drop me right outside VT. Just as I reached down the slope, I was blocked by a posse of cops, so I took the route behind Xavier’s college, past the back of esplanade court, between JJ School of Arts and Times Of India (TOI), into a lane that leads to a bridge that drops you into VT station. I met KK Choudhary, once a portrait photographer at Gateway - the Rs 10 a print kind, whose fortunes turned when he survived the horrific Gateway blasts in 2003. He had some horrific images of the blasts which were bought by newspapers and agencies and circulated worldwide. KK was absorbed by Afternoon Despatch and Courier and he later joined TOI and has been there since close to a decade now. 

KK came towards me while I was trying to park my bike after arming myself with a telephoto lens and a flash, whose batteries, for a change, were fully charged. Before we knew it, a flash went off on the third or fourth floor of the side of the TOI building. Almost immediately, in the darkness from the bridge, I heard the first of many bullet sounds of the night. We ran, sprinkled across the tiny lane like a pack of ants on whom a voluptuous drop of water may have been dropped. As I ran, having left my helmet and bike with the key in ignition, a bullet whizzed past my right and went into a rotting Ambassador parked in the Azad Maidan Police station, where I spent the next few minutes with KK and other cops. At the police station, they had no jackets and only some old guns and a few bullets. In one room, a cop and a Hindustan Times reporter were watching the news. Then a senior cop lost his patience, picked up a small revolver and a constable armed with an ancient rifle, stepped outside. Watching them move, the reporter, KK, and I left the police station to cross the road to Press Club where we were joined by Kamlesh Pednekar of dna and Bipin Kokate of Mid Day. Together, we walked gingerly with our hands raised like we were being arrested, following the bullet sounds which were now emanating from inside Cama hospital.

We reached the street adjoining Metro Cinema. Something was happening, but I was too unsettled by the pace of the night to notice Anti-Terrorist Squad chief Hemant Karkare and others padding themselves up to counter the crazed gunmen. None of us had any idea of what was truly going on. We heard of something similar happening at the Oberoi, so off we went. I had no way to reach my bike so I piggybacked with Mukesh Trivedi, then with dna. Oberoi was like a fortress. Police vans choked Nariman Point. The sound of bullets were being heard from all sides. We decided to go to VT, but instead ended up back at Metro, someone in our coterie must have heard something.

We reached Metro and plonked ourselves on the road divider. The roar of bullets grew louder, reporters raised their voices on their phones, desperate to make themselves heard to their bosses and hungry audiences. I bent down to answer a phone call. From the corner of my left eye, I saw a police car headed our way, the nose of a gun popped out and the plainclothes policeman on my right received 3 bullets near his abdomen and two people away on my left, a cameraman was left with a bloody left hand. The car belonged to an ambush team led by Karkare, but it seemed odd that a police van would fire at us. 

While we hurriedly took some pictures of the chaos, I begged the others to start their bikes and follow the van. The madness had slowed our responses and Mukesh and I finally made our way searching for the van. On the way, from another bike, someone yelled about a bomb explosion near the airport. This didn't seem like a gang-war anymore.

Phone communication was beginning to crack too. All of us had informed our homes that it might be a longish night. How long? They asked.  

Near Mantralaya, we saw that the hijacked police van had been abandoned and had a flat tyre. A few kilometers ahead, near Girgaum Chowpatty, a beach that is witness to lord Ganpati's departure every year, surrounded by barricades and skid marks, lay a Skoda car. The gunmen had bullied a man at gunpoint to let go of his car. They were intercepted by the policemen, and one of the gunmen was captured alive by an unarmed policeman named Tukaram Ombale. 

I made my way to the Taj with Manoj Patil, my former colleague from HT. We loitered near the back exit of the Taj. Frail policemen with their rusted guns, watched silently for a target, praying they wouldn't turn into one. I got hungry, so I picked up a few packets of biscuits from an abandoned paan shop and tucked away a Rs 100 note under the cushion of the owner's vacant chair. We shared the biscuits with the cops and the BSF unit that had just come in. Meanwhile, security guards of the Taj smuggled themselves in from the back gate and a few minutes later, evacuated over 150 guests who were there for a corporate event.

Crouched near hotel Diplomat, a photographer told me two things - that TOI had exclusive images of two of the gunmen on their website. None of our phones were smart enough to access any websites back then. Vasant Prabhu, a former darkroom assistant and now the photo editor at Indian Express, had made his way into the Taj with the first batch of policemen. Prabhu, in his 50s, could pass off for a government employee to most and having worked with him, I am minutely aware of his bravery at such times. 

Much like a big budget Hollywood action thriller, the scenes behind the Taj were surreal. Guests flashing their phone lights behind locked windows, choking under the smoke of grenade explosions, waiting to be rescued. Elderly waiters, carried in the arms of the hotel's younger security guards. Firemen with their ladders, extinguishing the fires and evacuating guests. A policeman shot in the back of his head was yelling 'Har Har Mahadev', tumbling away off balance and headed in my direction when his colleagues seized his gun and took him to a hospital in an ambulance parked nearby. For a moment, I was scared he would go on a shooting spree and that it would just end up being the last photo I ever took.

I asked a woman standing nearby for a sip of water from the bottle she had in her hands. I had no idea who she was, but she was as much out of breath as I was and I took her to be a journalist too. But she got angry, threw the water on my face and called me an asshole. I figured she was one of the people who might have been rescued a few minutes ago. I turned around to wipe my face and saw a man looking towards the firemen, standing on an Atlas cycle, the ones that milkmen use. Out on bail and living close by, it was none other than Duncan Grant, one of the accused in the Anchorage case.

We were getting tired now, all of us. Every working news photographer was out on the road, hopping between VT, Nariman House, The Taj and Trident. Mostly on foot or on their bikes. Dawn brought in the first glimpse of the Taj dome, engulfed in flames. Pigeons who sat on the dome every morning to bask in the morning light flew past it several times, confused and helpless, much like the policemen watching from behind dumpsters. The Gateway of India stood empty like an abandoned parking slot, but one corner of it was forcefully occupied by OB vans. Dawn opened our eyes to an image by Santosh Bane - Abu Ismail and Amir Ajmal Kasab, photographed on the tip of their toes, like athletes in the middle of a run, passing through the unmanned metal detectors at VT station. Dawn also brought to light the heroics of Raju Shinde, Satish Malvade, and Saby, (Sebastian D'souza) all Mumbai Mirror photographers. 

As the day progressed, photographers were coming in from all parts of the country to offer back up to their drained colleagues and to get their dose of the adrenalin too. The terror strike attracted a sizable contingent of the foreign press too. Compared to us, the wire chaps were all armed to their teeth with not just equipment, but bullet proof jackets and helmets. It took a while to swallow the irony that most of us had no such protection and barely functional, minimal camera gear. Television anchors though, seemed hell bent on having a stroke during their Live updates. Big names like Sardesai and Dutt were probably the most appalling in the way they went about seeking subjects to be interviewed. Of all their questions, "Aapko kaisa lag raha hai", or its English equivalent seemed to be the most insipid question one could ask. I got pulled by a crew to say something and refused. I had not even had the time to process the events of the night and am sure neither of the survivors were able to fully comprehend what they had just escaped. At this stage, the 24-hour beast was hard pressed to get hold of anyone saying anything as long as they could boast about getting it first. 

Terror tourism, is the best way one can describe the rest of the day. Politician after politician, with their posse of sycophants and security guards, disturbing a fragile situation. It went on till late in the night, when finally, the people's patience ran out and they chased away a prominent MLA of the NCP. 

By night, I was joined by two of my colleagues. Our editor Sandipan Deb had decided to put together our first dummy issue. The cover story was to be a package of stories and photographs of what was now being termed as 26/11. The magazine didn't have a name yet. We were still tossing between 'Talk' and 'Open'. Our bureau chief in Mumbai, Manu Joseph, allowed me to crash at his place for the night, just two lanes away from Nariman House. 

Just like his newborn daughter Kavya, I woke up early morning to the sound of explosions. The rattling sound of bullets, sounded like a riff of an unforgettable song by American thrash metal band Megadeth. 'Holy Wars', the opening track of their seminal album Rust In Peace, whose industrial riffs and mid-eastern solos, crafted on their screeching Jackson guitars by Marty Friedman and frontman Dave Mustaine is about the Northern Ireland Conflict. The video however, filmed during the Gulf War in 1990, depicts news footage of various armed conflicts, mainly from the Middle East. Mustaine's words from the second stanza stayed with me for the next few days - Fools Like Me, Who Cross The Sea, And Come To Foreign Lands. Ask the Sheep, For Their Beliefs, Do You Kill On God's Command?

That evening, with the NSG having taken charge earlier in the day, my sisters and father paid me a visit. I was in the same clothes as last night, like most of my fraternity, and being the only photographer for the as yet unnamed magazine, I couldn't leave the front. They gave me my laptop, a fresh pair of clothes, and most importantly, Bausch and Lomb's lens solution for my fully dried eye-lenses. 

There wasn't much to shoot or do during the rest of the night. Two of my photographer colleagues had joined me from Delhi. We were constantly being told to stop using our flash, but every few minutes a new photographer would come by, break the rule, and get shushed by the cops and us. The NSG wanted to tire the men holed inside Nariman House completely before taking over. Atleast that's what it seemed like. Waiting for something to happen, I walked around, looking at the deserted tungsten drenched streets. Near Colaba market, I met Satish Bhate, an HT photographer. We were both rather exhausted and sat on the pavement, resting our backs on the closed shutter of a jewellery shop. We only realised we had fallen asleep when a truck full of BSF jawans rolled by, followed, of course, by the TV crews. 

Hunger came knocking again. I noticed that in the race to not be left behind, laid out on the bonnet of the car of a TV crew, sat unopened boxes of food. Shamelessly, I stole a box of yoghurt, pulao, some greasy gravy and two paper plates. 

The next day seemed like things were coming to a close. Commandos were air-dropped into Nariman house. My body had given up from last night's vigil and I had gone off for a nap to Mr Joseph's place and missed the shots, but one of my colleagues was present. In the midst of all the chaos, I remembered that I had photographed Rabbi Gavriel and his wife in early 2004 for a listings magazine when the two had newly arrived in Bombay and were staying at a hotel in Colaba. It was one of my first batch of assignments, though sadly, I never did get paid for it since the magazine shut shop soon. 

While non-journalists may find this morbid, I was now looking to photograph or interview the relatives of someone who had fallen to the bullets of the loony gunmen. It's harsh and heartless, but it is one of those angles to a story that can't be avoided. It's truly an act of insensitivity on many levels, but we do it only in the hope that it evokes some amount of sensitivity in the reader. And many a time, it does. Positive things have happened for the relatives of the deceased. Strangers have come forward to help, moved by our images - which also happens to be one of the major reasons why a lot of us take up this profession.

I came to know of Thomas Varghese through one of his relatives who happened to be a journalist. Moments after he realized the hotel was under attack, Varghese, a senior manager at Wasabi, the Japanese themed restaurant of the Taj swung into action to provide safety to his guests. After having crouched in the dark for hours, using the absence of light to their advantage, aided by the hotel's security guards, policemen and the NSG commandos, Varghese and his colleagues managed to evacuate all the guests through a service exit. Varghese however, fell to the bullets and was unable to save himself.

I reached the church an hour before the service for him and removed my camera from its bag only a few moments before it began. Seven helpless pairs of hands rested on the railing of the spiral staircase of the church, watching, as relatives brought his body for final prayers. Dressed in white, his wife consoled his mother before the brave man was laid to rest, almost 12 hours after a relieved NSG commando finally stepped out of Nariman House, waving his gun in the air. 

Ritesh Uttamchandani is a photographer with Open Magazine. 

This article first appeared in the Galli Magazine website

​Also Read: Remembering 26/11: Pictures of the night that shook the city of dreams