NEVER FORGET 26/11: Can't erase it from mind, says Cafe survivor Ram Nandan

Ram Nandan was at the takeaway counter, attending to two customers when he heard the shooting across the road, at Leopold café.

"I saw two men with backpacks on, shooting mercilessly. They shot left and right, reloaded and began shooting again."

Ram Nandan, 39, works at the Olympia Coffee House in Colaba. He recalls the day that he remembers so vividly. "I assumed the noise was firecrackers. There was a cricket match between India and England, where India had won. When the noise grew louder and I saw people injured and covered in blood, I suspected it to be a gang war. People outside ran helter-skelter. A bullet ricocheted past the paan-wala who sits outside our coffee house. He was lucky not to get hurt and ran. The other waiters closed down the shutters just in time and we could hear the bullets hitting it."

He continues, saying, "The people inside the café, about a hundred customers and thirty staff personal, hid under the tables or crouched at the corners until the chaos on the other side of the shutter did not end. All of us were terrified. About one and a half hour later, the police came and it was then we came to know the severity of the shootings: it was a terrorist attack."

He also mentions how he had seen those who were killed outside Leopold Cafe, just a few feet away from him. "I still remember so many bodies lying on the road afterwards. The event is still crystal clear in my head and I can never forget it", he said.