‘The match saved my life’

For 25-year-old Suchita Mathur a spur-of-the-moment  decision to watch the India vs England match helped save her life.

“I was supposed to have dinner with a client from Delhi at Taj Mahal Hotel’s dining hall on Wednesday,” said Mathur, a relationship manager with ICICI Bank.

“However, my client, who was staying in one of the rooms on the ninth floor, said that he wanted to watch the match and thus we decided to have dinner in his room,” she added.

Recounting the incident, Mathur said: I reached Taj at 7 pm and directly headed for my client’s room. Around 10 pm, I decided to go home, but when I entered the hotel lobby there were sounds of shots being fired. I initially thought they were fireworks.

“Somebody hiding behind a pillar told me about the terrorists and the shootout in the dining hall. People were running helter-skelter. Suddenly, we were all bundled up in an elevator and I again went to the ninth floor to my client’s room.

“The hotel staff had asked us to lock our doors since the terrorist were trying to capture people as hostages. We were also asked not to stand near the windows.”

Like other hostages, Mathur was surviving on Pringle’s potato chips and nuts that were available in the mini-bar. “We had to drink tap-water from the bathroom,” she said.

“On Thursday, around 2 pm, someone knocked on our door and said that they were commandos. We took a chance since we knew there were rescue operations in full-swing,” she added.

Mathur said that they were taken out from the  fire-escape route. “We were a group of 10, including a few members of the Qatari royal family. On our way down we saw pools of blood and viscera from the bodies. It was horrifying.”

Mathur is now headed to Jaipur. “I think skipping dinner in the dining hall was one of the wisest decisions I ever made,” she claimed.