When Mumbai was attacked on November 26, 2008, the city witnessed 60 hours of bloodshed that left 166 dead and hundreds injured. For most, the horror unfolded through flickering television screens. But one senior State Bank of India employee experienced the ordeal first hand – not as a bystander, but as someone who was unknowingly walking the same paths taken by the terrorists minutes earlier.
Sixteen years later, he recounts his experience, which now comes back vividly after watching Dhurandhar, Aditya Dhar’s latest cinematic account of the attacks. What follows is his story—a story that lies at the intersection of chance, proximity, and the frightening fragility of everyday routine.
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Q: You were in the vicinity of the 26/11 attacks. Although you didn’t directly cross paths with the terrorists, you were close to several affected areas. Could you describe where you were and what you experienced at that particular moment?
At that time I was working in my office in one of the departments of State Bank of India and I was handling a big recruitment project. Most of my colleagues have already left. Suddenly I received several phone calls, including one from my boss asking me if I was still in the office. When I said yes, he told me to close everything immediately and rush home. I asked why, but he only said that there was “some problem” and that I would figure it out later.
I didn’t take it too seriously at first and continued to complete my work. Around 7:45pm I started unwinding because there were a lot of papers spread out on my workstation and I couldn’t just leave them unsecured. As I walked out of my office, I received another call, this time from my CEO. He asked where I was and insisted I leave immediately. He even offered to send his driver to drop me off at Churchgate station. I told him not to send a driver with the vehicle as I felt I could drive myself. Outside, I felt that something serious had happened. Still, I needed to lock everything down properly because the repeated calls made me wonder what if something happened and I might not get to the office for the next two days.
I finally left the office around 8:30pm. The roads outside were deserted. Someone mentioned that “the dog hit” which didn’t make sense to me. There were no taxis so I walked to Churchgate – about five minutes. The station was practically empty, which is extremely unusual for that time. I boarded the train and as we passed Charni Road the streets looked ghostly, completely empty. Some people said there was a “gang war type incident” near CST.
When I reached Santacruz, I took my car and drove home. At my building, everyone was standing outside waiting for me. Inside my apartment, my wife’s face was full of panic; she almost cried and my children were also distressed.
Q: When you got home that night and finally realized what was going on, what was the first thought that came to your mind?
A: Later I realized that barely half an hour – maybe even less – before I crossed that stretch, Kasab and his companion had traveled the same route. The thought hit me like a shockwave: if their AK rifles had been raised just a moment earlier, gunfire could have erupted right on that crossing, right across from the State Bank building where I worked.
Not long after, I learned that several of our top officials were trapped in the Trident Hotel, forced to literally jump over the wall in a desperate attempt to escape the gunmen and get to safety.
And then came the news that really shook me – our colleague was shot dead in the Leopold Café. He simply went out after work to meet an old friend, unaware that he was walking straight into one of the city’s darkest nights.
Q: What was your reaction after watching Dhurandhar? Did it remind you of those days?
A: Yes, it brought everything back flooding back—every image I watched on TV during those terrifying two or three days I was locked in my house. My office was dangerously close to the epicenter of the carnage: CST, Leopold Café and St Xavier’s on one side, and Hotel Trident on the other, both minutes away. I vividly remember three police officers being shot dead near St Xavier’s, after which terrorists seized their police vehicle.
What shook me later was to discover that the jeep had a flat tire almost in front of my office building. They just let it go and switched to the now infamous white Skoda, which then sped down the road I used every day. It’s chilling to imagine how close we all escaped.
And the most disturbing detail of all – Badhwar Park, the place where the terrorists first landed on Indian soil that evening, was also right opposite my office. Everything—the arrival, the escape, the movement of terror—had unfolded unsettlingly close, almost as if the entire trajectory of the attack had been drawn in a circle around where I was working.
Q: Would you say that the 11/26 Aditya Dhar screening made you revisit that trauma?
A: Yes, absolutely. He depicted many things very openly. Even in his depiction of demonetisation, he showed aspects – such as the involvement of the minister’s son – that no one had brought up so directly before.
More about Dhurandhar
Aditya Dhar’s Dhurandhar released on 5 December. Ever since the trailer of the movie was dropped, the movie has been nothing short of a blast. The film features a stacked star cast led by Ranveer Singh. Other actors include Akshaye Khanna, Arjun Rampal, Sanjay Dutt, Sara Arjun, Rakesh Bedi, Danish Pandor, Saumya Tandon and others.
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Dhurandhar is an explosive espionage action thriller that frames the covert response to India’s most devastating terrorist attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking in 1999 and the Parliament attack in 2001. Inspired by real-life intelligence operations and loosely based on Pakistan’s ‘Lyari Task Force’, the film’s central plot follows Ajay Sanyal (R. Madhavan), an intelligence chief who devises a mission with the aim of infiltrating and dismantling a powerful terrorist network in Pakistan.
For this high-stakes operation, Sanyal recruits Jaskirat Singh Rangi (Ranveer Singh), a young man trained and sent undercover into the dangerous underworld of Karachi as ‘Hamza Ali Mazari’.
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The cast also features Akshaye Khanna as formidable gangster Rehman Dakait, Sanjay Dutt as SP Chaudhary Aslam and Arjun Rampal as ISI Major Iqbal. While the primary plot focuses on infiltrating the underworld, the film strategically introduces characters and hints at the masterminds behind the major attacks, with one actor even briefly portraying Ajmal Kasab, implicitly linking the narrative to the machinery behind the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and other major events.
