The deadly terror attacks in Mumbai on November 26, 2008, forced a family that had lived in Nariman Point for four generations to pack up and move to Navi Mumbai in search of peace.

A decade on, Sanjay Kathar goes back to the area now and then, and revisits the haunts he and his friends would frequent. One of those spots was affected by the attack, and Kathar, who was 20 years then, remembers the “dark night” he was injured by a grenade and saw his classmate get killed by a bullet.

Now a real estate consultant, Kathar remembers growing up in the area, visiting the bakery opposite his house and staying out late with friends around the Shiv Sena office. He vividly remembers how the attacks unfolded.

“I was watching India win a test match against England, when the lights in our apartment suddenly went off,” Kathar says. His family and their neighbours first thought a ‘gang war’ had broken out. “But, that seemed unlikely as the area had never seen any such incident before,” Kathar said.

To find out what was going on, Kathar stepped out and met his friends near the Shiv Sena office as usual. When they heard terrorists had attacked Mumbai, Kathar called his two brothers and asked them to rush home. He started making his way back too, when he was thrown off by a grenade attack at the Nariman House. A few metres away, he saw his classmate get shot dead.

Kathar was lucky to survive, with 25 stitches around his abdomen.

“The story seems right out of a film, but for me it is real life. It was my destiny that I was there. If not me, it would have been someone else. The fact that I am alive today is more than enough,” Kathar says, but points out how, like any other Mumbaiite, he too had to move forward.

“All those who continue to live around Nariman House function the same way they did 10 years ago,” Kathar said. “Those who lost their loved ones moved out; others have moved on.”

First Published: Nov 18, 2018 23:38 IST