As Vaibhava Rele, the Pune-based professional who does line production for films and documentaries, wound up the meeting with her crew at the Sea Lounge of the Taj Hotel in Mumbai on Wednesday around 10 pm, she had little idea that the night ahead would turn out to be the most harrowing one of her life.

“I was sitting there with my crew when at 10.15 pm there was the sound of gunfire. There was a wedding on in the ballroom opposite so initially no one reacted very sharply. It didn’t even sound too dangerous and many thought it was part of the raucous celebrations,” recounts Rele, adding that there were about 25 people in all on the first-floor lounge at that time.

“Just then a group of five to six people barged in and shouted that there were people outside with guns. In a flash the hotel staff shut the door to the lounge and switched off all the lights. In minutes there were gunshot sounds all over and bullets whizzed through the door. We had taken refuge behind pillars and were then asked to lie down flat. We were petrified — it would have been so simple for them to just shoot the lock and come in but astonishingly they didn’t do that and in a few minutes the firing ceased,” she said.

“About 15 minutes later there was this huge blast. I guess it was the first of the many hand grenades. After that it was a like a Diwali party — they were throwing hand grenades left, right and center. We could hear glass shattering and there was a loud wail of a woman who sounded like a foreigner. Even in our room it were the foreigners who were panicking the most and demanding to know where the cops and the army was,” Rele recounted.

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