Buffeted by visions of death that would never leave him, a 24-year-old bartender at the iconic Taj Mahal hotel quit his job despite having escaped unscathed.

"The thought of getting killed would never go away. I always felt death lurking in the shadows. I escaped death at the hands of the terrorists, but the constant thought of getting killed was driving me to death," says Lalit Sawant.

Barely a few days after the attacks, Sawant quit the job.

"My parents feared for me when I was there at the Taj during the siege. They called me on mobile often to enquire about me and I told them I'm safe. But deep inside I was crying to be rescued," said a visibly shaken Sawant.

The ex-Taj employee was handling the liquor department in the Banquet Hall for three-and-half years before the backpacking terror peddlers let loose an orgy of violence that scarred his mind.

Sawant is now a supervisor at an Event Management company in suburban Bandra.

"There were those silent tears of joy in their eyes when they saw me alive. The first my family told me was to quit the job and they would not take no for an answer as they did not want to lose me," Sawant said.

The man would wake up in cold sweat almost every night for over two months, shaken out of slumber by nightmarish images of the ghastly terror attacks that unfolded right in front of his eyes.

"I took a break for two months. I would lock myself up in a room for days on end, shutting the door to the world outside. Images of bullet-riddled bodies, blood and shattered glass ran before my eyes like a movie," said Sawant.

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