“It took us over three days to kill four terrorists because of the layout of the hotel and the number of people who were holed up inside,” said the 27-year-old from Haryana. “But we are trained to stay without food and sleep for a week and that helped us ever since we entered the hotel on Thursday morning,” he said.

On the high death toll inside the hotel, the commando said the terrorists would booby trap victims’ bodies with grenades.

The commando spoke nonchalantly on how his team went for the kill. “The terrorists seemed very familiar with the place. We finally trapped them on the first and ground floors. All this while, they kept throwing grenades at us. But we did a ‘control explosion’, which led to a fire in two restaurants. Two of the terrorists were charred to death and one collapsed of asphyxiation and we shot him dead,” he said.

Did he ever fear for his life—wish he weren’t there? “Hum toh sirf yehi kaam kartein hai, dar nahin lagta (This is our job, we are not scared),” he smiled. He then packed up and boarded the BEST bus that was waiting to take him to the airport, from where he would leave for Delhi.

Another commando—who was involved in the Nariman House operation and who was waiting for his colleagues at the Taj hotel to finish theirs—talked about his experience. “It was a critical operation as the building was surrounded by other residential buildings. There was no question of entering through the gate as the terrorists kept lobbing grenades at us. So we decided to launch an aerial attack,” he said.

The 25-year-old commando hailing from Rajasthan had abseiled down from the NSG chopper onto the rooftop of Nariman House. “When we landed on the rooftop, we thought the operation would be over in a few hours. But when they opened fire and started throwing grenades at us, we knew we were in for a long haul.

The hostages, he said, had been shot from close range. “Their hands were tied behind their backs and from their bodies, it appeared they hadn’t been shot at the same time.”

The terrorist were well trained, the commando said, and never stayed together. “They were thorough professionals in that they never attacked first, which meant that they didn’t ever disclose their location. The two terrorists were not on the same floor. When the light began fading out on Friday, our commanding officer (CO) decided to blow up the entire third floor, which finally led to their death.

Is he relieved it’s over? “Yeh saab toh humareliye kuch naya nahin hai.” Just another day at work?