Photo courtesy of Emily Lodish

As my friends and I were peeling out of Colaba in a taxi that smelled like feet, the terrorists were very likely on their way in. We would later learn it was a near perfect miss.

At the time, though, we were none the wiser. It was Nov. 26, 2008, and my two friends and I had been traveling in India for some weeks already. We were finishing up our stay in Mumbai, which had only lasted a few days since time was short and money going the way of the famed Indian head wobble: Don’t know what happened to it. Can’t possibly begin to discuss. Sure. Actually, nevermind.

We were headed south to the beaches of Goa come morning, but had plans that night to attend a film premiere in the north of the city. A half hour into the film, which was a spoof about six young Indians competing to shake George Bush’s hand, the screen went black and the lights switched on. A producer stood up and announced that there had been a bombing in Colaba, the main tourist hub where we were staying.

He was referring to what we now know as the Mumbai 2008 attacks, for which Ajmal Kasab, the last living gunman among 10, was sentenced to death by hanging last week. Pakistani militants, who came ashore in a rubber boat, hit several city landmarks, including the fancy Taj Hotel, which was directly across the street from our dumpy hotel, and Leopold’s Café where we had eaten breakfast that morning.

But we didn’t know any of that then. All we knew was that the producer said, “Make sure your people are safe,” and we looked at one another. Going back to our hotel that night was out of the question. Our room looked out onto the back alley of the Taj, where they kept the dumpsters and where the terrorists had snuck in unnoticed.

I won’t lie and say part of me didn’t want to be there. I’m not proud of that part, but it was there. I wondered what I would see and hear and feel. From where we sat in the velvety theater chairs, I had the feeling that I was missing the show.

That indulgence quickly gave way to appreciation, though, of how fortunate we were. We were in the presence of so many young, well-connected Mumbaikars, all eager to help. A friend of a friend of a friend had plenty of space at his apartment in Bandra, a wealthy suburb of Mumbai.

Nobody had a clear sense yet of the extent of the attacks, which killed more than 160 people in total, the majority of them ordinary Indians. But the scenes of my imagination were far from what we found when Rajeev opened the door to his swank bachelor pad.

The main living room had red walls and a full wine bar. Strings of tiny mirrors dangled in front of a wall of windows. Rajeev had a live-in cook and a seemingly on-call yoga instructor. He owned a vineyard. He was so generous, it was almost funny. For weeks we had been sleeping on trains and running out of toilet paper. Now, in the middle of a terrorist attack, we were suddenly, luxuriously, taken care of.

Several people stopped by Rajeev's to drink wine and comfort one another over the next couple days. It seemed like everyone knew somebody who had been killed. Rajeev was worried about Mr. Lam, who did the wine purchasing for the Taj and had helped him get his bottles listed there. When few people would even agree to a taste test, Mr. Lam had let Rajeev open a bottle at the most famous hotel in all of Mumbai. He told Rajeev his wine was “pretty damn good.”

Everyone was heavy with sadness, but no one seemed surprised. Unlike so many Americans, who were jolted by 9/11 into a new understanding of reality, these Indians weren’t dealing with something new. They were devastated and weary at having been devastated in exactly the same way before. Watching them, I felt acutely foreign.

Glued to the television set was the first time I saw Kasab’s picture. He was one of two gunmen who had shot up a major train station, killing more than 60 people before moving on to a hospital and a movie theater. His stunned face was one of the few images news stations were recycling in the early hours of the tragedy. I remember thinking, “Wow. He’s just a kid.” And I remember thinking he was probably high. He looked crazed and small, dwarfed by his huge backpack and AK-47.

He looked further diminished this week, photographed in the courtroom where he received his death sentence. I read one news report that said he broke down crying while being led out of the courtroom to get a glass of water. But when the judge asked him if he had anything to say, he shook his head.

Apparently, he first ran away from home because he was angry with his father for not being able to provide him with new clothes for Eid. The defense argued that he had been drawn to militancy on grounds of poverty rather than religious belief. And he doesn’t seem to know much about Islam at all. When police asked him about the jihad, he reportedly said, "it is about killing and getting killed and becoming famous." He told the Indian authorities he’d switch sides and be loyal to them so long as they provided him with money and regular meals.

About 48 hours into the attacks, my friends and I were getting anxious about being separated from our belongings, namely our passports. It seemed like the situation was stable at the Taj, so we decided to make the trip back into Colaba. It seems like a miscalculation in retrospect, but at the time we didn’t know how long things were going to last and the longer we were without our passports, the less secure we felt. Rajeev offered to come with us out of concern, and also, I think, curiosity.

When we got downtown, everything was still. It was quieter now that it was under siege than it had been when all was well and the streets were bustling with people and cars. Several blocks from our hotel, the streets were cordoned off by police and military barricades. With Rajeev’s help, we gained access beyond a second barricade, and then climbed the dusty staircase of the Hotel Carlton. We threw our clothing into our packs, paid our tab, and got out as quickly as we could.

Walking back to the car, we couldn’t have been more conspicuous with our white faces and enormous backpacks. We rushed past the shops, all closed, where we had bought DVDs and bangles days before. Small groups of men stood in huddles on the sidewalk. You couldn’t tell who was on what side. They all stopped their whispering to look at us as we made our way out once again, moving on to the next stop on our itinerary.

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