Mumbai was under siege. Paris was seven years away.
That November day, it began with a few rat-a-tats and explosions. Soon, from the newsroom windows, we were watching the silhouette of a man walking inside Mumbai's CST. Kasab had just played his part in the city's grisly rendezvous with death.
26/11, even for some of us who witnessed parts of the macabre proceedings live, was a distant spectre on that day. But there were others who just managed to live and tell the tale.
Late in the night, when a clearer picture had emerged, one man returned from the field, gait nonchalant as usual. Camera in hand, the perpetual lost look in eyes, Hoshi Jal's appearance in the newsroom evoked a few frightened shrieks.
Brushing aside the anxious and shocked cries, he set to work, slotting and uploading photographs of the city's macabre tryst.
Worried colleagues making a beeline to his cabin annoyed him, but the man didn't throw a fit as he was wont to. Some of us sitting far away didn't know what the fuss was about.
Much later, as the night wound down, Hoshi passed by my seat. That's when we saw it.
His plain full sleeve shirt. Bullet burns. Shots missing his chest and tummy by a whisker.
