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societyMay 26, 202636:28pending

The Night Mumbai Burned - Will Pike p3

What I survived

About this episode

On the evening of November 26, 2008, British freelance filmmaker Will Pike and his girlfriend checked into the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in Mumbai for a one-night stopover on their way to Goa. It was meant to be a treat. A single night in one of the world's most famous hotels.


By midnight, terrorists were moving through the corridors executing guests.


Will and his girlfriend barricaded themselves in their room as the siege unfolded around them. They could hear the gunfire, they heard people being executed in the hallway outside their door.


When smoke began filling the room they had no choice but to act. They broke the window, knotted together bedsheets and curtains, and tried to climb down the outside of the building, Will fell fifty feet.


He broke his back, his pelvis, both wrists and his elbow. He was confined to a wheelchair.


167 people died that night at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel.


Will Pike survived and then came the part nobody tells you about, rebuilding a life, a body and a sense of self when the world that existed before November 26, 2008 is simply gone.


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The Night Mumbai Burned - Will Pike p3

What I survived

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