Are you a Brahmin? A terrorist asked him

A correspondent in New Delhi

November 29, 2008 16:28 IST

K R Ramamoorthy can't thank his lucky stars enough. One of the unlucky guests at the Taj Hotel, that fateful evening, Ramamoorthy stared at certain death, and survived.

When a terrorist knocked on his door, he hardly knew what lay in store for him. After barging into his room, the terrorists asked him, "Are you a brahmin? Your name sounds south Indian."

The seventy-six year old banker tried to hoodwink the terrorist and told him that he was a school teacher and hailed from Bangalore. But the terrorist who spoke fluent Hindi and English turned out to be smarter than he had imagined.

"How can a school teacher stay in a posh hotel like this? Who paid your rent?" he asked.

And without waiting for Ramamoorthy's reply, the terrorist hit him, before declaring with a chilling finality, "You are duping us."

It was then that Ramamoorthy saw the second terrorist. He had five employees of the hotel with him. The employees had their hands and mouths tied, and were crying. But the terrorists showed no emotion and continued to speak with each other 'quite jovially'.

Help finally came at 6 am on Thursday morning. Ramamoorthy saw a fire engine ladder outside his room. He waved his hand to the driver of the fire tender, who urged him to pull-down the curtains and tie them to the window. He then signaled Ramamoorthy to come out through the window.

While he was climbing on to the ladder, he saw a woman outside (the window) of her fifth floor room. They both got down with the help of the firefighters, and ran to safety. Their ordeal of over eight hours was finally over.

A relieved Ramamoorthy then called his wife and told her that he was safe.

The non-executive part-time chairman of ING Vysya Bank, however, rues that he had to leave his luggage and mobile phone in the hotel room.