The Night Mumbai Burned - Will Pike p3
5/26/202636 min
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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First 90 secondsSpeaker 10:00
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Cathy Bazora0:07
[gentle music] If you want to understand the world today, you need to go back to the '90s. From the internet boom to the rise of reality TV, the 1990s changed the way we live. I'm Cathy Bazora. On my podcast, History of the '90s, I go inside the stories, events, and trends that defined a decade, from the fall of communism to the rise of grunge. If it happened in the '90s, you'll hear about it on History of the '90s, wherever you stream audio.
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Jack Laurence· Host0:52
[gentle music] We often talk about life-changing moments. Sometimes they're good, and sometimes they're not. Sometimes they're of our own making. Many times they're not. Will Pike had just returned home from Mumbai, a city that had unwillingly played host to a violent and deadly terrorist attack lasting four days, leaving 175 people dead and more than 300 injured. Will and his partner had managed to survive. However, Will had only just barely done