MUMBAI, INDIA — They were the longest few seconds of his life, said Indian policeman Vijay Powar: watching a hand grenade roll toward him, tossed by militants from the floor above, and realizing he could do nothing about it.
The only thing that saved his life, he said from a hospital bed, was a wall that partially deflected the blast.
The police officers of Mumbai, often armed with nothing more than courage and old bolt-action rifles, bore the brunt of last week's fighting against gunmen who attacked the western Indian city.
When the three days of terror were over, more than 170 people were dead and hundreds were injured.
On Tuesday, Powar and other officers in the wards of Bombay Hospital recounted their moments on the front lines, mulling what might have been, why they survived and why others didn't.
Since the attack, a steady parade of relatives, reporters and politicians has been winding its way through the halls during the day. Once visiting hours are over and the crowds disappear, the wounded officers are left with their personal hells.
For Arun Jadhav of the Mumbai anti-terrorism squad, the demons aren't hand grenades.
He is haunted instead by a feeling that his boss of 12 years, the squad's chief, will walk through the door any minute and call out: "OK, let's go, we have a job to do."
The evening of Nov. 26, anti-terrorism chief Hemant Karkare, Jadhav and six other officers were responding to initial reports that a railway station, a hospital and a cinema were under attack.
As they headed toward the Metro Theater, with no idea of how large the attack was or what was going on, they approached a car in the road. As they slowed down, two attackers jumped out of the vehicle and killed everyone in the police van except Jadhav.
Debate continues on whether the ambush was planned or a chance encounter, but it served the terrorists well by eliminating the city's anti-terrorism leadership at the start of the militants' attack, spreading further confusion.
The two attackers then pushed the bodies of three dead officers on the front seat out of the vehicle and took it on a killing rampage with five bodies still in the back -- including Jadhav.
"I survived by pretending I was dead," he said.
Amid all the frenzied activity in the Bombay Hospital ward Tuesday, several bureaucrats suddenly appeared with clipboards and started handing each of the wounded officers a check for 50,000 rupees, about $1,000.
