7/11: When the story broke

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There was little time to react and lot to report.

I got a call from Jency at 6.25 pm. He was shaken up and said: "Ruksh, I think there has been an explosion on the train I am travelling on. The train has stopped in between Bandra and Khar and the bogie is damaged. The sound was really loud and powerful. I think it was a bomb."

Jency was travelling in a second class compartment adjoining the one that was blown up. I was in office, on assignment duty, that evening and I immediately dialled HQ in Noida and told them to take a phone-in with Jency.

I called up the police control room for a confirmation and they said: "Hame bhi aisi khabar mili hai lekin abhi kuch pakka nahin bata sakte hain." (We have heard something but can't confirm.)

Moments later, I was put on air for a phone-in and could only give sketchy details I had got from the police. I called for a camera, and was getting ready to rush out, but on the way out I got a call from a contact in Bhayandar that there was another blast in Mira Road. I broke out in cold sweat. The thought crossed my mind: "Is this a serial attack"". Moments later my worst fears came true. Phones started ringing and names kept coming in-Mahim, Matunga, Bandra...

That's when I decided to over-ride my reporter's instinct of rushing out, and instead took the call of manning the office. I called up logistics to get a fix on the position of our OB vans (satellite trucks) and request for the services of our sister network CNBC's OB vans. That's when I was told that we had one OB in south Mumbai, while the other was on it's way to the Marriott Hotel in Juhu.

That's the van that went on to get the first pictures on air, because of the alertness of OB engineer Deepak, cameraman Manish Dubey and features reporter Urmi Sahani.

As the van crossed Matunga station, they saw people pour out of the station and smoke billowing from inside. That's when Manish Dubey decided to run out with Urmi and Deepak fired the OB signal to beam those pictures to the world.

There was chaos in the office moments afterwards-phones were ringing, I was telling people to move out, calling logistics and fleet to go into "breaking news mode" and put every unit in cars and move to bombed locations.

It all sounds very need and orderly on paper like this. But it was as if all hell had broken loose. In the midst of this confusion, suddenly, one could not get through to reporters and officials, because most cell networks had gone on the blink.

All of this happened in 10 to 15 minutes, after which I got a call from assignment to get onto the rooftop, with a camera and sum up all the information we had been getting.

For the next two hours I was intermittently on air, giving updates from the rooftop but was hitched to the earpiece and the camera and handicapped with a cellphone that didn't work anymore.

That's when all fresh information leads to me dried up. until one by one these printed chits started coming to me through colleagues. It was the brainwave of our producer Bhakti Apte, who had valiantly risen to the task to managing the office, while I was on the rooftop.

I got back to the news desk at about 9.30 pm, when I started piecing together information and started pulling out all the archive footage to put together a story about how all the attack had been imminent and was titled "The signs were there".

Beginning with the arrests in January, the bomb detected at the Byculla station, the arms haul in Aurangabad and the trail of ammunition that had been traced across Deccan.

I finally got out of office at 4.30 am and went to Matunga Railway station to shoot a PTC (a piece to camera) for an overall terror backgrounder that I worked on through the night. That's when I first noticed these gangs of men who were cutting the bogies up, working on overhead lines.

I came back to office to paste the PTC into the package and went back to Matunga at 5:30 am to shoot the process of removing the last wreckage from Matunga station. I went from Matunga to Mahim to Bandra station to see how the rail network had been brought back to life. Which is where I managed to speak to the train driver of the first fast train that rolled into Bandra station and to also the Station Master at Bandra.

I came back to file another story which was an ode to Mumbai's railway men who had tirelessly toiled to put Mumbai back on track in 16 hours. After which I went back to do lives and walkabout from stations and helped organise a special show from Matunga station.

And so after pulling a 36 hour shift I finally went home, knowing I was just one of the many Mumbaikars who had stretched themselves to the limit to keep Mumbai ticking. Each one of us in our own little way added to what has come to be called Mumbai's Unbreakable Spirit.