For Heroes of Mumbai, Terror Was a Call to Action

By SOMINI SENGUPTA

Published: December 1, 2008

Ruth Fremson/The New York Times -Vishnu Datta Ram Zende working Monday at a Mumbai railroad station where he saved lives last Wednesday.

MUMBAI, India — On any ordinary day, Vishnu Datta Ram Zende used the public-address system at Mumbai’s largest railway station to direct busy hordes of travelers to their trains.

But last Wednesday just before 10 p.m., when he heard a loud explosion and saw people running across the platform, he gripped his microphone and calmly directed a panicked crowd toward the safest exit. The station, Victoria Terminus, it turned out, was suddenly under attack, the beginning of a three-day siege by a handful of young, heavily armed gunmen. more