Chilling

“My Blackberry Saved Us”

Wedding party turns into massacre.

Of all the tales to emerge from the massacre in the Taj Hotel, few are as poignant as that of Amit and Varsha Thadani, a honeymoon couple who were dressing for their wedding night party when the terrorists struck. Instead of dancing the night away, they spent their wedding night huddled in their bathroom. Next door, they heard gunmen shoot a woman guest, and then her screams. "We could sense she was being dragged around," Varsha recalled. And Gary Samore, of the Council on Foreign Relations, New York, staying at the Taj with his wife and daughter, were also holed up in their room. His only source of information were the e-mails friends sent to his BlackBerry. The Samores escaped by wrapping themselves in wet towels to get through a smoke corridor then found their way to a service stairwell, where they summoned soldiers. "My BlackBerry may have saved our lives," said Samore.