Kareena had been out to dinner, and I had some work in the morning, so I stayed in. She came back, we had a chat and went to sleep. After a while, the househelp rushed in and said – ‘There’s an intruder! There’s a guy in Jeh’s room with a knife asking for money!’ It was around 2am, I could get the time wrong slightly, but it was late...
Obviously, I kind of lost it, and went in there to see and I saw this guy holding (what I thought were) two sticks over Jeh’s bed – it was actually a hexa blade. So he had a knife in each hand and a mask on. It was a surreal scene. And something just kind of took over and I just grabbed him. I ran and pulled him down, and then we were wrestling. He was thumping me as hard as he could in my back, and it was just thuds. I thought it was...
You didn’t realise it was a knife?
I didn’t. It didn’t really hurt because there’s too much of adrenaline and shock at that moment. And then he was slashing at my neck, and I was blocking it with my hand. There were slashes to my palm and my wrist and arm. There was all this violence – slashing with both hands, most of which was kind of defended. And yeah, I fought with him, but I couldn’t handle it after a while because there were these two knives in action. And I was just barefoot, bare-handed in a kurta pajama.
And I was just praying that someone could get this guy off me at this point. And my incredibly lovely househelp (Geeta) pulled him off me and shoved him away. And we both kind of rolled away, and closed the door. And at this point I was covered in blood, and I lost some feeling in my right leg. This was because I had been nicked in the spine, but I didn’t realise that at the time – I thought I’d been stabbed in the leg. I went upstairs to try and find something to fight this guy. Kareena, in the meantime, had taken Jeh out and gone to Tim’s room.
She had taken him out while you were still grappling with the intruder?
Yes. While this fight happened, Jeh was taken out. I remember Kareena screaming ‘Take the kid out!’
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