‘Yeh hai Bombay meri jaan’: Helios capital founder slips into manhole in Mumbai, survives to tell tale

Team Udayavani, Apr 27, 2019, 11:19 AM IST

Mumbai: Top-notch fund manager Samir Arora had a miraculous escape Thursday after slipping into an open manhole near one of the swishiest shopping malls in the central part of the financial capital.

The founder of Helios Capital described the jarring incident in a set of tweets Friday, where he borrowed from the famous Mohd Rafi tune “Yeh Hai Bombay Meri Jaan”, to say that the Maximum City was close to taking his “Jaan” (life).

Replying to what seemed like a tweet from his friend Neeraj Batra who spoke about the incident outside the tony Phoenix Mills Mall at Lower Parel in central Mumbai, Arora said he was “within microseconds of disappearing” but quick reflexes and the shape of the open manhole” gave him a “second life”.

Arora, who has over 4.11 lakh twitter followers, said he went down up to his chest into the manhole before being pulled out with minor bruises. He is fine now, after taking an injection, he added.

An open manhole had taken the life of the 59-year-old gastroenterologist Dr Deepak Amarapurkar’s life in August 2017 during the 2017 floods in the city. The body of the noted doctor was found two days later.

“If the BMC (which is the richest municipality in Asia) finds my Samsung phone in the drain they can keep it with my compliments,” Arora said in another tweet.

A January 2019 media report said as many as 1,425 manholes were provided with protective grills, and the civic body is on an Rs 1.21-crore project to install 1,300 more in the eastern and western suburbs this year.

Later in the evening, Arora also gave out the exact address where he fell down, replying to a tweet which spoke about a local civic body official’s claim that there are no open manholes at the spot where he went down.

Located in Lower Parel, the Phoenix Mills was among the first to be developed into a swanky mall, after the shutdown of the textile industry in the 1980s. At present it hosts a five-star hotel, a mall and also another mall dedicated solely to high street brands.