"We have no words to express our feelings and it's not easy to even look ahead with hope at this juncture. But even then, in our darkest hour, we find solace and pride in the fact that our child died while taking others to safety. He gave up his life to save the lives of so many others. That is what keeps us going along with the support and prayers of our family and close friends who have rallied around us.

"We remember how we kept telling him, right from 9.40 pm when he first called us to say that “some madman is shooting bullets in the lobby'' to 3.45 am when we last talked to him, to leave the hotel and escape. Kaizad please come out, we kept saying but he kept replying that he will not do so till the last guest in the banquet party he was in-charge of and the last person in his kitchen had left the premises. We were talking to him every 45 minutes. At 3.45 am the contact broke. Before that, it seems, he had called up his best friend chef Sagar who was also there and told him that he had taken a bullet and needed o be taken to the hospital. But of course no one could do anything at that time. It seems the terrorists knew that the kitchen staff was helping guests out through the rear exits — they probably saw it on television channels and this thought angers me a lot. So they came down the service staircase that ended in the kitchen and shot four of the chefs there, including our son.

"We think everyday why this happened to him—and to us? Why did he think duty and loyalty was so much more important than his own life? There is no answer. But even as we ask this, deep down we feel proud of the kind of person that Kaizad was, that at such a young age he could put everyone else before him.

"The Taj people have made a memorial book with his name in it that they gave us. We learnt later how he was helping out so many people while working, lending money to the family of a colleague, he never even told us all this. It's only at his funeral when people came from every part of the city, braving the battle that was still on, that we learnt how loved he was amongst all his friends.

"Now all we can say is that the sacrifice of Kaizad and so many others should not go in vain. It's time to wake up. We want to implore to the people -- choose your politicians very carefully, take a few things in your hands, we need more responsible citizenship. We can't let an incident like happen and sit quietly. We can't let ourselves be manipulated. The government needs to take the security of the citizens seriously. Why do the politicians need security? Their security should be removed and given to the common man instead. If the politicians want security let them pay for it themselves.

"Our message to everyone today is, wake up, change some things and don't forget the sacrifice of those who died. Don't let it go in vain."