Top-notch fund manager Samir Arora had a miraculous escape on Thursday after he fell into an open manhole near a mall in the country’s financial capital, saying later that he was “within micro seconds of disappearing”.

The founder of Helios Capital described the incident in a series of tweets on Friday, playing on the famous Mohd Rafi tune “Yeh Hai Bombay Meri Jaan” to say the Maximum City was close to taking his “jaan” (life).

The incident happened outside the tony Phoenix Mills Mall in central Mumbai that hosts a five-star hotel, a mall and another complex dedicated solely to high street brands.

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 was “within micro seconds of disappearing”, he recalled, but quick reflexes and the “shape” of the “open manhole” gave him a “second life”.

He is fine now, he added, after taking an injection. “If the BMC (the richest municipality in Asia) finds my Samsung phone in the drain they can keep it with my compliments,” Arora said in another tweet.

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

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