So which city will it be tomorrow?
There were eight blasts in Bangalore yesterday. And 16 in Ahmedabad today. So which city is it going to be on Sunday?
Delhi? Mumbai? Goa? Vizag? Hyderabad?
I don't have any answers.
It's scary. These may be low-intensity blasts meant just to scare people, but they are killing people. May be not as many as a normal high-intensity blast would kill, but they still are...
It reminds me so horribly of the Diwali blasts in Delhi which occurred in 2005.
There were three of them: Paharganj, Sarojini and Okhla. There were reports of another one at Kotla, but thankfully it didn't happen.
I remember that evening distinctly. I was sitting at my desk when Nidhi came in and said there had been a blast. I rushed to the maindesk TV and saw the news flash. I ran to LNJP first for some strange reason. Then I remembered that they must have gone to LHMC and rushed there.
The cops wouldn't let my auto go up to the gate as the chief minister was expected. That's Delhi for you.
Somehow, I ran to the Emergency. Only to be greeted by the stench of dead bodies. People were not allowed to enter. So all of us journos stood with our noses plastered to the glass panes trying to see what was happening and framing our Page 1 stories.
What we saw was a sight I am never going to forget. One person dying and his body immediately making way for an injured one. People breathing their last in front of our own eyes, the beds just a foot away from the windows. Orderlies throwing out loads and loads of blood-soaked cotton through the Emergency doors in order to keep the Emergency clean. One such cotton pad came and hit my foot. I was wearing my grey slippers with red bands. The grey material soaked the blood from the cotton ball. I wanted to puke.
Huge trolleys of medicines were wheeled in with orderlies literally running with those trolleys. One injured man was brought in a wheel barrow. Anu clicked a picture on her new Motorola phone. The images are still clear in my mind.
The next few days were a blur. They were spent in getting as many exclusive stories as possible. The first day I came across a couple who were going to meet a woman whose seven-month-old son had died. I had come across Yash's name in the official records.
I followed the two and met Yash's father. He looked calm, composed even. I would go to the extent of saying he looked cool. He was probably too shocked to look anything else. "Haan, humne subah use jala diya," he said. I think I stopped breathing for a few seconds after that. His wife was in the hospital with 80% burns. She had never wanted to go out that evening as it was time for the municipal water supply. Her neighbour wanted to buy bangles so she and Yash had accompanied her. The neighbour survived.
The next day was as bad. A mother who had not been told that her daughter had died. Two sisters who had gone out to buy kerosene, struggling to survive.
The day after that was Diwali. That night as I sat in my room, I cried. And cried and cried. It hurt me so much when no one from my family was even remotely involved. It gave me so much grief just to see those people. It is unimaginable to think what a man feels when he loses his seven-month-old child to terrorism. And the terrorists know that.
Amidst all the gloom, there was hope too. Nisha had been engaged to get married to a guy. She was injured in the blasts, but he insisted that he wanted to marry her as he could not see himself breaking his promise. He said he always liked her smile a lot. And so a little more than a month after the blast, the two got married on November 12.
I called them up next year and their marriage was going strong.
Hope. It's such a wonderful thing.
Delhi? Mumbai? Goa? Vizag? Hyderabad?
I don't have any answers.
It's scary. These may be low-intensity blasts meant just to scare people, but they are killing people. May be not as many as a normal high-intensity blast would kill, but they still are...
It reminds me so horribly of the Diwali blasts in Delhi which occurred in 2005.
There were three of them: Paharganj, Sarojini and Okhla. There were reports of another one at Kotla, but thankfully it didn't happen.
I remember that evening distinctly. I was sitting at my desk when Nidhi came in and said there had been a blast. I rushed to the maindesk TV and saw the news flash. I ran to LNJP first for some strange reason. Then I remembered that they must have gone to LHMC and rushed there.
The cops wouldn't let my auto go up to the gate as the chief minister was expected. That's Delhi for you.
Somehow, I ran to the Emergency. Only to be greeted by the stench of dead bodies. People were not allowed to enter. So all of us journos stood with our noses plastered to the glass panes trying to see what was happening and framing our Page 1 stories.
What we saw was a sight I am never going to forget. One person dying and his body immediately making way for an injured one. People breathing their last in front of our own eyes, the beds just a foot away from the windows. Orderlies throwing out loads and loads of blood-soaked cotton through the Emergency doors in order to keep the Emergency clean. One such cotton pad came and hit my foot. I was wearing my grey slippers with red bands. The grey material soaked the blood from the cotton ball. I wanted to puke.
Huge trolleys of medicines were wheeled in with orderlies literally running with those trolleys. One injured man was brought in a wheel barrow. Anu clicked a picture on her new Motorola phone. The images are still clear in my mind.
The next few days were a blur. They were spent in getting as many exclusive stories as possible. The first day I came across a couple who were going to meet a woman whose seven-month-old son had died. I had come across Yash's name in the official records.
I followed the two and met Yash's father. He looked calm, composed even. I would go to the extent of saying he looked cool. He was probably too shocked to look anything else. "Haan, humne subah use jala diya," he said. I think I stopped breathing for a few seconds after that. His wife was in the hospital with 80% burns. She had never wanted to go out that evening as it was time for the municipal water supply. Her neighbour wanted to buy bangles so she and Yash had accompanied her. The neighbour survived.
The next day was as bad. A mother who had not been told that her daughter had died. Two sisters who had gone out to buy kerosene, struggling to survive.
The day after that was Diwali. That night as I sat in my room, I cried. And cried and cried. It hurt me so much when no one from my family was even remotely involved. It gave me so much grief just to see those people. It is unimaginable to think what a man feels when he loses his seven-month-old child to terrorism. And the terrorists know that.
Amidst all the gloom, there was hope too. Nisha had been engaged to get married to a guy. She was injured in the blasts, but he insisted that he wanted to marry her as he could not see himself breaking his promise. He said he always liked her smile a lot. And so a little more than a month after the blast, the two got married on November 12.
I called them up next year and their marriage was going strong.
Hope. It's such a wonderful thing.
posted by 8 by 52 at 10:55 AM
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