The deformity of human laws is faced to exhibit itself naked amid the dazzling rays of eternal beauty. Man breaks and destroys; man lays waste; man kills. Yet the summer remains summer, the lily remains lily, the stars remain the stars.” – Victor Hugo
In a country where there is liberty and justice for all, where freedom and equal opportunities abound… a crisp, clear, golden September morning, was defaced into an ugly, and dark… dark day – by messengers of doom. America, with all its majesty and nobility, suffered a crippling blow. The twin towers of the World Trade Center were set ablaze, and destroyed by terrorists in an act of such inhumane proportions, it belies all description. The lives extinguished, were those of young men and women on the threshold of their dreams, husbands and wives, intellectuals and analysts, of all races and religion.
Days have passed without finding a survivor beneath the charred remains of mangled metal and concrete. The wounds are deep, but the city of New York, and the American nation has risen like a phoenix, from beneath the ashes, with heroism, generosity and courage.
At press time, concrete figures were unavailable about the exact number of Indians working at the World Trade Center, but it is expected to be very high. An estimated 3,000 people of Indian origin work in lower Manhattan, most of them computer professionals, investment bankers, portfolio specialists, other consultants and cabbies. About 250 PIO (People of Indian origins) are said to have lost their lives in the World Trade Center attack. There were also several shops in and around the WTC, owned by members of the Asian community, according to Dr. Bhupendra Patel, the Chief of Medicine at the Mount Sinai Hospital, Queens, New York.
In conversations with me, Dr Patel said that he was leaving for work when he heard the news of the disaster. He rushed to the hospital to put the disaster management plan into action. His accountant’s daughter Sejal Shah is still missing. Mr. Jayanti Patel in New York also awaits news of his 36-year-old daughter Deepti who worked on the 103rd floor; as does Mr. Chandu Patel whose nephew, 28-year-old Avneesh, decided to leave his family in London, and work in the US. The internet has thousands of messages posted by anxious relatives and friends, begging people to contact them if anyone has heard of their loved ones… a brother who recently arrived from India to do a project… a young pregnant wife waiting for her husband to somehow miraculously show up and be with her after missing for all these days.
Vinod Parakatt, is one of them. Vinod worked for Cantor Fitzgerald on the 103rd floor of Tower One at the WTC. He had been married for barely ten months, according to neighbor Krishna Anand. His wife Jayashree is two months pregnant. He was supposed to come home early that day to take Jayashree to the doctor. He has not been tracked down. Priti Umarkar has been married for 6 years. Her husband Anil worked for E-Speed, according to their friend Pallavi. They have a 13 month old son. He has not been heard of either. “He usually reaches about 8.45 AM. We don’t know if he made it inside or something happened outside. We are hoping for a miracle, “ says Pallavi. The quest is never ending.
Naveen Narula lives in Atlanta and works for IBM. He was staying at the Marriott hotel at the World Trade Center on the day of the attack. He was to begin work on a month long project in New York. Naveen was at the IBM office about half a kilometer away when he heard the first explosion. “I saw dense smoke and debris spread all around,” recalls Naveen. “Luckily, the building I was in, had face masks to prevent particles from getting into the mouth and nose. I have never seen so much ash and debris. It formed a layer that was about 6 inches thick. Visibility was less than fifty feet. We moved to another high-rise building that was about 1 km away to avoid inhaling so much smoke and being hit by debris.”
“It is here that we found out what had really happened. Both the regular and mobile phones went dead. Luckily the electricity was still on. Meanwhile, things were getting from bad to worse in the area. Smoke was incredibly dense. We made a decision to walk to safety to midtown Manhattan. There were police cars and sirens all over. It looked every bit like a war zone or the aftermath of a volcanic eruption. We walked three hours and about ten miles, carrying all our belongings. The Marriott hotel in Times Square had set up a temporary hall with 200 cots as an emergency sleeping area. They had prepared food, hot coffee and had aspirins ready. All my bones were aching and there were blisters on my feet, I was also covered with ash.”
After staying there for two days, Naveen finally drove with a colleague from New York to Atlanta a few days later to get back home. “I still have the copy of the Wall Street Journal dated Sep 11, 2001 with the bold “With compliments of Marriott World Trade Center,” that I have kept as a souvenir. The hotel is gone.”
For Pratik Patel who works between the 90th and 100th floor, on World Trade Center’s second Tower, the day had begun very early at 6 a.m. When the first tower was hit, Pratik felt the explosion as their building shook. It took a mere 20 seconds to walk over from his cubicle to where he could see the other tower very easily. It was ablaze. “Nobody knew what caused it. Without any hesitation I headed towards the stairs – leaving everything , my wallet, my cell phone, the keys to my car,” he recalls. Instead of taking the elevator, Pratik took the stairs to reach the 78th floor from where most people generally boarded elevators to their respective floors. The stairs were soon swarming with people.
“No one yet knew what had happened. Most people thought it was a bomb, though a couple of people did say they saw an airplane hit the tower,” says Pratik. “I don’t think at that point people had any reason to panic, or felt there was any need to hurry, and get to the elevators that were still working because our building had not been hit. There was just this general discussion whether to stay on that floor or to take the elevators down.”
Pratik decided to take the elevator and get out of the building. The time was a few minutes before 9 a.m. The Police and fire fighters, had arrived and told the people to get as far away as possible from the WTC, and move towards Battery Park from where people usually take ferries to Staten Island. As he started to follow instructions and move, the second plane, hit the tower where he worked. “It happened so quickly that a lot of people thought it was another bomb. But by this time the realization had occurred to people that this was not an accident. If you have two explosions within fifteen minutes, you realize it is a planned attack. That is when the chaos began. I looked up and saw flying debris, metal, broken glass coming down with great speed, and at that moment your only instinct is to get away from it as fast as you can, try to go into a closed door building and get off the street”
Pratik found refuge in a school, a couple of blocks away along with about 100 other people. The police informed them that the WTC towers had indeed, been hit by two planes. It had occurred to a lot of them by then that it was most likely a terrorist attack, yet none of them wanted to acknowledge it openly. The cops told them that the situation was under control and the debris and smoke were not as severe as had been a little while ago. Everyone decided to leave and head for Battery Island. As Pratik walked, he saw some pay phones nearby and decided to get in line, to call his parents whom he had been unable to contact so far.
As he stood in line he heard a loud explosion and saw the WTC tower where he worked come down, even though it was the second one to have been hit. “I was only a couple of hundred yards away from the second building. The sound of the collapse of the building was even louder than the explosion that occurred when the planes hit. I saw people running in sheer panic, being trampled, while others just froze. There was heavy, debris laden black smoke filling up the area, rapidly spreading in every direction.”
Pratik and some others took refuge in an open parking garage hoping the smoke would pass them by. Barely a couple of minutes later, the garage was filled with the black smoke, they had tried so hard to escape. They could not see a thing, and tried to find their way around instinctively, trying to follow the sounds of voices around them. Finally they saw one light leading them to a street through a glass door.” I broke the door with my arm, “ says Pratik, “ We could not see a thing, so there was nothing to break it open with.” It was only when he came out that he realized his arm was bleeding profusely and would require several stitches. A bagel delivery boy, who was to deliver bagels at WTC, stopped and gave Pratik his apron to wrap around his arm to stem the heavy bleeding. The second tower collapsed around this time. Pratik startled a number of employees, by walking into another building covered with soot, and blood. This building was further away in downtown Manhattan and a lot of the employees had no idea what was going on.
Once the smoke had dissipated somewhat, Pratik made it to where the Staten Island ferries started. The city had established a mini hospital of sorts to treat the injured. They cleaned his wounds but did not stitch it, as there were others who were in much worse shape than he was. It was at this point around noon, as he sat down to compose himself and absorb the catastrophic happenings of the past few hours, he saw people calling from some payphones. As he made his way to the phones to finally call his parents, the impact of what he had gone through hit him, and he broke down. “I realized that finally, after three hours, I would be able to call my parents and tell them I am alive. I can’t even begin to express the emotions that coursed through me, elation, relief, my parents’ joy at knowing I was safe.”
He adds quietly, “I drove back to the area recently. The trains are working, the tunnels are open, and as I looked up at the sky, it was such an eerie feeling to see it enveloped still by the same gray smoke, and the twin towers gone. It will never be the same again.” As an afterthought, he adds, “A lot of the back office people come in after nine. Had they struck an hour later, there would have been many more fatalities.”
Vikas Chawla and Gursharanjit Sant of Marsh & McLennan also have similar stories to tell. Vikas decided to use the rest room midway through his trip to work, and missed the train he would have normally taken. Gursharanjit’s son left late for school so he missed his regular bus to work. As he sat in the next bus, passing the turnpike, he looked up and thought what a lovely day it was. It was at that moment he saw the first plane hitting the tower. “We were in a state of shock.” He tried frantically to reach some of his colleagues who were inside the building. One of them, Matthew Horning emailed back that, they were trapped and he was very scared. That was the last anyone has heard from him.
Vikas reached the WTC also about five minutes late. The building was on fire and cordoned off. “We had the trapped people sending messages, through their blackberry pagers, “I don’t think I can make it. Please call my wife on this number,” says Vikas. He added that others when asked how they were doing, said they were very scared. “We can’t go through the stairs, there’s smoke everywhere, and we are huddled in the conference room. We don’t know what will happen” There were 700 employees of Marsh & McLennan in office that day. No one, in the 93rd to 100th floor, has made it.
Vikas says this episode has changed his entire outlook towards life. “I wake up and see the sunshine and revel in it. I eat food with gratitude. It could be my last meal.” Vikas is also part of the Art of Living Foundation, which teaches stress relief through meditation and yoga and on the Sunday after the tragedy, led a prayer meeting at the Memorial site. They sang “Amazing Grace” and several hymns and taught the people meditation to relieve stress. Teachers from the foundation are going to continue doing free meditation and stress management workshops for the people in New York, says Vikas.
Among the survivors were two employees of Wipro, Vijay Pillapa and Balaji Muniratnam. They were among a group of six consultants leased to Marsh and McLennan. Only Vijay and Balaji survived. Four of their colleagues were not so lucky. Among the trapped Wipro consultants were: project manager Deepika Sattaluri, 29, whose husband and four year old son had accompanied her to New York; database manager Hemant Kumar, 28, whose sister has been searching for him frantically; Shashikiran Kadamba, a dynamic software consultant, whose fiancée drove nonstop for 30 hours from Texas on hearing the news; and Shreyas Ranganath who sent some frantic emails to his counterparts in India and then rushed down to escape, but never quite made it.
Balaji says the sight of people jumping in droves from the 80th floor to their death was a horrifying sight. He also added that the first plane went in gently into the tower, and did not do as much damage as the second one, which slammed at a speed of 600-700 miles an hour. “Everywhere people were crying. Someone had a sibling, a child, a fiancée or a spouse in there” recalls Balaji. He ran when he saw the second tower falling like a pack of cards, at a close range of 500-600 meters.
For Sybil Dodge, a college hire who was working for Deloitte Consulting, at the World Financial Center, it was a harrowing experience. She had just reached her office, on the 8th floor and was sitting down to eat her breakfast and begin work when she was told to run, because it seemed the World Trade Center had been bombed. “Upon exiting the building we looked up to see an enormous gash pouring out flames and smoke in the first tower. There were papers, CDs and files flying out of the building and fluttering to the ground. We were dumbstruck”
As Sybil and four of her colleagues were trying to call their families, they still did not realize the enormity of the situation. “As we leisurely made our way west towards the water, we overheard that it was a plane that had hit the tower. It just seemed inconceivable.” Sybil recalls. “As I was walking away from the building, the overpowering whine of turbine engines filled the air. I looked up in time to see the second plane, the left wing clipping the side of the building, and turned to run, feeling the heat of the explosion on my back.” Her first reaction was of complete terror and confusion, as she tried to make sense of what she had seen. “That’s when we all realized that we were under attack! My biggest fear was that the towers were going to fall immediately. Suddenly the urgency to get out of there was real, very real. We didn’t want to understand, we just wanted to get out.”
Sybil and four of her other colleagues started walking, when she realized she had hurt her foot (it turned out to be a fracture) She was carried by three of her male colleagues, as they ran to safety They were heading towards Battery Park to get a ferry, and as they waited, they found a bench to sit on and watched the towers burn. “The fires were getting much worse, burning a bright orange, and the second building now had a gouge in it as well. We watched helplessly as the fires raged and dozens of people jumped to their deaths. I can’t fully describe the effect of watching bodies fall 70 stories and hearing them land. We knew those people had no hope, no chance. Nobody was trying to save them, or trying to douse the flames out. We watched in horror, our hearts going out to them, all of us trying to imagine what the conditions must have been like in there to drive people to such drastic measures. It was horrifying. Those images are permanently imprinted into my memory.”
Sybil and her friends waited, and had no clue where they should go to be safe. “We figured the worst was over, but at the slightest sound of any aircraft, we looked at the sky, with unimaginable fright.” Sybil says. The area they were in had no one there. They did not see any police, or fire fighters, or an ambulance or a boat. “We were in a crowd of people left to rely solely on their wits. I was feeling such anger. I felt my government really let me down. Where are the fighter planes, why am I not protected? What am I paying taxes for? We really had this overwhelming sense of abandonment.”
In desperation, they were inches away from deciding to swim to New Jersey, crossing the Hudson river , when they heard what she calls an unearthly sound and saw the second tower crumble. The sky was now turning black, and smoke was fast enveloping everything impairing visibility and thus preventing them from swimming. The overpowering smell of fuel, smoke and fumes swept over and engulfed them, stinging their eyes. “All we could do was sit huddled on the grass, breathing through our shirts.” It was twenty minutes before visibility returned. “I will remember forever, looking up and noticing that some people had shadows again. To see the sun again was indescribable. I honestly thought we had lost it forever.”
As their ferry pulled away, the enormity of what she had just witnessed, hit her. “Relief quickly gave way to a deep sadness, and utter desolation as I watched the marred New York skyline. The towers were gone, just gone, and I cried my first tears of the day. I cried for my city and my country. My city, my home was up in smoke, the skyline was unrecognizable; a gaping hole where the pride of New York city had been, an aching void where my sense of security had been. An eerie sense of reversal washed over me as we motored past Ellis Island and the statue of liberty. Our history was built on the huddled masses being welcomed to safety in this country, and yet here we were, refugees in our own country, fleeing our own homes, watching as our city burned.” “It may seem trivial, to lose two buildings,” says Sybil, “but it is morally devastating to live under the weighty absence of a symbol of New York that we lived with in our daily lives, that we saw from nearly every point in the city, that we worked in, wondered at, prided ourselves in. They are just gone.”
Sybil says she still sleeps with the lights on, and the sound of thunder brings back horrible memories and she wakes up shaking and crying. “The sound of thunder is the closest sound to what we heard that day.” Sybil turned 22, three days before the tragedy and says she was already struggling with the realization that she is not immortal, but the tragedy made her realize how finite our time on earth is, and to live for the present to the fullest.
Homegrown Ugliness
Even as the world gasped in disbelief at the sheer viciousness of these attacks, isolated versions of similar disregard for innocent civilians began to crop up right here in the US. While the country was coming to grips with the tragedy, sporadic incidents of violence against the Sikh and Muslim community began to filter in. The Sikhs were being targeted because of their flowing beards and turbans – somewhat similar to those worn by Osama Bin Laden, the billionaire Saudi terrorist who has been linked to the attacks.
“I am very familiar with this situation,” recalls Mr. Surinder Singh, a Sikh living in Atlanta. “I used to work in a hotel for senior citizens and after the gulf war a lot of them would point their finger at me and ask me to go back to the Middle East. It was at that time that I finally cut my hair short.”
“We have had some graffiti scrawled on our mosque,” adds Dr Khaled Siddique, an eminent physician and well-respected leader of the Pakistani community in Atlanta. “We have heard a few incidents where one of our Muslim neighbors had stones thrown at their house in Alpharetta as well; some children were also harassed. There was also some altercation at Georgia Tech, but mercifully Atlanta has remained, mostly calm and united.” Dr. Siddique’s sentiments are shared by Imam Zahid Abdullah, the director of the Al Farooq Masjid in Atlanta. “We have had amazing support from the American community, and received several calls assuring us of help and assistance, from them in case we need it. We are as shocked as any one else and condemn this act vehemently.”
Dr. Siddique adds, “the Muslim community in Atlanta as well as the United States is a peaceful and law abiding community by and large. People who are accused of these terrorist attacks are usually not members of a community. They are in fact not even members who will mix with the community, and for us it was a shock. We have been trying to tell the world that it is not Islam that is responsible for this kind of action .It is an individual. Just as Timothy Mcveigh is not a representative of the entire White community or Christianity, these terrorists do not represent Islam or the Muslim community. The action of a few should not stereotype Islam as a violent way of life”
Professor Mian M. Latif, is a Professor and also a businessman, who has lived here for the last fifteen years. “We are concerned about the safety of all Asian community members. There are irrational people in all communities whose emotions run high and blind their wisdom, and hopefully it will die down as time passes by. The fact that majority of Pakistanis are Muslim and the terrorists were Muslim will make some people generalize that anyone who is Muslim is to be blamed. Its unfair but the sentiment is understandable and discrimination will occur, but rather than acting emotionally, we must think logically, no matter what our ethnic or religious background is. We must focus on the causes that spawn terrorism.”
Some Views and Comments
Major General R.N. Chhibber (retd) who is an expert on Middle East terrorism since the 1970s and has served as military attaché in Afghanistan observes, “America should have been much wiser because Americans were on the hit list since the mid seventies. It is alarming that the planes were so easily hijacked and were in the air for 40 minutes and the US could do nothing. If these people can fly aircrafts, they can also use a nuclear bomb.”
“The terrorists are rabid people, and they should be shown no mercy. However, this should not be an excuse for a more powerful country to cow down a weaker country. Terrorism should never be supported even when it suits your country, as was the case when the Talibans were trained by the USA. If Taliban are part of this tragedy and it is proven, then they have to be reformed or eliminated. Along with Bin Laden, the various organizations that support him have to be eradicated, because even if he is eliminated someone else will take his place. USA has to act decisively now otherwise if it is seen as a soft nation, the terrorists will strike again. USA can’t say, lets get Bin Laden and let the jihadi camps in Kashmir, remain India’s headache ”
Professor Jagdish Sheth agrees, “The writing was on the wall even when the two US embassies were attacked in east African countries, and the ship was attacked in the Gulf. If you let them succeed, it will escalate to the next level. This is indeed a wake up call for the USA. Terrorism is not just a reality for underdeveloped nations. This seemed to be the complete failure of US intelligence and I think, it was partly because this nation is very tolerant and agonizes too long. I think we are as vulnerable as anybody and this has to be stopped on a worldwide basis. Hopefully all advanced countries and emerging nations will now unite and address this. Any friendship between the United States, and another nation from now on will not be due to their association from the cold war, but a simple are you pro terrorism or anti-terrorism? Any country, whether it is India or Pakistan or middle eastern, if they show any sympathy to fundamentalist movement, will be regarded as anti American. It is an interesting change.”
Counsel General Rinzing Wangdi concurs, “We have been in the front line for our fight against international terrorism. The very idea of a democracy and liberty for all humans, that India and USA share becomes an anathema for these terrorists. We have been there before in 1993 in the Bombay riots. The footprints are very similar and this kind of a proxy war has been going against us for along time. Terrorism has no boundaries and if we don’t act immediately this hydra headed monster will get bigger and bigger. And that is what has happened.”
While the nation and its people struggle to come to grips with the tragedy, the singular most outstanding aspect has been the amazing compassion and unity people have shown. From minor gestures such as stores handing out free shoes with flat heels to women running in high heeled shoes, to the larger ones such as an abundance of blood donors from across all religions and nationalities.
In Georgia, all communities united to donate money, blood and other amenities. The Indian and Pakistani communities have started raising funds, helping the Red Cross with blood drives, with local restaurants chipping in to bring food for workers and blood donors. Several local companies including Coco-Cola, Bellsouth, Scientific Atlanta, Home Depot to name a few have made huge monetary donations along with donating equipment.
As America the beautiful, struggles to be America the brave, Pratik says he wishes that they would consider making a shrine for those who perished, in at least a section of the complex, where the center stood. He remains optimistic that the perpetrators will be brought to justice. Naveen says what angers him deeply is the fact that these terrorists, took advantage of the hospitality of their host nation, utilized their resources to train and then destroyed the heart of America’s pride.
Dr Patel agrees, “We have lost a historical monument but we have also lost our faith. It is like being stabbed in your own backyard. This is a democratic country, where people enjoy their freedom. There is a lot of respect for human life and human dignity and it is hard for Americans to perhaps believe that there are others who don’t think the same way. This country has given us so much love and such great opportunities.”
He pauses for a moment, then says with steely resolve, “When you are faced with tough times you work your way through, and become ready for anything. In fact the entire nation comes together in times like these and we are seeing that already. I think people all around the world will be with us. When the earthquake happened in India the Americans came to our aid and now it is our turn to help and give something back to the country that has done so much for us.” And we will, for as Herbert Wolfe said, “The flag still flies, and the city has not fallen.”