They went crashing down...

It was sometime in the evening that we were strolling in our hostel’s lobby after a hectic day at college; we heard a loud expression from crowd of people, “oh shiiiiiiiiit..!!!”. I along with my friends were very near to our common room that was filled with couple of big tattered sofas, a table tennis  section, a 32 inches television safely placed on a podium and a large floor carpet that was occupied with almost 100 future engineers. As we entered the hall, we recognized that all eyes were glued to the television and the expressions went like, “America ki to lag gayi..!!!”.

The first plane had just crashed into North block of World Trade Centre. More than the impact on economy that we could understand, we were more amused at the vulnerability of American’s security system against the terror attack. We felt like if USA couldn’t escape such attacks than better not to expect anything from Indian government. Some seniors watching the accident felt terrible due to the fact that it might affect job opportunities while the ‘Engineer-in-making’ like us were hardly puzzled by such great thought. All that we were shocked and amused about was the way America was being shattered.

The news was still flashing at the bottom of television news channel about another plane wandering around WTC and was confirmed hijacked. In a short while another plane hit the south block of WTC and we gawked at it with full-blown eyes. The mood was tense as if the planes were hitting our own college building outside. Even the canteen person was interested more about what was happening in television rather than calculating canteen bills.

Post that event millions of MMS, SMS and videos followed in the network and it had left an indelible scare in our mind. The world still shivers after seeing those horrifying clips of destruction of two biggest establishments of America. We can’t even imagine the state of any of the passengers in two planes (infact four) or the officials who were trapped inside the two towers asking for help. What kind of cruelty is this? Taking a bullet in head would be simpler than watching own death approaching close. A group of dozen people took death close to 3000, what kind of terrorism is this? Only Spielberg can illustrate such action packed stunts in his movies.

Standing on 10^th anniversary of 9/11 attacks on WTC, I pay generous tribute to those who suffered the loss of their life in this tragedy and an honorable salute to American defense system that made the country invincible since then.