Ramya Sarma
Senior Columnist

I switched on the television to watch a travel show on the BBC and saw images of familiar sight with an unfamiliar twist: the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, a city that I love and have always wanted to live in, spewing smoke and flame. One part of my mind registered that something nasty had happened, the rest wondered whether I had the time and channel right. The classic double take was followed by a stunned realization and an urgent need to sit down. This was no movie short, it was not a strange piece of art of the surreal kind, it was not a very un-funny computer graphics simulation. It was real, and a reality that wouldn’t go away. 

As I watched, the cameras focused on the structures crumbling, people running, dust pluming over a city that was hurt more badly than it could ever have imagined. The networks stopped regular programming to show again and again – and yet again – how the towers were hit and how they fell. And then how the bastion of the American defense system, the Pentagon, was similarly damaged. 

Reports of the events that were unfolding in front of horrified eyes watching kept pouring in; there was pain in the journalists’ eyes, witnesses sobbed as they related their stories. And, as what had really happened became clear, other tales were told: about cellphone calls from the hijacked planes, about miraculous escapes from the battered buildings, about those who could not run and so jumped out of windows knowing that death would come as the end no matter what they did. 

Then came the careful piecing together of the sequence of the day’s tragedy. Shots of the first plane hitting the first tower, then the second. Then the hit on the Pentagon, then the crash in Pennsylvania. And the speculation, always the whys, whats, hows and whos that could have been responsible. All fingers pointed at one man, Osama bin Laden, who was quick to deny his involvement, even as he celebrated the catastrophe. Gradually evidence came in supporting possible Arab involvement – flight training manuals in luggage, a copy of the Koran, passengers listed in manifests but missing on planes, meetings in a hotel, a van that could have carried explosives…was it more reality or a need to find a suspect? 

The TV pictures changed, but always punctuated by that one shot – of the second plane hitting the second tower, which burst in gouts of fire and debris. Then came the second set of images played and replayed over and over again: the tower crashing eerily down, with a huge cloud of dust and smoke rushing tidally through the streets, pushing panicked people before it. There was the feeling of it all being a bad disaster movie, but everyone knew that no celluloid could have captured that magnitude and horror. 

Indian news programmes caught feeds from the US and from BBC and added local flavor with messages from political leaders and offers of support from a shocked country. But, as the saying goes, you had to be there to know, to see, to feel what – literally, and an abysmally bad pun – went down. Whether in New York City or in Washington, DC, the devastation was a massive blow to a people, to humanity, not just to two cities and a government. It was not merely revenge against a single country or against those who run it, but against life itself, against all that is good and positive and healthy. It was the creation of a sick mind – individually or collectively – with all the perversion of the insane that made it real. As most terrorism does and almost all mass destruction will do, it killed the innocents, those who were going about their own business without thinking of a unthinkable terror that would end their existences. 

And somewhere along the way, framed against the backdrop of agony and coloured by blood and fear, the American spirit found its feet and stood up again. There was a need to move forward, to survive, to heal, to help. People started the search for the living and helped succour the injured. They gave blood, they fetched and carried, they searched for survivors, regardless of the dangers to their own lives. There were small miracles – calls from people trapped in the wreckage, those who were known to be dead, found alive, and hopefully more positives to try and mask some of the anguish of that huge, unforgettable negative. 

The American President, safe behind his protective cordon, assured his people that justice would indeed prevail and retribution against the guilty would be the American way. Those who did the actual deed are dead, along with the thousands those lives they destroyed – for what reason? For whom? Who inspires such loyalty that a man is willing to kill not just one or two people, but whole masses of living, thinking, feeling human beings along with himself in a way that evokes nothing but horror and disgust? Hitler managed to do it, as did various “gurus”, as happened in Waco not that long ago. The Japanese undertook suicide missions during the World War and the LTTE is best known for its well-planned murder of Rajiv Gandhi, while suicide bombers are fairly common in the Middle East conflict. 

But the basic question is very simple: Why would anyone die for someone else. More, why would anyone kill so many for anyone else? Somewhere along the way some questions will be answered. Other truths will never be revealed. But as America and the rest of the world slowly recovers, knowing who and why will help in the healing.

Ramya Sarma is a Senior Columnist of The Satya Circle. For more articles by this author, please click here.