JOIN US9/11: Bengalureans recall day of carnage
Bengalureans with friends and relatives abroad panicked when they saw on TV the death and devastation caused by terror attacks on September 11, 2001.
Saturday marked the 20th year of the 9/11 terror attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York.
A series of attacks on US cities resulted in the death of nearly 3,000 people, and the destruction of iconic structures, and changed the course of history.
‘All phone lines were jammed’
Filmmaker K M Chaitanya’s parents were to travel from London to New York that day. “I was working on the lighting of a play when somebody informed me about the attacks. I froze. For everybody else on the sets, it was news. But I was really scared.”
News that more flights could be hijacked petrified him. “I tried calling my uncle in the UK but phone lines were jammed. My wife had no updates either. After five to six hours of panic, I learnt from my uncle that my parents had been asked to stay back at the London airport,” he recalls.
The visuals of innocents dying during 9/11 and subsequent terrorist attacks gave a boost to right-wing politics in India, he observes.
‘I was scared to travel’
Sandalwood actress Sudharani had family and friends in New Jersey, Boston and Chicago when the tragedy struck. She was also due for delivery.
“Mobile phones weren’t common then, so we had to wait to hear back from them. Thankfully, they were safe, they informed us over the email,” she says.
She was, however, overcome with the fear of travel. “One doesn’t expect a country like the US to suffer such a tragedy. How safe are airports across the world? What if tourist places are targeted? These questions bothered me for a long time,” she says.
‘The unshakeable were shaken’
Activist Tara Krishnaswamy was studying and working in San Francisco in those days. She remembers how the world’s most powerful country changed in a matter of days. “The unshakeable had been shaken. Wherever one went, there was increased security and screening, and also extreme scrutiny and suspicion. At such a point, one realises there is nothing like absolute safety,” she says.
‘Sang Mahatma’s favourite hymn’
Musician Ashley William Joseph was conducting a symphony orchestra “to promote peace and harmony” in Bengaluru when the news reached him. The irony hit him hard.
“Coincidentally, the last song of the evening was Mahatama Gandhi’s favourite hymn ‘Abide With Me’. People who attended the concert say it’s the best rendition they have heard. Everybody was emotionally broken that day,” he says. They needed hope, which the song gave, perhaps.
Among the victims were a lot of artists, he learnt after the show. “So on behalf of the Indian National Symphony Orchestra (of which he is the founder), we wrote emails to their families to say we stand by them in their hour of grief.”
‘Saw the contradiction in NY’
Comedian Danish Sait was in Class 8 when the staff of his boarding school asked him and other students to gather in the TV room and watch the breaking news. “It looked dangerous and it involved bad guys, that’s what we understood as kids. But I am glad our principal explained to us in detail the gravity of the situation,” he says. Danish went on to study and live in New York later. He shares a memory he can’t shake off. “On the one side, I saw the office of United Nations, which is supposed to uphold world order. On the other side, I saw the site where the World Trade Centre was brought down because there was no world order. We live amid such contradictions.”
‘Mistrust set in after the attack’
Congress leader and engineer Krishna Byre Gowda saw the visuals of the plane crash at a restaurant in Bengaluru, where he was out with friends.
“It would have a significant impact on the future of the world, not just the US. That was my first thought,” remembers the MLA representing Byatarayanapura constituency in Bengaluru.
He later realised he was right. “When I went to the US after 9/11, I found the warm, welcoming feeling missing. The behaviour of immigration officials and others has changed. There was irritation and mistrust towards people of different colours and religions, people other than white,” he says. The attack fomented Islamophobia and sowed seeds of division in societies, he says.
3,000 deaths
Nearly 3,000 people died on September 11, 2001, when hijacked planes crashed into the twin towers at the World Trade Centre in New York, the US military headquarters in Washington DC and into an open field in Pennsylvania. Ten years later, on May 2, the US military carried out a secret operation in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and killed Osama bin Laden, who had claimed responsibility for the attacks.