Yesterday, around 10.45 pm:
As the newspaper I work for is wrapping up its edition, news trickles in via TV of explosions in Guajarat. Again? that was the first reaction. Only earlier in the day there were reports of many crude bombs found in Ahmedabad. We think blasts are in Ahmedabad but it turns out the tragedy has struck Modasa town of Sabarkanta district. The same reports of blood spills, wails of agony and a sense of hopelessness.
15 minutes later:
Blasts in Malegaon too. Are terrorists now attacking sleeping people or what?
15 minutes later:
News comes in that the House of Representatives in the US has voted down the $700-billion bailout package for the Wall Street. Dow Jones has crashed. TV channels are switched to find out the latest from the US. Will there be a cascading effect globally tomorrow? Newsroom hots up around midnight, quite unusually for that hour.
30 minutes later:
One of our reporters calls up to say people are getting messages of possible crash of ICICI Bank, and many are rushing to ATMs to pull out cash. This is truly ominous. Gosh, it’s going to be madness tomorrow. One, the bailout package falling through, and now ICICI Bank crashing… It’ll be bloodbath in the markets. I go to bed wondering what lies in store the next day.
Today, 8.30 am:
The first image I see on television is of a small child crying: ‘papa uddo, papa uddo‘, prodding her father, who possibly is unconscious or even dead. There has been a stampede in a Jodhpur temple and scores are dead.
Though as a journalist, for years together I have been exposed to grim events and got excited by them — for such are the events, unfortunately that make news — I have never had a run like this. Never I had felt confronted by gloom this way. The ease with which bombs are going off on roadsides… There must be so much of frustration all around — anger triggering blasts, and anger resulting from blasts… This is the time of festivities; and blood is being spilled. For whom and why? How can one enjoy, if this is the scene all around? I am an optimist, but it’s hard to be.
Evening:
Perhaps the only bit of good news through the day. Though Wall Street crashed and so too the Asian markets, Indian markets held out, amazingly. Even that mischievous rumour about ICICI Bank created no damage. It was mayhem, not in the markets, but in an abode of peace in a temple in Jodhpur. The number of people dead had climbed to over 100.
One conspiracy theory heard in the corridor:
There must have been a terrorist in the temple queue. Without a single bomb, by whispering something that triggered panic, he achieved his grim objective.
Oh what a gruesome day…
and we call ourselves human beings…
Sad, sad, sad
— Manpreet:
Yea, I wonder what makes people do such things.
— Raji:
It’s difficult to rationalise such things.
You guys journalists seem to have the best time when the world is crumbling. Good as long as u guys aren’t affected. (no offence meant)
Pradeep, I don’t know what to say… so, so sad…
Hi ,
I was reading ur blog posts and found some of them to be very good.. u write well.. Why don’t you popularize it more.. ur posts on ur blog ‘Sands of Change’ took my particular attention as some of them are interesting topics of mine too;
BTW I help out some ex-IIMA guys who with another batch mate run http://www.rambhai.com where you can post links to your most loved blog-posts. Rambhai was the chaiwala at IIMA and it is a site where users can themselves share links to blog posts etc and other can find and vote on them. The best make it to the homepage!
This way you can reach out to rambhai readers some of whom could become your ardent fans.. who knows.. 🙂
Cheers,
Where are you these days?