It was a splendid chilly Tuesday morning and with the onset of the Fall season, the leaves had just started to change their colors. Amidst this fall foliage, I boarded the New Jersey Transit to work in the City while still mentally engrossed in the beauty of the fall witnessed that past weekend in the Shenandoah Valley. Isn’t it always a drag to come to work after such a fabulous long weekend? While still brooding over why I have to come to work every day, this early, I finally entered my Empire BlueCross BlueShield office and settled myself down on my comfy chair with a cream-cheese bagel and a cup of java.
Moments later, a loud shudder roused me up from my morning slumber and I dragged myself out to the hallway to enquire what had happened. While on the way, the fire alarm went off, the piercing blare of which was enough to put me on to my normal pace. But wasn’t it too early in the day to have those futile fire-drills?
I inquired Ted, my colleague, on what was going on and he replied in his thick southern accent, “Looks like some routine fire drill they make us do each time. C’mon les head off down”
Meanwhile we saw Connie, our middle aged administrative assistant carrying her bag and running down the hallway. And so did those women who were coming down hysterically. It was glad to notice that all the Fire-Safety trainings had finally paid off and people had started taking them quite seriously. But what was the need to be so hysterical in a mock fire drill?
Clueless about the enormity of the condition, Ted and I joined the herd of people flocking down the narrow stairs, assuming it to be one of those minor fires we keep witnessing in New York City all the time and hoping that we’ll be back up to our cozy offices in no time. The only thing which still perplexed us was why Connie and her friends from upstairs were so hysterical about the whole thing. We dismissed it momentarily as an initial anxiety from the fire alarm clouting them and reached on to give them a helping hand to climb down safely. The downward descent from our 30th floor office onwards was becoming sluggish with additional folks from various floors joining us. The ultimate challenge awaited us from 5th floor downwards which was flooded with ankle deep water due to the damage of some water pipes.
While somehow managing to get to the ground floor we were incredulous to find segments of broken glass, wreckage and gore of human flesh and blood. It took us a while to realize that the “red thing” we were looking at was actually defunct human flesh and while we were having a tough time grasping the visual verity, we had New York City cops directing the whole flock of people outside the building. Once outside, still unaware of what has happened, we just stood there waiting. Perhaps we were still trying to get in terms with what we had just witnessed. Ted had vanished somewhere and I just could not find him around. By now I was sure of one thing – This was no mock fire drill and something serious might have happened.
While still outside the World Trade Center-I, there appeared a deafening sound above my head and I was surprised to see an aircraft at a distance which seem like less than 100 yards. I was amazed and surprisingly frightened to see an airliner this close to the ground level. My fright quickly turned to horror when I saw that same airplane angled itself almost vertically and go right inside the WTC-II tower, like a hot knife piercing a brick of butter.
That is when my panic button got triggered and the whole stunned lots of us, standing below the WTC Tower-1 till now, tried to race away from where we were to avoid any debris falling from the top. We did not know where we were dashing to or why, but the instinct guided us to be as far from the massive concrete structures as possible.
But could we really run far enough? The debris seems to be falling from everywhere from the sky or maybe I was hallucinating.
The impulse of this sprint guided us to be near water and we ended up near the banks of Hudson River. I had only heard the phrase “spread like a wild fire” prior to seeing the sea of people gathered near the Hudson River. I still had no idea as to what exactly had happened – but whatever it was, it sure wasn’t good enough, and the news of it had surely spread like a wild fire. But why was I running? And why was this huge crowd of downtown New York running along with me? Whatever it was, it sure felt safer to be with other fellow beings and on the wayside of the river.
While sprinting we reached across Battery Park, where a stranger (of Indian origin) approached me asking if he can borrow my cell phone. My immediate reaction was affirmative to learn within a few minutes that my cell was not within the network. He introduced himself as Sachin and joined me in my sprint. Along the way he told me he worked on Fulton Street nearby and had heard about an attack on World Trade Center. I had no heart to disclose him then that that’s exactly where I was coming from. He tried to borrow cell phones from others too along the way, but it looked like the whole of New York was stripped off any network signal.
In all this frenzy of saving my precious life, it did not even occur to me that I have to call up my family and let them know about this incident and if they already know about it, reassure them about my safety. On a slightly offbeat scene, in midtown Manhattan, Tracy heard about the incident in her McKinsey office on 51st street and Madison avenue, roughly 40 miles away from the WTC site and frantically ran down to my wife’s cubicle to tell her about it. Tracy had been a family friend and she knew that I worked in World Trade Center. She however was mature enough to maintain her calm while breaking the news to my wife, who till that time had not heard of anything.
After a brief race of 15-20 minutes, we finally reached the Hudson River port and there was an ocean of people there already waiting for transportation out of New York. In the meanwhile some speedy ones had already switched on their pocket radio receivers and it was utmost evident by then that New York City was under a terrorist attack.
I felt like the most perplexed man in that whole mass that was not only unable to reach his wife but was also confused and shocked at the happenings around him. It was then that I found out that I probably was not the only one in that befuddled state and that the complete phone lines (mobile and landlines) in the whole of New York City had been jammed. But what was I to do standing at the river port? The immediate thoughts were -“Shall I take a ferry to Staten Island or just be in the City waiting for things to calm down and then go back to office?” “What will I do if I take a ferry to Staten Island which is like 6 miles away from the city – I don’t even know anybody there – how will I possibly even go home from there?” Whilst under this dilemma two ferryboats came in and there was a mad rush to get in. I gave in on all my speculations and joined the herd into one of the ferries. Owing to the calamity of the situation, there were no ticket being charged from anyone on that day and it was a free-for-all ride from New York to Staten Island.
Sachin and I got ourselves a tight bench in one corner of the lower deck and there was an announcement to wear on the life jackets which all of us promptly did. People were still embarking on the ferries going out of Manhattan to safeguard them from the unexpected. Both the ferries were soon filled in much more than their accustomed capacity and the operator had to request the others to wait for the next ferryboat to turn in. We soon started on our journey away from Manhattan while still terrified in our hearts on what to expect further.
By this time, the beautiful fall morning had been warped into a sky blackened with smoke engulfing out of two magnificent towers nearby. Looking out the window, there was hardly any visibility with the black smoke glooming everywhere. We soon crossed underneath the Brooklyn Bridge and saw a faint and blinded image of the Statue of Liberty signifying we were getting away from the danger zone. The ferry driver resembled Noah who was trying to take his Arc to a safe ground. I must commend our Noah for a remarkable job of rowing his arc while being virtually blinded by the surrounding smoke.
The ferries reached Staten Island in a little over half hour and a SWAT team guided the passengers along the bay side. Though there had been hurried and hazy glances at the WTC twin towers while sprinting away from them, this was the first time I was actually having a chance to really look at them from a safe distance couple of miles away. They still looked as magnificent as always except the fact that now the top was smoldering. I was told that the airplane hit our building (WTC-Tower 1) on around 96th floor (at least 36 floors above us, thereby giving us a chance to escape out safely) and the second one which I witnessed in person was hit on around 82nd floor of Tower-2.
From where we were, the only things in sight were two majestic towers engulfed in smoke. That was the first time I realized that I was witnessing a tragedy of immense magnitude and had just made a narrow escape out of it. Though Tower-II collapsed at around 10:00 am followed by Tower-I a half hour later (which was an hour and 40 minutes later when I had first felt the impact), it was like all the movement had stopped in my mind and body and that I was dreaming about all this.
By this time, we hoped that the ordeal for us was over, only to realize later that the safe haven of home was still a distant dream. The offloaded people from ferries soon realized that all the three bridges (George Washington, Verrazano and Tappan Zee bridges) and both the tunnels (Lincoln and Holland tunnels) connecting New York to New Jersey were sealed. Along with these all the other transportation to and from New York City had been brought to a standstill. Consequently, nobody could either go back to the city (though I’m sure nobody at that point of time wanted to go back anyway), nor could one travel home to New Jersey because of the lock ups.
Though it was hard to clearly see the proceedings in and around the towers, the news was that the trapped people, having lost all hope of any air rescue, were jumping out of the tower to instant death. At that time, I thought that was the scariest news of the day coming my way. Little had I known at that time that I’d later be delivered the news about Jerome too.
I got the reports about Jerome, the senior architect for our project and an extremely close friend, who was one of the unfortunate ones to have boarded the elevator just before the impact of American Airlines 11 on Tower 1. The information confirmed that he, with others, in that elevator never made it out of the elevator as the doors failed to open. Our architect melted inside that elevator leaving behind his wife and two very young daughters.
As a result of the transportation lock-ups, there we were, a bunch of multi-nationals – Americans, Europeans, Chinese and Indians stranded in the middle of the nowhere for close to 13 hours, unable to reach our near and dear ones, before George Washington tunnel finally opened up for transportation and survivors managed to get back to their abodes.
End of story…..and beyond…
That night went off in chronic coughs amidst the frequent nightmares. The worst hangover was the next morning when I got up to realize that I have no place left to go to work, with my previous workplace now commonly referred to as ‘Ground Zero’. It’s quite a dangerous situation to be in to get ample time to reflect upon your life after such a tragedy and I had abundant time on hand to do so. More often than not, the brunt of such catastrophe tends the mind towards negative thoughts and our company having realized this, had appointed dedicated psychiatrists and counselors to help all the breathing employees ease through this adversity.
Though it was heartache of a reaction for everyone around when we met at Jerome’s funeral at a cathedral in uptown New York two weeks later, but I could also see everyone counting their blessings. This also made me ponder whether this life is a blessing in disguise and why could Jerome not make out of the WTC in time and I could. How is it that I was not in the list of more than 2600 fatalities that happened only in NYC that day? Does that mean I have some unfinished business in this world?
Only time will tell.
The immediate effects of this unpleasant incident had soon started to visibly appear on my health and I had developed a breathing disorder with chronic coughs which took more than three months to subside under the able supervision of a medical professional. This could have been due to the thousands of tons of toxic debris resulting from the collapse of Twin Towers along with unprecedented levels of dioxins from the fires which burned for three months. Three months was precisely the time which took Empire BCBS to come up and book W Hotel on Lexington Avenue for us all to go back to work while they looked for another building to lease in New York. Moving out of New York would have meant accepting the defeat against terror and this prompted the new structure to come up for our workplace on 12th Avenue near Times Square in another month’s time.
President George W. Bush marked the attack on twin towers as the Pearl Harbor of 21st century in his diary that night and I’m blissful to survive this attack to recount this horrific personal experience.
Recounting this tale here sure sends a chill up my spine even today, but I wanted to do this to convey upon a powerful message of appreciating the lives we have and making the best possible use of it while we’re here. That proved to be my ordeal to find whether my mission on earth is finished and since I’m alive, it doesn’t seem to be completed. At least I have started “living” now and have stopped saving the best for the last. This seems to have taught me to stop withholding my love and celebrate every day as a special occasion, just to be alive. Every minute, every breath, now appear to be a gift from God to Live it all I can. I think it had to happen to me to make me realize that life is a polarity with its light and dark shades and it’s never the way it’s supposed to be. The way I and you cope with it will make all the difference. The choice is ours to be a caterpillar and think about the end of the world or emerge out of it like a butterfly with the whole world ahead of us. I personally learned my lessons the hard way and wish the others would never have to go through any such torment to learn not to take the things given to us for granted.
However, I feel like the chosen one to have undergone the grief and suffering associated with this incident enabling me to value the truth imparted upon me in those times of sorrow. I guess I had to be ready to obtain this truth and thereupon reflect upon – Who am I and why am I here? What is my purpose? Am I fulfilling it?
I would like to dedicate this article to the loving remembrance of my cherished friends whom I know could not make out of the elevators in time and to all others I did not know who had to suffer the consequence of this carnage.
– Gagan Leekha