ডাকবাংলা

Time cannot always heal all wounds. Two decades have passed, yet, time has not healed the wounds, nor changed emotions associated with the Twin Tower attacks of September 11, 2001. In the history of mankind, the date 9/11 will always be synonymous with suffering, with the most terrifying crime against humanity.

Daakbangla placed these two questions to a few prominent personalities:

1. Where were you when you heard about the 9/11 bombings? What was your immediate reaction?

2. Other than the political fallouts, how did it fundamentally change our world view?

Each of them shared a memory of their emotional state in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Decades may have gone by, but we all agree: the attack against humanity remains as agonisingly unbelievable today as that fateful September day, twenty years back.  

NASEERUDDIN SHAH, Actor/Director

I was at the Toronto film festival attending the screening of Monsoon Wedding along with several American journalists, all of whose euphoria about the film naturally vanished as soon as we exited the auditorium. It was the most startling piece of news we could have received and it took a while to sink in.

I feel that the opinion about Muslims changed universally due to the incident and the American propaganda that followed. The reason I made that film (Yun Hota Toh Kya Hota; 2006) was because it occurred to me that absolutely anyone in the world could have been on those planes that day.

RAJDEEP SARDESAI, Journalist

I was preparing to record my weekly ‘The Big Fight’ debate show. I remember that one of my guests was Rahul Bajaj. I came out of the show and was told the news. And guess what? We changed the debate from the economy to 9/11 and one of my guests was a certain Narendra Modi!
My immediate reaction to the attacks was a kind of ‘holy shit’ incredulity. No clue of what had happened but a sense that this was just crazy. I remember watching the second building come down and that I think really shook us… I mean, it seemed like the world was under attack and not just America.

KUNAL BASU, Author

I was writing in my Oxford study on 9/11, when a friend called and asked us to switch on the TV just in time for us to watch the plane crash into the tower. Like the rest of the world, we watched stupefied. Beside obvious changes to travel, etc, it impacted on our trust of fellow citizenry, hardened attitudes and fostered intolerance. It reduced us in many ways, brought us close to the precipice of civilization.

The Paris attack had more of a dramatic impact on me, as I was in the city at that time and had passed by the Bataclan – a bombing site – barely minutes ago. I think Paris has coped remarkably well by managing to live down hatred and letting the good sense of good people prevail. It has made Parisians stronger.

TABISH KHAIR, Author

I was in Copenhagen. I saw it on TV, and as I had been to neither USA nor New York until then, it looked like something in a film. The horror sunk in only when I saw the first body falling. There was a minute or so between it changing from an unreal TV spectacle to a horrible crime and human tragedy in my head.

It brought fundamentalist Muslims into negative focus. But was it a fundamental change? I am not sure. I was old enough to recall that once Communist ‘conspiracy’ and the ‘evil’ Soviet empire had been seen and narrated in very similar ways.

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