Reminiscence ... of blast !!

As the news of serial blasts at Bangalore came pouring in at the office and everyone's face reflected a blend of emotion of sheer disbelief (Why Bangalore!), concern and fear, my mind went into flashback mode and travelled about 11 months back - to Hyderabad.

August 27 and 28, 2007, Monday and Tuesday respectively, were holidays at my office on the occasion of Onam and hence made a great opportunity to make a moderately long trip to Hyderabad on that weekend. So my wife and I started from Chennai on the evening of 24th August, a Friday, with all the enthusiasm in the world.

We disembarked at the Kachiguda Railway station around 7 'o clock the next day. We checked in at The Asoka, a decent hotel, which is very near to both the Nampally railway station (where we had to catch our return train) and Lumbini Park, from where all the local operators start the City Tour.

We were in no mood to waste even an iota of time. Just went in the room to dump our baggage, got fresh and came out to venture to the well known Ramoji Film City that very day. We did not rely on any tour operator for visiting the Film City - we boarded onto a local bus from the nearest bus terminus (the hotel authority was very cordial indeed and gave us the direction to the same and arranged for an auto rickshaw) and reached Ramoji Film City in an hour. We spent the entire day at the Ramoji Film City, watching the various shows, looking at the various buildings & fountains and most importantly venturing out into the splendidly maintained gardens and meadows.

We came back to the same bus terminus from where we started in the morning and took a stroll to the hotel, since our morning experience suggested that the distance from the bus terminus to the hotel would be less than a kilometre. As we did some shopping along our way back, we were completely unaware of what news awaited us back in the hotel.

We were back into the hotel by around 8:00 PM, took the keys from the reception and did not pay much heed to all the violent stuff being broadcast in the local Telugu channel. We keyed into the hotel room, switched on the TV to check out whatever unpalatable programmes the channels are trying to force unto us. My wife went to the bathroom to freshen up and as I reached one of the English news channels while surfing, I was dumbstruck - Hyderabad had been ripped apart by at least 2 high intensity explosions between 7:00 PM and 7:30 PM. By around 8:30 PM live explosives had been defused in at least 4/5 different places. It was chaos and mayhem, blood and death in all the channels.

We had planned to take the city tour the next day, i.e. on Sunday, the 26th. I realized that it would not be possible to take the next day's tour; I even contemplated whether it would be prudent to continue the Hyderabad tour at all. But it was not easy, probably impossible, to arrange for 2 return tickets for Chennai on Sunday. In the meantime my wife joined me and she was visibly extremely upset, and admittedly not without a reason. This was our first trip together since last January and we had to think of abandoning the tour well before midway!! Terrible, especially when it was being forced on us by some incidents for which we could not be held responsible in any way! But such is life, it fuels itself from compromise.

For some time I could not hold onto to my temper, cursed the miscreants for their cowardly act - the people who did not have the courage to face the world to battle it out; instead planted bombs in crowded areas, targetting and killing innocent people while they themselves enjoyed the dreadful scenes from the their safe haven. Then I became philosophical - I could not find a single convincing reply to the query - "Why? Why do they do it? Why do not they live and let others live? After all we have only one life to live - no one ones whether we come back for a second stint". I was sad, in fact I felt extremely depressed for some time. Then I shrugged myself off. I had to think of our course of action - to stay or not to stay at Hyderabad, to continue or not to continue the tour.

We plunged into deep thoughts; the only solace was that the 2 of us were together. More shots of the scene were exposed in the TV channels, shots of mangled bodies and parts of them. The 2 blasts had taken place at Gokul Chat Bhandar, a very popular fast food centre and at Lumbini Park, a well known tourist centre. The common element that binds the places together is that both the places remain most crowded in the evening, and the goons had chosen their time well. In the meantime, I went to the front desk of the hotel and queried about the relative locations of the 2 blast sites with respect to the hotel. Gokul Chat Bhandar was around 800 metres from the hotel and 200 metres from the bus terminus where we disembarked in the evening while returning from Ramoji Film City and Lumbini Park was about 2.5 kilometres from the hotel!! Further, I found out that the final destination of the daily city tours was Lumbini Park, the buses finally drop the tourists there for them to enjoy the famed Hussain Sagar Lake, the Necklace Road and the Laser shows at Lumbini Park.

The deep thoughts now directed me to think about the quantum of luck we had. We had planned to take the City Tour on Sunday. What would have happened, had the terrorists planned to carry our the blasts a day after than it was originally done!! Unthinkable - probably I would not have enjoyed the privilege of listening to the news of the Bangalore blasts on 25th July, 2008.

The next day (Sunday) we stayed back into our hotel room, but after much deliberation and consultation with the hotel authority we decided to go out to visit some of the nearby places of attractions. We left the hotel around 3:00 PM, visited the Salar Jung Museum first and then we moved towards, guess what, the Charminar - arguably the most communally sensitive place at Hyderabad, more so because of its proximity to the Mecca Masjid (notably, a blast occurred at Mecca Masjid just months before, on 18 May 2007). So, there we were - in the most sensitive area of Hyderabad, not even 24 hours after the city had seen the worst act of terrorism in its century old history. I suddenly felt privileged, fearless, blessed, endowed with opportunity and what not!! I took a lot of snaps of the Charminar, though I felt the monument did not look as grand as it does in photographs. We stepped into the Mecca Masjid complex (I was really surprised that people are allowed to enter the complex without security check of any sort), just a stones throw away from the Charminar, in a short while. Lo and behold the architecture! There it stood, the stupendous structure, its grandeur increased manifold by the golden light of the setting sun. The Charminar was visible from the Mecca Masjid and that gave me a great subject for photography!!

We did not wait till dark - made sure that we started for the hotel well on time before the sun sets completely. While coming back, we had to cross a cordoned off area where one side of the 2-way road was blocked. As the auto-rickshaw passed by, I could read the name of a burnt out and heavily damaged shop - Gokul Chat Bhandar. Thrilling!! So much of experience all in a few hours time :-).

We faced no problem during the rest of the tour - took the APSRTC conducted City Tour (this tour comprehensively covers most places of interest in and around Hyderabad) the next day (Monday, the 27th) which took us to some splendid places like The Birla Temple, the Golconda Fort, the Nizam's Silver Jubilee Museum, the Chow Mahalla Palace Complex as well as to the places we had visited the day before.

We had our return train on Monday evening. We went to the Railway Station directly after the tour. This was a memorable tour indeed - our only regret was to miss the Hussain Sagar Lake, the Necklace Road and Lumbini Park ... by a whisker!!