It has been a decade since that horrific night in my living room in India when I watched the two towers of the World Trade Center collapse. I still remember the flurry of emotions that ran through my head. It was undoubtedly one of the darkest moments in the history of the US. The World Trade Center, to me, stood for a mammoth symbol of man’s ability, vision, conviction and action to create and to progress.
The effort and perseverance that led to erecting these two structures kissing the sky, celebrated the triumph of human potential and action over the odds of nature. Seeing the Devil’s forces taking this symbol of hope and awe, and reducing it to dust, made me feel cold on a very primal level of existence. I felt the warmth leave my living room, as an anger-induced adrenaline spike combined with the darkness that falls upon the heart when one encounters a tragic experience, paralyzed me. I sat frozen on my couch as the second plane crashed into the tower, and as it fell, I could feel one solitary teardrop trail down my cheek.
I knew nobody in those buildings, to me it was a foreign land, with foreign people whom I didn’t know, or relate to. Sitting in India, this event was not going to affect anything in my life. Hell, I didn’t even know anyone from the US on a personal basis at that time. But I felt completely split open, naked, and vulnerable to forces that I had no control over. I felt as if I could be next, I half-expected a nuclear bomb dropping on Calcutta that night, since I thought the terrorists were going to pull some similar stuff in all major cities of the world (Junior high is a strange time which makes us come up with strange theories). Despite my family being next to me, I felt lonely and insecure. What would I have done, if I was in the World Trade Center, or if I was in New York that dark morning? As a bystander, watching innocent people getting killed, my heart felt weak and wounded.
5 years later, life brought me face to face with a predicament triggered by a combination of an unintended chain of events, and due to my innocence in the matter, it plummeted me into one of the darkest phases of my career and the lowest pit in the valley of life. For the first time, since that night of September 11th, 2001, I felt completely split open, naked, and vulnerable to forces that I had no control over. I broke down, and felt the same coldness descend upon me that I had felt that horrid night. Despite my family being next to me, I felt lonely and insecure and completely wounded by the brutish realities of human existence.
Destiny, yielding its absolute powers of irony, held my hand and took me to a non-descript town in the heart of the US, continents away from the place where I was born and brought up, away from all my friends and family. The reason for my writing this revelatory note, is the connection I felt with the US when I first set foot outside the airport at New York and breathed in its air. The air whispered hope into my ears, a kind of hope that I had never experienced before. I thought about the human will and effort of the hundreds of fire-fighters and civilians that I had seen on television, trying to rescue trapped people in the rubble of the World Trade Center. I thought about the thousands of man hours that had been put into rebuilding what was lost, and the combined sense of spirit that New York had created, picking themselves up, dusting their clothes off and fighting back. The New York air told my troubled mind, this darkness won’t last, you will.
Born and brought up a Hindu, religious scripture for me is ‘the Bhagvad Gita‘, a collection of ideas which are an important part of Indian mythology, which were imparted by one Lord Krishna, amidst a battlefield, to a warrior called Arjuna experiencing the darkest hour of his life.
The Gita has the idea of Karma, or ‘action’, as its central theme. It focuses on how the power of human will combined with action can move mountains. It professes that we, as humans, can only find peace by performing our actions (preferably without expecting the fruits of said actions) and an action-centric way of life can change any circumstance that we are brought face-to-face with.
During my time as a student in the US, I saw all the ideas laid out in the Gita (not the vegetarianism bit of course!) in action. Here was a country of people which was built on the beliefs of liberty, human will and action. The fact that I couldn’t see a practical demonstration of Indian religious ideas in India, but halfway across the world in the US, is the matter that deserves a whole different blog post. This country picked itself up after being inflicted by such a savage wound, and rose from the ashes (literally) on the basis of inner strength and action. The new World Trade Center that is being currently constructed, will be even a greater architectural marvel than it’s predecessor. Never before have I seen the Phoenix metaphor being played out with such perfection.
The Gita taught me how to turn my life around with action, 9-11 showed me how it is done. And I followed suit, I chose action and undeterred focus, I chose will-power and inner strength and I turned my life around. I rose, and will continue to rise with the fervor of never backing down, because I still remember what the air in New York told me that afternoon, ‘this darkness won’t last, you will‘.
Towards the end of my academic career in the US, I visited Ground Zero, and saw the two powerful beams of light that shoot up in the air where the former buildings once stood. I thought to myself, what better way to represent the two towers, than two beams of light, cutting through the darkness?
9-11 has taught me that we cannot resolve the past.
But we can kick darkness, till it bleeds to light.
- Light beams cutting through the darkness
