Times

It was an ordinary morning, until 10:45 am when my boss came out and mentioned the blast at Delhi High Court. The next, what, 90 seconds were filled with anxiety. Mom told me she was in office, not at the court, and that was the end of the tragedy for me. We talked about it in office, watched some news, and got about the routine things of an ordinary day.

Shopping was on my mind for the past few days, so after work I set out to the malls closer to home. Apparently security concerns disrupted metro operations in the evening and my family got to know about it. I did not experience it. As my family worried and called, I hopped from one store to the other getting my card swiped left, right and centre.

At night, I was thinking of writing about the shopping experience in detail, but a phone call from a friend took over. We were discussing some nonsensical topic when the world shook. I have bad reflexes (which is why I don’t panic too easily) and it took almost the entire 5-6 seconds of the earthquake for me to realise what happened. Brother and missus were hyper. The next 15 minutes were slightly disturbed and excited. And then we got about the routine things of an ordinary night.

I was discussing with a colleague how these episodes mean little to those of us who have been fortunate enough to be safe so far. But thinking about the close escapes, or even the times when there was no information available, still gives me the jitters. Particularly the Delhi blasts of 2008 when I was in Pune and I could not get in touch with family and friends. I could not breathe. I still remember that Tarun was the last one I managed to talk to that night. Him, I panicked about because getting through took the longest. It was creepy.

This morning when I entered office I thought to myself how my mornings are now incomplete without the three coloured papers. But by the time I was done with all the papers that I browse through, I was feeling sick in the pit of my stomach. The blast’s reports were upsetting.

We are literally sitting on a ticking time bomb. We choose to not bother because we have a lot of other things to bother about. We choose to not bother because perhaps there is little we can do about it. Feels like such a bloody handicap!

And it is another ordinary day with routine things to care about.