Memories of 9/11 attacks

It was a regular Tuesday evening for me. I had returned from my school. I had my cup of milk. I was relaxing and planning how to proceed with the homework that day. Sometime later I took out the notebook from my school bag and started working on that day's homework. It was around 7 O'clock by that time.

My mother had gone out to buy grocery and vegetables. She returned by 7:10 PM. My dad also had returned from his office around 7:30 PM. Nothing was unusual for my family. Around 7:35 PM the upstairs neighbour Mrs Khare had stopped by and informed us that she watched some news on the TV, "a plane had crashed on a tall building". She had provided just this much of information. She did not know where it happened or any further details.

My dad switched on the television while I was still finishing my homework. My mother was in the kitchen. My dad looked at the news and informed my mother, "come out for few minutes. This is an important news". My mother was hesitant but she is still came out of the kitchen to see the news. My dad told me to stop the homework for few minutes and watch the news too. This was unusual because my dad would always tell me to focus on the studies instead of seeing the TV. I closed the books and went in the living room to see what was happening.

The news channels were showing the footage where a plane had crashed into the Twin Towers. The visuals were really scary. It was appearing to be a terrorist attack, at least that was what the analyst were suggesting. I found it disturbing to look at. For the first time in my life I wanted to go back to my studies instead of watching the TV. Then suddenly I remembered I had two cousins who were living in the US.

"What about both of them? Are they in danger?" I asked my dad.

Dad told me that both of my cousins stay far away from the place where this incident has happened so the cousins must unaffected but definitely in a scary situation. I was definitely relieved to hear that my cousins where safe and sound.

After that my dad made phone calls to some of relatives and friends whose children had been staying in the United States. All those people confirmed that their children were not affected by this, but the communications were down. I immediately rememberd the Bombay Stock Exchange bomb blast. I got really scared.

I approached my dad and I asked him, "are we in danger too? Is this attack going to affect us as well?"

Dad looked me and he realised that I was scared. He patted me on the back and said, "not right now. We are safe right now. It is important for you to not worry and focus on your studies".

I listened to my dad and decided to focus on my homework. But while hearing the news of death and destruction it was really difficult to not think about the disaster but focus on studies. I remembered what my cousin had said when she was going to the US, "I no longer won't to stay in India where attacks happened every now and then. I am moving to a safer country where terrorist attacks do not happen". I realised at that moment how wrong my cousin was. This time she was in the danger zone and I was in the safer zone.