New York/Chennai

The building was on fire. It was so tall that more than half of the people working there never realized that there was a fire in the building. With two towers, each with 110 floors, it was considered to be the business center of the world and its name World Trade Center was more than apt for it. But on this day, 9/11, everything was different. People from big businessman to the bell boys where running down the stairs.
The local train pulled into the park suburban station in Chennai at a good pace. The train was almost empty. But within seconds, the seats were occupied and it was on its way to its next destination.
The aero plane had hit the building at the correct place. The crash had started. People started running down the emergency stairs. As they looked down at the ground, it seemed as if, they were spiraling down in an infinite well. The World Trade Center had been attacked. It was a black day. Millions of dollars transactions have stopped, with people not knowing when things will get back to normal.
A small girl bought me back to ground reality from ground zero, from New York to Chennai. Jeffery Archer had described the last minutes at the World Trade Center in a detailed way. I closed the Jeffrey archer novel and looked at her. She would have been some three years old. Her white dress was almost brown with dirt.
She tried her luck with an old fellow sitting near to me. The reward was two rupees. If that was the start for the day, then I bet it was a good one.
As the next train pulled into the station, I hurried as usual, a routine, which I almost got used too. As I took the window seat, my eyes rested again on her. She was running now.
The train driver blew the horn, and the train started. My eyes refused to move away from the small girl. I was curious to see where she was going. The train slowly started picking speed. She reached a place, where three people were sitting, a man, a woman and a small boy, whom I presumed to be her father, mother and brother. Her father and mother were busy talking something. She went to her brother and showed the two rupees coin. After a very very brief pause, they both smiled and hugged each other, a very spontaneous action. The train moved out of the station, but that scene refused to move out of my mind.
Most of the days would have been black for the small girl, unlike one black day for New York. She had told a story better than Archer.