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COVER STORY: TERRORIST STRIKES
THE TRAUMA BEGINS
For the Indian community suffering some 250 casualties,
grief is compounded by the terrible fear of a racial backlash
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SEARING LOSS: Relatives of Jerath who died in the WTC disaster
hold up his photograph
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Most days Gunjan
Rastogi, a senior consultant at Fidelity Investments in the World Trade
Center is in office by 8.15 a.m. On September 11, her five-year-old son
would not let her go. So it was 8:45 a.m. when she reached the office.
And there she saw a nightmare unspool: "I saw a red shirt and a black
jacket, and this man jumping out of the window, as if he was trying to
fly. I was hoping he had a parachute or something. At least six people
jumped out because the flames were so high. Whenever I close my eyes,
I see those six people jumping. I felt I should go and hold them."
Rastogi is one of the lucky ones. Prem Jerath,
57, who worked for the port authority of New York on the 82nd floor, last
spoke to his wife minutes before the tower collapsed. As the first plane
hit the WTC, Jerath's wife Meena asked him to run but bewildered by the
smoke, Jerath decided to stay locked in his office as colleagues left.
Jerath paid for the confusion with his life. As many as 5,000 people of
Indian origin worked in the WTC, of whom 250 are feared dead.
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"Bodies
were flying like pinballs."
Kabir Rekhi, executive
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The rest of the million-strong Indian community
in the US will face a long ordeal not just of tragedy but of the backlash
from September 11. As grieving Americans reel from the WTC catastrophe,
they are sorrowful, yet determined to punish the perpetrators. As the
enemy remains nameless and faceless, many people's anger and frustration
is turning to fellow Americans who share only the colour or ethnicity
of the alleged hijackers.
More so, after a Pakistani family in charge
of handling baggage at Logan Airport in Boston was taken in for questioning
by the police in connection with the hijackings. These are tense times
for the Muslims in America. Adam Lang, 76, of upstate New York was arrested
after trying to run over a Pakistani woman in his car, shouting, "Your
people are trying to destroy my country!" A Molotov cocktail was
thrown at a Hindu temple in New Jersey, resulting in some damage and the
Richmond Hill Gurdwara was attacked by people firing rubber bullets from
a car. An Asian cab driver in Manassas, Virginia, was assaulted with a
bottle while picking up his daughter from school. Nor is it a good time
to look ethnically different. Amrik Singh Chawla was chased by three men
even as he fled the WTC disaster. He had to remove his turban, which to
the American eye looks similar to Osama bin Laden's headgear. In Richmond
Hill, an elderly Sikh was beaten with baseball bats, others were attacked
with pellet guns. Many Sikhs decided to discard their turbans for caps.
But women in traditional garb now feel unsafe outdoors. Their ordeal has
only begun.
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