Reader's Report - Daijiworld News Network
Pics by Rons Bantwal
Mumbai, July 12: It was just three days earlier that daijiworld.com had offered its readers an opportunity to report any incidents in their vicinity, which could be shared among the other fellow-readers, who have crossed the 90,000 figure in the daily reckoning.
Never was it imagined that a situation would crop up so soon to enable one of our regular readers to narrate what she saw in her own eyes on Tuesday evening.
But this is what she has survived to narrate to daijiworld readers; she was one of the passengers in the ill-fated train, wherein explosives blasted around 6.30 pm somewhere near the Matunga station.
Dorothy D`Souza, 23-year-old commerce graduate from Bendur, Mangalore, has been living in Mumbai over the past two years. She works for a private company in Churchgate and lives with her uncle and aunt in Matunga.
She was one of the several hundred passengers travelling in the Western Railway train. It was her daily routine. And that was her regular train on the way back home every working day.
But the day, July 11, 2006, no one can forget, in the least, Dorothy. She was travelling in a common coach. When the deafening sound was heard, not only Dorothy, but all passengers in the train panicked.
It all happened in seconds. Several lives were gone. But compared to others, her compartment was very safe. She realized that nothing had happened to her or her co-passengers.
But there was huge chaos outside. People were simply running for life. The train had stopped. And she could observe only commotion and cries.
She had just witnessed the most fearful things in life. She had seen pieces of human flesh and bodies strewn all over...
But more than that she saw the depth of inhuman tendency ! Until then she was not aware that humans can be that cruel. Some guys were just trying to exploit the situation by looting the people lying helplessly on the ground and looking for a helping hand. Those cruel people were searching for any gold or cash that could be lying in the ground. In fact she did observe a couple of them pocketing cash and gold!
What an act to do and in what circumstances!
She cried. First of all she was in a terrible state of shock. At the same time, she thought it could be the end of the world. Within herself she thought: 'What is the use of living in this world?'
Travelling alone, naturally it was her concern to reach home safely. As she came out of the Matunga station, the news had spread and the entire railway operations in the city had stopped. People were desperate to reach their destinations. They just wanted to reach home for safety. To make things worse, the land phone lines and mobile networks went haywire because of jamming resulting from a large number of anxious calls being made.
Dorothy literally cried and for the first time she saw life's reality.
But she has also seen other side of the coin. What amazed her was the way a city like Mumbai responded to this situation. As she walked towards home, on the side of the road, many neighbouring families had gathered with pure drinking water and were distributing it to the needy and the thirsty, as they lay wailing, because they could not get transport like auto, taxi or trains to their homes. That is the spirit of Mumbai !
Because of the hectic traffic, many preferred to walk to their destinations, althouggh they were many kilometres away.
But it was heart-warming to see those good-hearted families offer water (free of cost) to the people who were thirsty, shocked and tired, while also wailing.
Dorothy saw a blast of this kind for the first time in her life. That shook her conscience.
But she says Mumbai will soon recover from this tragedy because life here is fast and people forget the past and look towards the future. She only hopes that the authorities will not forget the culprits and forgive them for their sin!
As she reached home around 9.30 pm, being a regular visitor of daijiworld, she realized that here there was an opportunity to share her eyewitness account with other readers.
She did it despite a painful, tiring and traumatic day, just as if she was duty-bound to do so.
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