Peaceful march against terrorism………..

The last text message she sent was to her husband at 3.40am on Thursday. Since then, there has been no word on or from TOI’s consulting editor and resident food critic Sabina Sehgal Saikia. Sabina was in Mumbai for a wedding reception but returned to her room at the Taj hotel early, complaining of fatigue. Trouble began soon after she got to her hotel room, a luxury suite on the top floor of the heritage wing of the grand building. As soon as she heard gunshots, Sabina called her family and friends to tell them that she was alone in her room and nobody was answering the phone at the reception. ‘‘We advised her to switch off all lights and stay in her room,’’ said a friend. A constant stream of SMSes was exchanged between her and well-wishers, and they got darker by the minute. ‘‘So far so good,’’ read one. ‘‘I’m shaking,’’ said another. ‘‘Desperate firing outside, my window panes are shattered,’’ she continued. ‘‘I’m hiding under the bed,’’ followed. When friends tried to call her on her mobile, she whispered that she couldn’t talk but they should get her out of there.
Then came the grenade blasts. Setting the top floor of the hotel ablaze, the blasts were flashed across TV channels. Sabina’s text message to friends: ‘‘I can hear the blasts.’’
There was an alarmingly long silence after that message. Those who watched the hotel burn tried in vain to contact her. Hotel sources confirmed her suite was in flames. A hotel employee she was in touch with received a frightening text message from Sabina saying: ‘‘They are in my bathroom.’’ Her message to her husband was the last SMS. Sabina’s kin keep fingers crossed
Then there was complete silence. Calls and text messages went unanswered. Sabina Sehgal Saikia’s family feared the worst, and husband Santanu and brother Nikhil took the first flight from Delhi to Mumbai on Thursday morning.
Mobile phone records available with the family show there was no outbound activity on her phone for the next seven hours, until it was tracked to a location in Raigarh. Relatives have been to four hospitals and checked the injured and the dead but haven’t found her anywhere. There were some reports that the charred remains of a family in the adjoining suite had been found but hotel sources have not been able to locate her. At the time of going to press, the search for Sabina was still on…

This was the story of one of the blast victim taken from TIMES OF INDIA ( main edition dated 28, November 2008) .The Mumbai blast have left me shocked , baffled and has left me into tears as I write this post. When I read such story I just imagine how dreadful life can be, one moment you are happy, celebrating the colors of life and the other moment the doom knocks on the door and everything is left standstill . Is this what we call kalyug (living hell) ?

Today when the entire nation stands up to put a brave fight against terrorism , where are the lawmakers of the country, the white collared men and our “very own moral police ” Mr Raj Thakeray ? Why are they going into hiding as if they are the real terrorists ?

I think even the tiny tots of my locality who are too young to differentiate between what is right and what is wrong , today seem to be more mature than their age . No matter how young they may be but they have the spirit of humanity alive as they cried and lit candles in memory of all those innocent people who lost their lives in an unfateful event , unmindful of the fact that they dont even know victims or have any blood relation with them.

So to show my solidarity towards these young patriots and to pay my tribute to all the Mumbai blast victims and all those inncocent people who have been vicitmised by terrorism I have decided to observe a peaceful march against terrorism on this blog for one week. In the profund memory of the victims and our brave soldiers who sacrificed their life fighting for cause of humanity I light the torch of peace . I request my fellow bloggers and the regular commentors on this blog to show their solitude and carry forward this torch keeping the spirit of humanity alive.

“Let terrorism wither away into nothingness from our life …….. let peace prevail and god reside always by our side …… Amen ”

A day gone in trash!!!!

STATUTORY WARNING :This post is an exaggerated off beat post providing another glimpse of writer’s ( out of) school life.

Alright, day before yesterday I had participated in Prodigy -2008 organized by College of Business Studies( CBS), University of Delh. CBS has been known for imparting quality education in field of business research and is one of the premier colleges in entire Asia in this field. I told you the writer will exaggerate ( but yes, it is a good college with about 120 seats and 5000 students competing for it…okay then what is so good about it ? 😛 ) .

THE JOURNEY

It was a chilly morning ( yipeeeee winters are coming back 😛 ) . I was sitting in the front seat with my friend accompanied with the driver ( felt like kicking him because I was not getting enough space,.but then who would drive). I was going through my business studies book and the worst of all chapter “ Marketing” because I was part of the event “Marketing Pitcher “whose prelims was based on this chapter. So I wrapped up the session quickly ( after all its harmful to read in a moving vehicle 😛 ). Then my sweet tooth stuck in between ,so I ate gems and offered some to my favorite economics teacher ( oops why am I misinterpreted? 😀 ) . She accepted it at my first offer( okay what am I supposed to do….I thought she had refuse! 😦 ). The journey was boring ….but thank god there was no traffic. The venue was located in the north campus( Delhi’s hotspot and students hangout) . It is one of the posh area and it fascinates me a lot ( I don’t know if I had land up there in one of the colleges next year …..but I don’t want to). Okay , so finally we reached the venue after wasting away 15-20 minutes searching for it…not to forget we passed in front of it and then found it was VIP area so no U-turn was allowed. It was a big auditorium and had 70 schools competing in the event. At the entrance we were greeted by one of my school senior , formally dressed( hey! do we actually change so much after passing out from school 😛 ). Next the guy greeted me with a genuine smile and I gave a polite gesture. So next we moved in , were handed out the schedule of the programme and were seated. As I told you earlier that I was competing for two events one was “Marketing Pitcher “and the other was “Acumen” – the brainstorming quiz( it should have been brain washing quiz 😛 …….tell you about that later).

So I took a glimpse of my surroundings…….okay so there was Modern School , Barakhamaba road., girls from St Thomas School Mandir marg, Bal Bharti Pitampura, boys from St Columbus, Amity International and of course Apeejay School Pitampura( hey that is mine)…..and list is endless(70 schools and half the names I dont even know ). The event kicked off with the college’s Principal welcome note and then introduction to the theme by one of the professor ( not to forget his bad accent). And with the blokes from Modern School laughing their way off as if they were some lunatic out on run 😛 , the acumen competition began.

It was absolutely a bad quiz( not to mention that I suck at business quizzes) . So out of like 25 questions both me and my partner were able to answer 10 . Now how the hell would us be knowing that which bank financed VEER –ZAARA. (these questions are part of BBS entrance exam). So finally going through so much hardship of answering questions, thankfully the time was up and sheets were collected. The result were to be declared at 12:45 . So then we waited for the marketing pitcher . But we were told that the students participating in acumen cannot help the group in Marketing pitcher preliminary round. What the heck? . ( actually it was our teacher who screwed up things by placing people wrongly 😦 the marketing pitcher guys knew answers of acumen and we knew answers to marketing pitcher). So finally results of preliminary round were declared , guess what? We were shown the way out! Yes we didn’t get selected in either of the two. And to add on to our agony, the comparers gave so many pauses in declaring the results ( as if it was an Indian Idol show)…..for instance they went on like this “the next school selected is Apeejay School………………………..NOIDA) .Great so there was another branch of Apeejay…and we thought we got selected. But at least the refreshment was good. Thankfully I didn’t have to feed on my lunch because on that day my mother had given me my least favorite dish……so the day ended in a trash….. with the school bus not available to pick us up……we took the metro…and with my teacher on top of it who didn’t even know the way out( imagine she took the token and went out of the station… 😛 ) and then finally I landed way back home and crashed !!!!

So that was one day( god it had been better if I had attended the school) of my school life or shall I say out of school life.

But that too is going to come to an end…….its just 4 months more to go for the transitional phase of journey from school to college ( I don’t know how I am going to live without my second home) …..

PS-

• Humble request to readers not to mind the writer because some points have been exaggerated by him. He is humming to the tune of ROCK ON and is unmindful of the fact that tomorrow he has a test so he needs to go to sleep! Go to sleep you nutty blogger. I told you ………….see 😛 🙂 !
• please do poll for the writer wants to know your views whether the exaggeration worked out or not 😛