TRAUMA TRAIL

A quarter of a century ago, the New Year parties in the national Capital were family or at best a colony affair.

- SIDHARTH MISHRA Author and president, Centre for Reforms, Development & Justice

It was still to go commercial with bonanzas being heaped by the restaurants and hotels. So 24 December 1999 was to be the last Christmas Eve of the century. The middle-class apartment block, the word condominium was still to become part of parlance, where this writer lived had gathered on the rooftop to celebrate.

Most of the people in the newspaper office that evening had left early, soon after the night shift reporter had arrived. Most of them had a party to attend and the regulars to the Press Club an excuse to leave early.

My neighbourhood was pretty happy to see me home early and join the party.

Given one's assignment as the head of the reporting unit, reaching home was mostly at an hour when people would be in bed.

The assignment nonetheless had also given me a mobile phone which no other party maker in that middle-class apartment possessed that evening.

Midway through the party, the phone rang; it was my editor on the other end. He had wanted a story on an Indian Airlines plane coming from Kathmandu to New Delhi, which had been hijacked.