Memories of a horrific day

One of the questions everyone faced during my high-school years was "Do you remember where you were when you heard that John F. Kennedy was shot?" A similar question in this century was "Do you remember where you were when you first heard about the twin towers in New York being hit by planes piloted by terrorists?"

- BASAB DASGUPTA

I vividly remember where I was. I was in Torreon, Mexico, working at a manufacturing plant owned by RCA, on a temporary assignment. RCA, originally an American company, was later bought by Thomson, a French multinational.

It was a normal morning. I parked my car at my designated spot and started to walk towards the main entrance. It was around eight o'clock. One of my colleagues, Jaime, had gone to the airport to pick up a French engineer coming to provide technical support on some equipment. Jaime and this engineer were walking a few steps behind me. Jaime told me in an excited voice, "Basab, did you hear about the planes striking the World Trade buildings in New York? There were two planes and both towers were hit. I saw the second tower being hit as they were showing the video of the damage to the first tower."

I gave him a blank stare. None of this made any sense. Jaime repeated some of the same statements and then said, "Let us go to Francisco's office and watch on TV." Francisco was the plant manager. He and his staff members and I huddled around the TV. It was an unbelievable scene. I was shocked, horrified, angry, and almost numb at what I was seeing. Then reports started to come in about a hit on the Pentagon by a plane and another plane crashing in Pennsylvania.

I immediately made two phone calls—one to my ex-wife Swapna and one to my daughter Runa (not real names) who were both in California. It was shortly after 6 a.m. in California, and I woke Swapna up to give the bad news, urging her to turn the TV on. I remember her saying, "Oh my God, they are destroying the Pentagon," as she was watching TV and crying.

I did not get hold of Runa at her Stanford dormitory. Swapna told me that Runa was in D.C.! I could not believe it. Runa had a history of often being in the most dangerous places.