The World Financial Center lies right next to the Ground Zero... and it is the World Trade Center site that I have to cross everyday as I get to the office... a site that stood testimony to one of the worst ever tragedies of the 21st century. The debris is still being collected out of the complex, and from the top, one can see a huge hole, as the foundations of the WTC are still intact..... Beside the complex a huge banner running the full height of a 50-floor building proclaims.....'The human spirit is not measured by the size of the act, but by the size of the heart'. NYC was a city that was reduced to abject tragedy a year and a half back..... and the denizens of this city are yet to recover from that shock.... The towers were so much a part of New Yorkers' lives, that when they came down, they not only changed the skyline of NY, but also the lifestyle.... today, NY is a city living more in chains than in the freedom that Lady Liberty proclaims.....

People whom I meet here tell me of how NYC was pre-9/11. There were absolutely no security checks where the security came face to face with people.... there were no '2-hours-prior-to-flight' reporing times.... there were no barriers at the various office buildings. Today, the memories of Sep 11 have changed the face of NY to leave permanent scars..... Offices have elaborate security arrangements.... Each employee at the WFC offices needs to go through a bank of barriers where his/her fingerprints AND ID BOTH have to be matching database records..... and then, further, he/she needs to swipe to gain permission at every level of entrance, and surprisingly, EXIT too!!!

At the time of Sep 11, Amex Technologies was operating from neighbouring New Jersey state, while the traders were at WFC....

The most difficult thing about being at the office here is, each time I look down my window.... I stare into the depths of the World Trade Center towers..... One of humanity's worst attacks, the WTC site quietly stands bearing on its back a horrible past. A flight of stairs leads nowhere in a corner of the campus, and a score of trucks keep lumbering in and out carrying debris from WTC 7. Hectic work is going on at the Twin Towers site where the train station underground is being restored. The place wears a look of a graveyard. And that was what it was! I had a chance to talk about that day to some of the employees here, who were, on that day in this very same building when the planes banged... And, one lady was in WTC when it happened!

The Towers so dominated the city, that from neighbouring Jersey City, you could see them reaching beyond the skies..... And, when the aircraft rammed in, a street that was at least 50 streets away, the 42nd Street, was filled with dust! Thinking about it in terms of Madras(Trichy/Bangalore), it would translate like, if the towers were to be in Adyar(BHEL in Trichy/Raheja Towers, MG Road in Bangalore), imagine all of T-Nagar (Palpannai in Trichy/ Indira Nagar in Bangalore) being covered by dust! That, they said, was how it was..... And the one memory that would never ever leave their minds... a picture that would ever remain forged in their spaces, despite desperately wishing it to go.. would be the sight of seeing hundreds of people jump to their deaths from the towers.... "We initially thought it was furniture falling", said Arlene Laungayan, a Manager with the Dealing Room. "It was only when they were closer that we realized that it was people. That was something that I would never even want to talk about". I excused myself with a lot of apologies, and went on to talk about what happened at this building (WFC) that day.....

There was a shudder, and a huge explosion..... and the alarm went on... and the security came over the Public Address System to inform that nothing was to be immediately reported, and that the building was not in danger.... and that people could get back to work, and that an enquiry was being conducted..... The reason???? The WTC was so tall (It was exactly twice the height of our building, we have 52 floors here), that people could not, from here, see the first plane having crashed into the tower. It was only a few minutes later when the security realized what had happened... and ordered an immediate evacuation. The first bunch was hardly out when the second plane crashed.

Rick Perez (one of my managers here) was driving to the office when he saw smoke bellowing from the top of the towers. Not knowing what it was, he drove straight to the Amex Technologies office in New Jersey, and that was when he heard what happened..... Rick had some personal friends in the WTC..... I have not asked him about what happened to them. Had they been okay, he would have told me....

Joe Fernandez and some others (some members of the GMS Team (God knows what this team does, anyway!)) were in a meeting at the New Jersey office when out of the window, he saw a plane fly straight into the towers.... and before sense returned, another followed..... He was quoted as saying that that was a scene which had no parallel in life.

Catalina Borrero, a dealer in Amex now, was working with someone else at that time, and that office was at WTC 7..... She was in the 11th floor, and had gone into the office at about 8:00 in the morning... within the hour, there was chaos..... and she rushed out, leaving her everything...... The next morning, the building was no longer standing... the remains of the Twin Towers had fallen on this puny giant.

Mike Daly, a trader who had begun as a runner boy (I have read that story somewhere!) was also in WFC... making "good money" when came the siren for evacuation... and he rushed out..... And he had just got into the ferry station when the second bang of the second plane was heard. From his boat, he could see the bodies fall on their way to certain death.

These are blood-curling... and I could not help wonder how the city managed to cope with such a dastardly act...... and each time I cross the site, my heart offers a silent prayer to the victims of one of the worst terror attacks.... It is a sombre sight, and there are no crowds of visitors anymore..... They are all gone, and the WTC site is now a place of pilgrimage. A new model has been selected to replace the towers, and, of course, life has to go on....

However, even if there comes a new building, it would only be a thin cousin of the famous WTC..... and would, however vibrant its design, be only a pale lower rung when people look up at the sky and find a monument gone, and in its place a modern mockery of a memorial..... I have been here only for 2 months, and still find the loss..... and my heart goes out to those millions of New Yorkers who grew with it, wishing Goodmorning everyday for over 25 years...... While the machines turn, and chimneys smoke.... a silent tear drop escapes me, as I read the banner reinforcing the American resolve to grow from the bottom.... and not for the first time, I salute the Americans for this.... because, by boldly going ahead and picking up the shreds, and by rebuilding the towers, they win the war more convincingly than a few hundred daisy cutters over a helpless oil rich sovereign power..... And, in one tiny corner, almost hidden by all the scaffolding, someone had scribbled.... 'It cannot get worse. But, is that all?'. That, my friends, is the American spirit!

Vijay Kumar
(Vijay Premkumar works with Infosys Technologies, Chennai, and is currently (2003) at New York working from the World Financial Center, right next to the World Trade Center site.... and has an everyday knowledge of what happens in Ground Zero.)