5 years have passed by …

September 11th, 2006 admin Posted in Events, Experiences |

September 11th 2001. I remember someone stopping by our office room and breaking the news and then us seeing the footage on a television screen in one of the hallways inside IBM’s building 62 in RTP that morning. Everyone was out of their offices, grouped around the several hanging televisions throughout the building. I distinctly remember someone instinctively say, “World War III is about to begin…” But more noticeable was the silence. What was there to say? Disbelief was so overpowering that normalcy could only be a pretense. Even if in the coming weeks and months, we got our heads around the what, the how and the why, that would not take away the disbelief from the fact that it happened, the thought that such things are even possible. The lives lost can not be brought back. The innocence lost can probably not be restored.

The World Trade Center towers, since my childhood, had been to me the image of the American skyscraper and American achievement. I considered them the most gorgeous of modern buildings in the world. They were symbols of simplicity, elegance, function and efficiency. Their grandeur lay in their modesty, their attractiveness in lack of ornateness. The New York and its skyline that I saw in summer of 2000, while interning at Symbol Technologies in Long Island, was defined by these towers. New York, indeed our lives, had changed forever that day.

I saw the site of the towers again in 2004 when I visited with my parents. It was a large barricaded crater-like pit. It was a sad day with a quiet sense of loss. The current plans are to build another office complex at the site. It will be called Freedom Tower. I always wished the exact same towers be rebuilt, with the exact same plans for, at least, the exteriors. Maybe people are averse to that idea since it might seem to belittle the immensity of the event. Maybe the thought is that by rebuilding the same towers the terrible events would be forgotten and we would be pretending that everything is back to normal. Maybe the reason for not rebuilding the towers is that the suffering of the innocent people who died that day would then continue to haunt forever. Maybe economics plays a cold hand and says the office space would not sell. But I feel, what better way to rebound and rebuild, than in the literal sense. A symbol of and for the indefatigable people around the world would be the twin towers rising back up from the pit to reach for the skies like they were always meant to. They would recreate the New York that defies defeat. The plain simplicity and austere efficiency of the Twin Towers would serve as the best reminder and monument there could be for what happened five years ago.