iGeek Blog

Ahmedabad, the economical capital of Gujarat was hit by series of more than 17 bomb blasts on Saturday, Jul 27, 2008.

Few minutes before the blasts.

Around 6:25 pm, Shailesh called me, "What you doing yaar, lets have some snacks, I'm hungry."
"I'm sleeping, let me sleep", I replied on the phone.
"Ok, I will be at your home, after few minutes.", he said.
I told him. "k, fine, come after 10-15 minutes, I'll be ready."

"As I need to fix my spectacles' frame, lets have some snacks, & after that we will go to the the "Drashti chasma ghar", I told him.
He said, "OK".

On the bike, We about to reach 'Karnavalti vada-pau', near the location of first blast and suddenly bike started coughing, Shailesh found that the bike was in reserved. He told me to give some fuel for the bike first. I agreed & he changed the path towards the patrol-pump instead of 'Karnavalti vada-pau'. We went through Lilanagar, the area was normal as usual. Patrol-pump was in totally different direction from the 'Drashti chasma ghar'. I don't know why, but now Shailesh was not in mood to go to the pump. He turned the bike towards Thakkarbapa nagar. As we reached there, the area was crowded with lots of people near 'Kuldevi Tea-stall'. Also more and more people were rushing to the location. But we thought, there might be small issue between some people & they were fighting. So we reached to the shop of spectacles, I gave my spectacles to the person in the shop. Inbetween, people inside the shop were talking about the crowd, they told me, there was a bomb blast there. In just 2 minutes the person fixed my specs & returned me.

Now we were outside the shop, on the main road, everybody talking about the blasts, somebody told us there were blasts near 'Sardar Patel Diamond Market' & in Sarangpur area as well. I called my dad on his cell, but the line was jammed. So I called on land-line phone at my home. I told about the blasts to my mom, as she wasn't aware about the blasts.

We left the bike there only, and started a walk towards the 'Kuldevi Tea-stall' with the people, as road was blocked for the vehicles. We reached the sight of blasts. This was the place, at which me & my friends enjoyed Tea lots of time. But this time, Terrorists enjoyed the blasts over there. Police pulled the people back, so we also had to pulled ourselves back & we left the place. We were eager to know about the other blasts near 'Sardar Patel Diamond Market'. We decided to go over there on the bike. We reached near that, but road was blocked. Now, instead of going anywhere, we decieded to go home. So we had to choose the long path which leads towards our home. At about 7:10 pm we reached the home. At that time news channels were giving news about 5-6 blasts in Ahmedabad.

At the end of the day, figure of blasts reached to 17 and death toll rised to 40.

4 of the total blasts were in Bapunagar area only, In which I live.

Two blasts were outside the main building of 'Sardar Patel Diamond Market', which you will find always crowded with diamond merchants. After the first blast at this location, police found a live bomb & was trying to take the people away from it & suddenly it blasted, but luckily nobody injured.
Other two blasts were near 'Kuldevi Tea-stall'.
Another live bomb was found in Lilanagar, which is a sub-area of Bapunagar, luckily it was defused.
All three locations I mentioned above are just few meters away from my Home. Its like, these locations are on the perimeter of a circle and I live in the center point of that circle.

Not only me, nobody in Ahmedabad can forget this evening.