By Syed Zarir Hussain, IANS,
Guwahati : Young Purnima Begum and her four-year-old son Elvis were glued to the television for the past few days looking at the gory images of the Mumbai terror attacks.
And when visuals of a sobbing Moshe Holtzberg, the two-year-old orphan of Rabbi Gavriel and Rivika Holtzberg who died in the attack, were shown on television during the memorial service at a synagogue in Mumbai Monday, both Purnima and Elvis simply broke down.
“I can feel the pain and realise little Moshe’s fate,” Purnima said, as tears rolled down her cheeks. Purnima has seen death from close – her husband Rana was among those killed in the wave of bombings in Assam Oct 30.
“After my husband’s death we were totally shattered with Elvis literally shell shocked and refusing to eat for a couple of days,” Purnima says recollecting the horrific sight of her husband’s body arriving at their Guwahati home draped in a white sheet splattered with blood.
Today Purnima is trying to put up a brave front. “I as a terror victim can feel the woes of the families of those killed in the Mumbai attacks. My heart goes out to all of them… we don’t need sympathies, we want tough and bold action from the government in the war against terror,” Purnima, a homemaker, said with palpable anger seething from her face.
Like Purnima, Bimala Kalita of Guwahati is equally distraught after the Mumbai terror strikes.
“Not just words, we want tough action to deal with terrorism. In this hour of crisis, my prayers are with the families of those killed in the bloody attack,” Bimala said even as she was recuperating from the shocking death of her 20-year-old son Samarjit in one of the Guwahati explosions.
More than 95 people were killed and 300 wounded in serial explosions in Assam Oct 30, the deadliest attack in the state that has been witness to violent insurgencies for the last three decades.
On Tuesday again, three people were killed and up to 30 wounded in a powerful explosion inside a passenger train at the Diphu railway station in Karbi Anglong district, about 300 km east of Assam’s main city of Guwahati.
“The death of all these people in Assam and Mumbai should not go waste. Their souls would rest in peace only if we jointly put up a spirited war against terror, but definitely not just political rhetoric’s and resignation dramas by ministers,” said an equally angry Renu Rai.
Renu lost her husband Gyanendra during one of the blast at the western Assam town of Kokrajhar Oct 30.
Kalpana Das also lost her son Titon in the same Kokrajhar blast. She said: “Let the nation act together now, rather then simply reacting after every attack.”
“The colour of the blood of my son is the same as the colour of the blood of those who died in Mumbai. So it’s time people stopped playing politics over terror.”