NOIDA: Himani Gupta, a finance manager who lives in Aster 3 just next-door to the demolished twin towers, was elated on returning to her home. “We heard the crack of explosives from 5km away. Imagine how nervous we were for our flat. What a relief it was when we returned it was just as we had left it. There was some dust in the balcony and drawing room. But that’s about it. All’s well that ends well,” Gupta said. She and others had been assured repeatedly their houses would be safe. But no scientific logic or promise of precision from seasoned experts could cast away the anxiety that came from their buildings being so close to the towers that were to be blown to the ground with 3,700kg of explosives. Aster 2, the closest, was just 9 metres from the outer wall of Apex. Used to living in the shadows of the twin towers, Monday morning brought back a sight she had forgotten, of her balcony bathed in sunshine. “It felt like we had walked into someone else’s house!” said Gupta. Deepika Bhardwaj, who lives in Aster 2, couldn’t eat as the clock struck 2.30pm on Sunday, her eyes glued to the TV screen. “We sat down for lunch but could hardly eat. What if one of the boulders fell on our building? All kinds of thoughts crossed my mind,” she said. On Monday, even before she had returned to her flat, sunlight reflecting from the lift door had made her smile already. “That felt so good,” she said. Vidit Mehra, a corporate lawyer and Aster 2 resident, found some cracks on the walls of his ground-floor flat. “I am pretty certain this will be taken care of. Like the others, I, too, had my reservations about the demolition process. But it is amazing how good a job the team has done here. With the towers, our stress and concerns have gone too,” he said. Dharmender Kumar Rana, also an Aster 2 resident, took the day off from work to clean his flat and glass windows. “As my wife watched the twin towers go down on TV, she got emotional and kept praying to God that our flat remains safe. We don’t see demolitions happen every day, that too of such a magnitude. As we saw the towers go down, many questions were on our mind. We hadn’t thought we would get our flat back intact,” he smiled as he wiped the surface of his dining table. In the Emerald Court compound, normalcy had returned within a day of the demolition. People hung clothes on their balconies and some residents even took a stroll in the open areas that had been partially cleaned by sanitation workers of the Noida Authority. For many, it was not just the sunlight and the view that had returned with the razing of the towers. Residents said phone networks had got better too and they could seamlessly browse the internet from their homes on mobile data.
Source: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/noida/noida-freed-from-twin-towers-shadow/articleshow/93864687.cms