With the dust settling, residents and shop owners of Dilsukhnagar are finally coming to terms with last Thursday’s terror attack. Normalcy returned to the areas near the two blast sites on Monday as most of the shops were open.
The clearing of the blast sites by the police on the same day also came as a relief to the people. The charred bikes and debris were all collected and loaded onto an auto to be sent to the forensics lab. “Finally I was able to open my shop today. All I could do was watch helplessly till now,” said Ramana Reddy. The scene of the second explosion, however, continue to attract the public, who kept teeming just to catch a glimpse of what had happened.
“I don’t know why they keep coming and seeing like it is a show. Even on that day I stayed away, while hundreds grappled with each other to see the blast scene,” Reddy added. G Ashok, who runs a flower shop on the other side of the road, too said that business in the area was reviving slowly. “This is an important area and a lot of people travel by this road. I guess even such attacks won’t deter them from passing by,” he opined.
The owners of Dress Code, in front of which the first explosion took place, were cleaning up the place along with their workers and hope to restore the shop as soon as possible. Although the building had been damaged, it was less compared to the second explosion which ripped apart bikes at the spot and also damaged the building extensively at many places.
It was the site of the second blast which got more attention from the public as the incident took place right on the main road, unlike the first site, which is noticed by passersby only on close inspection as it is behind a bus stop. “It is more noticeable near Anand tiffin centre, and the damage on that side was much more. The charred bikes and the scene have become somewhat a spectacle now,” pointed out Ashok.
G Srinivas, who works at a store there, however, felt that Monday’s developments were a positive signal. “I hope something like this never happens again. You don’t expect yourself to witness a bomb blast,” he said.