‘The craziest thing’

Aruna Inalsingh, Fuqua School of Business ’95, usually arrived in lower Manhattan by 8:45 a.m. each day. But a lengthy discussion with her brother Sept. 11, 2001, caused her delay.

Inalsingh’s brother was visiting from California at the time and wanted to use her car that day. The two spent 30 minutes discussing how they would share the vehicle.

As a result, Inalsingh was en route to the train station near her home in Hoboken, N.J., at the time of the first attack.

“As I was walking to the train station, there were all these people out on the street in Hoboken, which was really weird,” she recalled.

Inalsingh noted that there were two different theories circulating among the crowds about what exactly crashed into the World Trade Center towers, either a small military plane or a small private plane.

“I called my mom and told her, ‘The craziest thing has happened—someone crashed a plane into the World Trade Center,’” she said. “My mom said, ‘I hope it’s not terrorists,’ and I said, ‘Mom, that’s crazy—there’s no way.’”

Despite the hectic environment surrounding her, Inalsingh was still concerned about how she was going to reach her office. After the transit lines into the city were shut down, Inalsingh gave up and returned home 15 minutes later, only to learn the full extent of the devastation.

“In the days after, I remember driving past the Newark airport and not seeing the airplanes coming out,” she said. “To have the whole airspace be completely quiet was such a strange feeling—you kind of knew something was really, really wrong.”