Hours after the blasts ripped through Ahmedabad, its two halves stood wide apart: the eastern half clobbered, mangled, bloodied, the silence only broken by screams; and the other, its western half, snug, unscarred.

•1.55 am, The Grand Bhagwati, Ahmedabad West: It is like any other night here. Tired and hungry from the long hours at the blast spots, our car turns to The Grand Bhagwati, one of the few hotels with the lights still on. The lobbies are crowded and the restaurant packed with diners, revellers. It’s strange to think they are barely minutes away from the sites of the tragedy, still only a few hours old — far removed from the men, women and children dead and dying on the other side. The huge LCD TV in the lobby repeatedly telecasts gory images of the deaths and destruction. People chat, some even laugh, glancing at the screen for updates.

•2.45 am, Civil Hospital, Ahmedabad East: The post-mortem room can’t take any more bodies. “29, so far,” says the weary doctor. But the stretchers still keep coming in, carrying bodies. Bhuvan Shah is inconsolable: “Rajkumar, my son, had come to help after the first blasts. He was in one of the 108 ambulances bringing in the dead and wounded from Maninagar. They escaped the first and the second blasts. But the third bomb went off just when they were opening the ambulance door here. The bomb killed him. My son just wanted to help, why did they kill him?” One from the crowd shouts: “They used a human bomb to blow up the ambulance, the head and body are lying there.”

... contd.