New Delhi, Sept. 13: Her bangles broke when a limp and dangling hand hit a lamp-post as two men ran with the woman’s supine form between them and bundled her into a police van that sped off.

She was probably in her early twenties, in jeans with shimmer. The face was in a shadow and dark with blood that was dripping on the road, the Inner Circle. The light was not good enough to see the other bodies either.

There were at least four of them inside the van, a Police Control Room (PCR) Toyota Qualis. I don’t know if they were alive or dead. She was moaning, so she was alive. I first saw them as silhouettes against the mercury vapour lamps of Central Park, Connaught Place, where Janpath meets the Inner Circle. The police van was in front of the Palika Underground Car Park.

It was shortly after 6.30pm. One of the two men, both sardars, later told me his name: Baljit Singh Bengali, an electronics shop owner in Palika Bazar. A stain of fresh blood — not his — spread across his shirt at the chest.

“There were many women and some children, stunned, unconscious, writhing — on that lawn over there — when my brothers and I went into Central Park and started bringing them out. I think we must have put about 20 men, women and children into the police vans — four or five in each,” he said.

I was in Connaught Place when the bombs went off. I heard them. It was close to 6.30. Connaught Place is crowded on Saturday evenings. It takes time to park. The parking attendant in front of a publisher’s office asked me to wait in the car. I was idling.

It’s always like this here since CP — as it is better known — was revived after the Delhi Metro authorities rebuilt Central Park. The three-storeyed underground station is the hub of the Delhi Metro where the red, blue and yellow lines intersect. Since the authorities restored Central Park in the middle of the circle — which is the dome of the station — this has become one of the best-known hangouts.

CP is still known in Delhi as CP, not as Rajiv Chowk. Most visitors who come to Delhi and can afford the time, visit CP. There is always a babble of tongues — Bengali, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Assamese. It is the iconic centre of the national capital. And it costs nothing to sit on the lawns of Central Park or stroll around in it.

Outside Central Park, around the Inner Circle, traffic was heavy. At least three other cars queued up behind mine.

Then the first bomb went off. Having heard bombs explode earlier, I wondered if I was mistaken. (I learnt later as I walked around it that the bomb was on Barakhamba Road between Gopaldas Bhavan and Statesman House).

Within what must be 30 seconds, a second one, louder or closer or both, went off. I was convinced. “Dhamaka suna (heard the explosion)?” I asked the attendant.

“Karol Bagh mein bhi hua hain (there’s been one in Karol Bagh also),” the attendant replied. The rear-view mirror was reflecting running silhouettes in Central Park. I called my wife who was driving here too with her sister. They were 10 minutes behind.

We were to meet and go for a movie at PVR Rivoli. I asked them to come to Baba Kharak Singh Marg, in front of the state emporia complex, told them we were in the middle (possibly) of serial blasts, cancelled the evening’s programme and asked them to drive home.

The drill in these circumstances is to keep moving. Two bombs in quick succession... and I thought of Srinagar where a photojournalist colleague was killed by a second bomb as he went to take pictures of the devastation left by the first.

Then I ran to Central Park. A brown dustbin and some bottles were lying on the red pathway between the lawns. Three twisted cans of soft drinks too and packets of wafers and fries. That is where the bomb probably was.

The spot is just opposite the Palika entrance from the Inner Circle, about 500 metres from where I was trying to park. From where to buy cheap DVDs. When I reached there after coaxing my wife and sister-in-law to leave I found it was cordoned off by the police.

Police vans and ambulances were hooting in an out and, I now recall, I heard the first hooters within a minute or two after the second blast.

For the Delhi police, CP has always been high on the list of possible terrorist targets. On any given day, there will be at least two PCR vans in the Inner Circle at any time and on weekends possibly more. It’s as secure as a secure city centre in India can be. In fact, it probably has more police presence than any other city centre in this country and on Saturday evenings even that is reinforced.

And most of the bigger shops and establishments around Central Park -- showrooms for Nike and Reebok and Bata, Levi’s and Colorplus and Woodlands, restaurants Thank God It’s Friday and Q’Ba’s and McDonald’s and United Coffee House, publishers Harper Collins and Living Media, stock firm Indiabulls -- have close-circuit TV cameras.

From where the dustbin now lay, its stand, a scrap of twisted metal had flown clean over the Inner Circle when the bomb went off, hit a lamp-post across the road and was now at its base. The twisted T-shaped piece with sharp uneven edges was enough to slice through a human body. Rajiv Bhagat, another shop owner and a civil defence warden, said the dustbin was about three metres from where it stood.

Central Park has now been emptied. Only the police, forensic specialists and a bomb detection squad are allowed in.

The blast was in the southern lawn of Central Park. Even in peak summer, Central Park is crowded and, with the weather beginning to change in the evenings in Delhi this week, families were whiling their time. It costs nothing to get there except the fare to travel to the place from wherever you are. Entry is free.

It is impolitic, perhaps, for a journalist to report in the first person. But the coincidence today is not to be easily forgotten. All of this afternoon, I was watching documentaries on terrorism and violence in Israel and Palestine in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv at a film festival at the India Habitat Centre called with the theme “exploring conflict”.

In one city, a documentary showed, an Arab was picked up by the police because someone reported him standing near an unidentified package at a kerb, the people were so paranoid.

Thirty minutes later, I drove into Connaught Place and paranoia.