I was 4 years old.... we had come to meerut to get my chacha married, chacha chachi had run away and gotten married side main and then my grandpa came to know and all hell broke loose. My father being the eldest son stepped in and spoke to amma and babaji to let this be and accept chachi. Therefore we were in North India on 31st October 1984. Since there was going to be an arya samaji wedding and there was also a curfew due to Indira Gandhi having been assassinated, there were hardly any people who had come home. We were leaving the same day or the next morning, I dont quite remember that.... all I remember next is that we were at the New Delhi railway station, mausi mausaji and muni were also there, i dont remember if rishi bhaiya was there or not......we were in the waiting room and I remember seeing blood and a lot of hair on the floor, I asked my mom what this was and maa said to me that the sardarjis were being killed and to save themselves they were cutting their hair off. Next I remember we were at the platform and suddenly a huge crowd came running and mom pushed me towards the wall and covered me. I hadnt seen the mob, but I had heard it.. I can still hear it. In the train (rajdhani or deluxe something) the glass windows had been hit and some of them had broken, the route had been changed and i was told by my cousin that it was because the sardars were killing people in the trains...... I do know the full truth of this now
In the year 92, i was 12 years old... a number of things had changed in my life by then, in december the riots in mumbai took place. I was living in Santacruz west and my school was in Bandra west. our school was shut for quite some time and then it was shut for christmas. We all were always scared and I remember that the muslim famlies in our colony had gone completely indoors, cudnt see them at all. Do remember the look on firoz's face once i had seen him outside. I also remember my school friends telling me that they could see mahim burning from their building terraces. We never talked about what happened, never discussed it in school. I remember once we were going to honey uncle's house in amboli, I think it was his bday or sumthing, I remember vandana was there and she was pregnant and we had passed a maha aarti taking place, I was really scared and didnt want to look up and just quickly walked away from there. Honey uncle had an enfiled bullet that he used to ride and he had told us that once he had saved some person because the group of 4/5 people thought he is from the police and they just ran away from there and the person they had gheraoed was saved...... thats what i remember from the mumbai riots
When gujrat happened I was in delhi studying law. I think it was then that i realised how much i have blocked information about riots from myself. I just did not want to accept that my city had altered so drastically and that human beings were capable of such violence...
Here I am now doing an accountability study of the state response to communal massacres, facing my fears, lowering my guard and letting the truth affect me, crying and wiping my tears and going ahead with my work, telling myself that this work will have an impact....
