User:Inderbir singh

The Days I want to Forget

My whole body starts trembling whenever I recall those days. It was the 1st of November, 1984 the day after the Prime Minister of India Ms. Indira Gandhi was brutally killed by four Sikh “extremists” who were her bodyguards too. We were having evening tea in our house situated in a rural area of Delhi called Narela. Suddenly somebody knocked at the door. My father went to see who it was and found that it was his friend Abbas Ali who had come to inform us that a cluster of around 200 “fanatics” was marching towards our house and they had already set fire to and looted two Sikh houses in our locality and were on the way to our house.

We had very little time to react, we decided to lock the house, and went to one of our neighbor’s house to hide us. As a six-year-old child, I could not understand what was going on and why. My father and my uncle had to cut their hair so that nobody could identify them as Sikh. My brother and I were forced to dress up like girls and had to tie up our hairs as girls do, just to hide our identity as Sikh children. After half an hour, we heard that our house had been looted and it was on fire. None of us could sleep that night.

The next day all of us went to see our house and the only thing we saw were ashes all around; nothing was left. The atmosphere was still very hot in the city and we were not secure. At around 10:30 in the morning on November 2, a police van came, they took us to the police station, and from there we were shifted to a riot victim camp. There we met so many of our relatives who had also lost everything. In fact, some of them had lost their loved ones too. We stayed in the camp for around a week and when the atmosphere in the city became calm, we were shifted to our localities.

Now the big question before us was where to live. We stayed at our neighbor's house for around a month. Everybody from our colony used to invite us for breakfast, lunch or dinner and a month passed like that. Since my father and my uncle were both in government service, they got government accommodation on riot victim grounds and we shifted to Timarpur, a state government colony. But those who were not in govt. services had to renovate their houses. Can anyone imagine the amount of compensation we got from the government? It was Rs. 5000!!! It was only fortuitous that my parents were in government service and we started our new life, but those who were in business had little option left and starting a new life was very difficult for them.

Now after twenty years, we have again managed to get our own house in Delhi, but still I cannot feel secure because incidents like the 84 riots are very common in India. That time it was the Sikh community which was the target and recently something very similar or I should say something worse than, the 84 riots happened with Muslims in Gujarat. Thousands of Muslims were killed and it is a pity that the same government came in to the power in the state that promoted the riots.

For me, the major causes behind these communal riots are poverty, jealousy (it is clear that the attacks on the Sikhs had less to do with love for Indira Gandhi and more to do with resentment against them because they were a well-to-do community in Delhi), and the lack of independent thinking, which allows politicians to manipulate religion and fool people into thinking that killing other people serves their religion. It is very easy for the politicians to mislead unemployed and underprivileged people or those who have blind faith in their religion for their own selfish interests.

Here I would like to mention an infamous statement voiced by Rajiv Gandhi, then India's prime minister “When a big tree falls, the earth is bound to shake” on November 1, 1984, the day after his mother Indira Gandhi was assassinated.

What the 84 riots taught me is my own precarious position in the Indian nation but also the shallowness of identity and politics in the subcontinent and in human nature.

Inderbir Singh Duggal [Primarily I wrote this piece in November 2004 and then edited and finalised it in May 2005]

Some of my Poems

Answers

Everyday I try, to satisfy the questions., Every answering word is a pointed sword., Blood drips from them.

Loneliness

Sometimes I laugh so hard that I cry.

Image

I see my God in my friends, I see my pain in my friends, I see my strength in my friends, I see my critique in my friends. Yet those who love me say I am cruel.

Pain's Pleasure

I asked the wound What purpose do you have? It said: to give pain.

I laughed and said I get pleasure from pain, the pleasure of learning. It said: that is my purpose.

Jealousy

Whenever I see a pregnant woman, I feel jealous.

Seeing her pregnant And my not being able to get pregnant.

I wish I could carry a child could nurture a life inside me could feel the pain of giving birth to a life.

But I have to live my life with this deadlock till I die.

Vindictive evening

The sun is getting down, light is fading, day wheezes to its end.

Here starts the vindictive evening. Your memories cut me to pieces, they shatter me, destroy me. The long dark night is waiting to gobble each piece of me.

Night by night, I am losing myself, And there will be a night, which will never end.

Regret

Here I was in my early 20s, And life seemed to be so exciting, Full of friends, gardens, drinks, cricket games, Clubs, discos, sex and temples. I mean, it seemed absurd to be writing these drab, depressed little poems. I knew there were realities, Like death, poverty, injustice, But they were not severe for me.

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