Moments
of shared history. For Indians, especially Sikhs, October 31, 1984 is
such a day. Seared in my memory, a date of ignominy with only a tinge of
fraternal quick-wittedness tempering some of its horror.
A day of rumors. Something had happened to Indira Gandhi. Rushed to AIIMS or Safdarjung, she was sick or wounded or dead. All day long, rumors swirled, thickening, thinning, like flocks of birds. Then it came, the moment of truth. Wasn't it 6PM when All India Radio officially announced? Indira Gandhi was dead, shot and killed by her own Sikh body guards.
Didn't the riots begin almost instantaneously? Living so close to AIIMS and Safdarjung, rush upstairs to the roof, climb atop the water tanks. Against the setting sun, a memory of smoke rising from among the many high-end fashion stores in the distance. Isn't that Perfection Silk and Saree House, the smoke a sign of its demise? Isn't it owned by a Sikh? Chilling portent of the coming evil hours. Soon, not one but several smoke stacks rise up into the sky. People mill around in the street, talking. Then the distant non-stop strum. Takes a while to understand it's the sound of rioting humans.
Maybe speak briefly with Jyoti, our Sikh landlord's grandson and his mom, Manoranjana? That day, they had visitors from Punjab, the heartland of Sikhs. Also seared in my memory? The first P on their visitors' Ambassador car's license plate.
How did my brother do it? The front gate, flanked by two posts with glass encased bulbs that lit up at night, one displaying the address, the other, the names including our landlord's, unmistakably Sikh. Suddenly, as the rioters grew ever louder, nearer, he picks up a paving brick from the garden and smashes the glass and bulb. Dark. Name display gone. Next, another inspired act. From the thelawala's ironing stand out on the street, takes a piece of coal and, in the thickening darkness, quickly changes the tell-tale P in the visitor car's license plate to B. Back then, with Mumbai still Bombay, it could be a Bombay car in the driveway. Wouldn't pass muster in light but at night? Fingers crossed.
Marauding rioters run past. Shouting gleefully, arms filled with goods from freshly looted stores. No reason to stop. No Sikh in sight. No sign this is even a Sikh house. Some even graciously share their loot, throwing designer shoes and sarees onto the lawns as they run past. A macabre vista of the end of days? Surely it would be something like this.
All night, our landlords hide upstairs in/ behind the roof-top water tanks. Next morning, I hear friends drove up in the dark of night, around 2:30 or 3. Stealing out, crouching below the car seats, spirited away to a safe house.
As the smoke cleared over the next few days, it also became clear we'd lived through a genocide. The Sikh genocide. Thousands of Sikhs were mercilessly slaughtered that day and the days that followed, certainly thousands in Delhi alone. Beaten up and burned alive as they made their innocent way home from work.
2009. Jyoti's working in Chennai and he, Manoranjana aunty and Jyoti's wife drop by the evening I'm flying back to the US. Now Jyoti has two kids of his own. A boy and a girl. A future materialized, a future that hung in the balance the day Indira Gandhi died. My brother recalls smashing the glass but surprisingly, he forgot changing the license plate but Manoranjana aunty hasn't. She reminds him.
My brother's quick thinking likely saved lives that night. The lives of our Sikh landlords. How did he do it? Still can't answer. The world suddenly topsy-turvy. Lives in the balance. Can't be sure what to do, let alone do right. A moment of reckoning. Instinctual, visceral? Maybe, but what my brother did on the night of October 31, 1984 was the right stuff, then and forever. The right stuff that precariously separates the civilized from the bestial.
https://tirumalaikamala.quora.com/October-31-1984-The-night-of-my-brothers-right-stuff
A day of rumors. Something had happened to Indira Gandhi. Rushed to AIIMS or Safdarjung, she was sick or wounded or dead. All day long, rumors swirled, thickening, thinning, like flocks of birds. Then it came, the moment of truth. Wasn't it 6PM when All India Radio officially announced? Indira Gandhi was dead, shot and killed by her own Sikh body guards.
Didn't the riots begin almost instantaneously? Living so close to AIIMS and Safdarjung, rush upstairs to the roof, climb atop the water tanks. Against the setting sun, a memory of smoke rising from among the many high-end fashion stores in the distance. Isn't that Perfection Silk and Saree House, the smoke a sign of its demise? Isn't it owned by a Sikh? Chilling portent of the coming evil hours. Soon, not one but several smoke stacks rise up into the sky. People mill around in the street, talking. Then the distant non-stop strum. Takes a while to understand it's the sound of rioting humans.
Maybe speak briefly with Jyoti, our Sikh landlord's grandson and his mom, Manoranjana? That day, they had visitors from Punjab, the heartland of Sikhs. Also seared in my memory? The first P on their visitors' Ambassador car's license plate.
How did my brother do it? The front gate, flanked by two posts with glass encased bulbs that lit up at night, one displaying the address, the other, the names including our landlord's, unmistakably Sikh. Suddenly, as the rioters grew ever louder, nearer, he picks up a paving brick from the garden and smashes the glass and bulb. Dark. Name display gone. Next, another inspired act. From the thelawala's ironing stand out on the street, takes a piece of coal and, in the thickening darkness, quickly changes the tell-tale P in the visitor car's license plate to B. Back then, with Mumbai still Bombay, it could be a Bombay car in the driveway. Wouldn't pass muster in light but at night? Fingers crossed.
Marauding rioters run past. Shouting gleefully, arms filled with goods from freshly looted stores. No reason to stop. No Sikh in sight. No sign this is even a Sikh house. Some even graciously share their loot, throwing designer shoes and sarees onto the lawns as they run past. A macabre vista of the end of days? Surely it would be something like this.
All night, our landlords hide upstairs in/ behind the roof-top water tanks. Next morning, I hear friends drove up in the dark of night, around 2:30 or 3. Stealing out, crouching below the car seats, spirited away to a safe house.
As the smoke cleared over the next few days, it also became clear we'd lived through a genocide. The Sikh genocide. Thousands of Sikhs were mercilessly slaughtered that day and the days that followed, certainly thousands in Delhi alone. Beaten up and burned alive as they made their innocent way home from work.
2009. Jyoti's working in Chennai and he, Manoranjana aunty and Jyoti's wife drop by the evening I'm flying back to the US. Now Jyoti has two kids of his own. A boy and a girl. A future materialized, a future that hung in the balance the day Indira Gandhi died. My brother recalls smashing the glass but surprisingly, he forgot changing the license plate but Manoranjana aunty hasn't. She reminds him.
My brother's quick thinking likely saved lives that night. The lives of our Sikh landlords. How did he do it? Still can't answer. The world suddenly topsy-turvy. Lives in the balance. Can't be sure what to do, let alone do right. A moment of reckoning. Instinctual, visceral? Maybe, but what my brother did on the night of October 31, 1984 was the right stuff, then and forever. The right stuff that precariously separates the civilized from the bestial.
https://tirumalaikamala.quora.com/October-31-1984-The-night-of-my-brothers-right-stuff
