First up, are the Gujarat riots - 2002. This was probably the most important piece of history that I lived through. I was thankfully not a victim. But it did impact my thoughts.
I was in class IV then and we were to have our picnic to a water park the next day. We were all jumpy jumpy about it. We had our 'list of things to be brought' ready. I guess it was in the last period that our class teacher(Manjari Madam I suppose) came and told us that the picnic was cancelled. We weren't told why this had happened. So naturally, our tiny little brains statred overworking to work out the reason. We concluded that the water park was closed because the owner, who was quite a crook, had landed up in jail again and so the water park was shut.
Disappointed, when I reached home, I rang up Dad and told him about the cancelled picnic. He was sounding a little confused now. It was then that he told me that a train was burnt in Godhra. "Where is Godhra?" was the first thing I asked him. "Its somewhere nearby" came his reply.
When I think of all this today, the part which inrigues me the most was that for almost an entire day, all I was sad and worried and depressed about was the picnic. Reading things like "50 people die in Godhra carnage" appeared simply trivial to me. It wasn't that we were insensitive. It was just that we didn't know what communal riots were all about. We didn't know what the death of 50 people meant.
Till almost one day after the riots things were fine; in Anand at least. The next day, we even had school. It was supposed to be a Gujarat Bandh that day. Again, all we were worried about was that kids of other schools were getting a holiday and we weren't.
The fear began when some mob leader threatened to stone the school or something like that if the school wasn't shut down. Not everyone knew this. I happened to be at the reception when all this was happening. So I knew.
Anyways, this was the first time we were being sent back home from school with such urgency. This was the time the Hindu mobs had begun taking to the streets. My parents trusted my maturity and the news channels' sensitivity and they let me watch television for all the news on the riots. What I saw on TV that day scared me. It was really scary. I had never even heard of things like these, leave alone seeing.
To make me feel a little better, my parents took me for a stroll in the campus. (I was living in a really secure campus, probably the most secure place in Anand then. So life inside the campus could go on as usual). We went upto the gate and the guards said the customary 'Salaam Saab' to Dad. Everything looked pretty normal. It was in the night, so the empty streets also blended into the apparent normalcy.
But, this peace and quiet, was quite literally the calm before the storm. Suddenly, there was shouting all around. It turned out that the bakery near the temple was being looted before being burnt. I was immediately taken back home. But the images haunted me. It was the most popular bakery around. Everyone went there and at almost all times, you could see the sadhu sant people from the temple eating something there. Why then did they turn against that very place?
Riots make people blind to other peoples pain, deaf to the cries of help of the kid next door and they also maim them by tieng up their hands when they wish to stand up against the wrong being done. People whom you proudly called your family suddenly become people of the ither religion. Riots like the one we had scar human relations forever.
Most riots in this county are not due to something genuine people feel or have experienced. Its because someone who can speak convincingly thinks he'll benefit if people are at each others' throats. Non existent problems are made in the 'burning issue of the hour'.
But at the end of it all, it is the optimistic human spirit which triumphs. Sure it takes time to heal the wounds of a riot. But with the years, people are willing to put aside their past and start afresh once again . . . .
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