RED – 1984 SIKH RIOTS

It doesn’t matter how many stages of life you’ve seen, the answer to this shouldn’t be difficult: what is the color of love? Through all these years of my existence I thought it was red. So what about hatred? Maybe black or maybe red. What about religion then? Religion has no color but why did I just see shades of red in front of my eyes. Why?

1st December 1990 I opened the old trunk today which was left untouched since the past so many years. I found the old letters and they were meant to be musty. The scent of his old clothes seemed nothing less than a petrichor to me tracing the only evidence that he once existed. Nothing but just the scent and I finally unfurled all the letters. ’I wish you came along’ were the only words I could recall.

Faridkot, Punjab

October,1984 Fateh and I have been married for the past two years. Our marriage was a love-cum-arranged one because our parents, being best of friends, were really happy with the decision of us getting married. Fateh had gone to Delhi for his office work and was finally returning tomorrow. I am talking of a time when letters were the only means of communication and out of the ten houses in a cluster just one had a telephone. ‘Noor, Fateh’s on the telephone.’, Neelu shouted from the verandah. ‘Neerav and I’ll leave by four in the evening tomorrow. You take care.Veerji will pick us from the railway station’, said Fateh. ‘I will.’, I had so much more to say, I’d missed him enough, and I would have if only everyone wouldn’t have been waiting for me to hang up and share every piece of information I heard over that one-minute call.

31st October 1984 4.00 pm ‘Turn on the radio’, Junaid, our neighbor came shouting. ‘Indira Gandhi is shot by two of her Sikh security guards at her residence.Violence towards Sikhs and destruction of Sikh property spreads.’ I couldn’t think of anything. My brain stopped functioning and time froze. ‘Fateh will be safe. Fateh will be safe.’, I chanted nervously trying to ring him on the number he gave.

8.00 pm The phone rang. ‘Noor?’, the feeling of relief ran into my nerves and every warmth of his voice soothed my frozen blood. ‘Are you OK?’ ‘Neerav and I are safe.I’ll be home soon. Very soon.’ ‘I know.’ ‘I wish you came along.’, and the phone hung up or maybe the telephone lines were poor. Days passed. I sat near the phone all day. Neerav’s wife Neelu kept on listening to the radio which reported violent mobs flushing into the trains and killing Sikhs. Junaid went to the railway station everyday to enquire about the same but it was futile.

November 5, 1984 5.00 am The phone finally rang. Neelu rushed towards the phone and her expressions were loud enough to guess who it possibly could be on the other end. It was Neerav. ‘Fateh?’, I enquired trembling. She just stood there. Blank. ‘Fateh?’, I shouted, snatching the phone, knowing that every vessel in me would burst. ‘Fateh ko maar diya. Fateh ko maar diya.’

November 6, 1984

Delhi, India Civil Hospital mortuary His white kurta dipped in the red garnet. All I could see was his face which never looked so beautiful to me before, his eyes closed and his skin as radiant as the sun and his hands wrapped in the white cloth not fondling against mine. I wanted to wake him up. I wanted him to assure me that we will make it through this ,that he loves me. But he didn’t. He just lied there like a marble sonnet and all I could wish for was to have his hand in mine, both cold, yet complete. 1st December 1990 If only the nights could breath and we sat on the terrace with your hands fitting into mine, you’ll tell me how your day was and I’ll tell you that this is going to be fine we’ll talk till the stars fade away and I’ll see you fall asleep I’ll hide you within my arms so you never go again, so tightly, so passionately but then when I wake up you are gone again and I realize it was just a dream

I cry myself to sleep again, to dream again but the clock ticked the hour away and I can never fix it.