We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live*

"Everybody says I look just like my mother
Everybody says I'm the image of Aunt Bee
Everybody says my nose is like my father's
But I want to look like me."

Her nine-year-old granddaughter Kuljeet Kaur's poem shares wallspace with images of the Gurus in Baksheesh Kaur's two-room apartment, twin reminders of the faith and optimism that saw her family through its darkest hours. Dressed in white, stark in the dingy surroundings, she listens silently as her son Harpal recounts the night of October 31, 1984.

"They dragged out my father—he had retired by then from the army as havildar-major—and killed him. My 21-year-old brother Harkirat was up on the terrace, he saw the murder and cried out. So they went up and killed him too," remembers Harpal, 35. His mother, with the curious resignation of the very old or the very helpless, adds in a whisper, "Teen tukde kar diye."

The other family members fled in time to escape the carnage, but were refused shelter by almost every neighbour in their Laxminagar locality. Finally, 50 of them found refuge with a washerman in an adjoining street. "For three days, we huddled together in one room, till we were rescued by the army," remembers Baksheesh Kaur.

Apart from the death of his father and brother, Harpal recalls little of those days. "But the image of bodies littering the streets is something that has stayed with me," he says.

Putting behind those memories, burying the searing grief, Baksheesh then had to lead the family in the painful task of reconstructing their lives. They moved in with a son who had largely escaped the riots in his South Delhi residence; later, they shifted to the DDA flat in East of Kailash, where they now reside.

By the time they managed to get their share of compensation—Rs 3.3 lakh—eight years had passed by. Harpal had had to give up his studies to support his family; today, he drives taxis and does other odd jobs.

Just as life seemed to be coming together, calamity struck again. In 1992, Baksheesh's son Harbhajan—Harpal's elder by two years—was shot dead in an encounter with the police on the outskirts of Delhi. "He was with a friend, who was a militant. Harbhajan was caught in the crossfire and paid with his life," says Harpal.

Forgiveness should not come easily to people like Baksheesh, but it does. "I hope the people who incited the mobs get punished, but I bear no hatred towards anybody anymore. I just wish no one has to go through what I went through," she says.

Every afternoon, Vikramjit Singh takes leave from the computer firm that employs him in Nehru Place and heads back home to help his mother Gurbaksh fill up water from a tanker. The street they live on, unlike the rest of East of Kailash, does not get piped water. Vikramjit isn't sure why, has never asked.

The 26-year-old learnt early in life that not all questions life throws up comes with neatly tagged answers.

If there were answers to be had, other questions would be top of the mind. Why, for instance, were his father and grandfather hacked to death in 1984? Why did his mother have to educate him and his sister by working as a Grade IV employee in UCO Bank? Why did relatives cheat them of compensation? Why did he have to quit studies after Class XII?

All the questions were born on that terrible night of 1984, when a mob broke into their Gandhinagar residence and hacked the two elder male members of the family. Gurbaksh and her mother-in-law managed to smuggle out Vikramjit and his sister through a backdoor and fled to a relative's house in West Delhi. There they stayed till the army came in.

"At first I used to string beads for a local firm for a living," remembers Gurbaksh. "The UCO Bank job happened only in 1990."

Simultaneously, the family faced the rigours of filing FIRs, queuing up for compensation, acquiring a house, building a home. Unable to bear seeing his mother trying to make both ends meet on her meagre earnings, Vikramjit gave up studies after Class XII, only recently acquiring a BA (Pass) degree from Delhi University and subsequently a job with a computer firm.

"If my father had lived, I would not have had to see my mother addressed in an undignified manner by her superiors at work. Our relatives would not have cheated us of more than a lakh of the compensation money," smoulders Vikramjit.

"I do not care what happens to the politicians when the Commission report comes out. I never saw them and they do not know of me. The people who attacked us, my mother says, were our neighbours. But that was then... Now all I want is my mother to get some rest after these 20-odd years," Vikramjit says.

His mother has always advised him to avoid nursing hatred towards specific communities. Now, he says, gussa aata hai, but only when he sees his mother working even after suffering a stroke. Politics? Terrorism? Vikramjit has no time for all that.

As for myself, there's no time to dream. I'd be happy if I could get myself a permanent job as a driver

Gurpal Singh Kalsi is a worried man. At this precise moment, there might be other 26-year-olds who are as worried, but chances are his concerns are a world away from the romance-career-travel thought cycle of his contemporaries.

Gurpal has been taking care of his family—his mother, younger brother and sister—since he was 16. Twenty-one years ago, all four earning members of Gurpal's family were killed. Worry has been almost a constant companion since then.

But money is not the primary of his worries. Nor is the erratic water supply at the DDA flat his family has occupied for more than 10 years now. It is the authorities' habitual harassment of local youths at the slightest hint of Sikh-related trouble that worries Gurpal.

"In 1996, the police picked up my uncle Maha Singh—he was a student of Class X at that time—on some pretext and beat him senseless," alleges Gurpal.

Protests his mother, "If we were going to be following the path of violence and hatred, why would we be trying to lead this honest existence?"

Since 1984, Surjit Kaur has been working as a peon with the New Delhi Municipal Corporation to support her three children. The youngest of them was born seven months after her husband was burnt alive.

Gurpal himself started working as a driver when he was 16, saving money in his mother's name till he could buy his own vehicle to drive. In these 10 years, he has sponsored his brother's computer education and an ongoing college degree.

"I am very busy, I want to secure a job with the police for my brother," he says, standing before a mirror in a tiny but scrupulously clean room, tying his turban. "As for myself, there's no time to dream. I'd be happy if I could get myself a permanent job as a driver."

(Courtesy The Indian Express)

*With apologies to Joan Didion

31 October, 2007