Ahmedabad. September 23, 2002

Leya Mathew

9pm
My stomach is knotted up in fear. 26 people have been killed in a terrorist attack in Akshardham Temple complex in Gandhi Nagar. The road in front of our flat is one of the many borders near Shah Alam ‘Dargah’. Much violence had happened in this areajust a few months back. My dad calls me up every half an hour from Surat to tell me the latest TV news. We have no radio, no TV. If the mobile phone connections are cut off, we will be cut off from the entire world. Mobile connections were jammed all afternoon. The night sky shows a helicopter light circling the city. The knot in the bottom of my stomach grows tighter. My fourth floor flat in Dani-Limda is too high to jump down from in case someone comes to attack us for being neither a Hindu nor a Muslim, but just a human being.

We watch and wait...Tonight, Riyaz (one of our local friends) had sent us Tiffin from his home…we eat the delicious basmati rice and chicken curry…in apprehension, fear and in anxious thoughts about what will follow.
We call up Riyaz. He comes over, gives us the phone numbers of the local Police Station. “Whatever you do, don’t go out on the road if anything happens.” Is his parting advice. He shows us how to get to the nearby Police Station through the back alleys.

11pm

We have packed up our essentials into a small bag. A change of underclothes, all our money, camera, blank tapes... In case we have to leave in a hurry. We leave the ‘exposed’ tapes of our two months shooting and our dairy behind. What if someone from either side with a sword in hand would want to see what we have shot/written so far! – A painful decision. We leave behind all our accounts of the help we have rendered to the chali, all our financial records…. and the photographs of the carnage we had been given. The street in front of our flat is empty; Deserted... I have never seen it empty, even at 2 am in the morning.

Riyaz calls up again to tell us that people have started shifting to Shah Alam Roza (a relief camp) from Naroda Patia and from Behrampura also. We decide to go to Kasai ki Chali, the Chali we have adopted in Behrampura. The rest of Ahmedabad is a stranger to us anyway. There are no auto rickshaws available tonight. We walk fast. Ajay keeps looking over his shoulder. I look into the shadows. Everything looks suspicious. There are some young men collecting stones. We hurry on. Men sit outside, huddled in silence. They watch us warily. There is anxiety and there is fear. We finally manage to get an auto.
“Behrampura chaloge?”
“Haan.”
We reach Kasai ki Chali by 11:30. The men of the Chali are all huddled together outside, on the stone benches. The children are mostly asleep. A few loiter around, too scared to sleep. The women sit outside their houses on the charpoys. Every one is happy to see us.
We go to Chand Bibi’s house. Rihana and Amna keep Chand Bibi company. Amna usually has a big smile for me, but she is cold now, her eyes look frightened. She is muttering something under her breath. Rihana laughs uncontrollably. Chand Bibi sits silently rocking herself. She is a childless widow. She lives alone. Last time, she had no one to help her shift her luggage. She had lost everything. Her one room home had been burnt down. In the last few months, she has somehow managed to rebuild her house. Most of it on charity from relatives, from us…
Her old wrinkled face is wrought with worry. Ajay takes out his camera and asks her to pray. “Ya Allah, Reham kar…Shaitanon ko akal baksh…Unhen sachchi rah dikhah…” (She prays for peace and for some sense to the devil’s children…)
There is a TV in the house next to the school we started here two months back. Aaj Tak TV says, “Terrorist attack on Akshardham temple on the day of Kashmir Elections. 24 people have died. The NSG is fighting it out with the terrorists holed up inside the temple." People walk in and out, for a glimpse of the latest news.
We wait outside the chali. Asiappa sits with her son Amir Ali. The young men form a group near one of the stone benches. A State Transport bus stops near the chali. All of us watch the bus suspiciously. It has a tyre puncture. The driver calls out to us to help him out. The young men help him out willingly. At least there is something to do instead of sitting and waiting for God knows what… Police vans go by every once in a while. That it is Gujarat Police vans and not the State Reserve Police (SRP) or Central Reserve Police (CRP) vans only increases the scare. A firecracker goes off nearby. At this time of the night? Is that a bomb? Our nerves are frayed. The wait is maddening…
By one in the morning Ajay and I go out for a walk, to kill the sleep that is slowly creeping in. We walk down to Jamalpur Char Rasta for a cup of tea. The place is usually packed in the night with the lorry traffic that comes to the APMC Sabzi Market. Tonight, there are only a few odd ghosts like us. At least it is not deserted. We sit at Khalid Ibrahim’s ‘ande ka larri’. Khalid is from Kasai ki Chali. We know he won’t kill us. He gets us kala pani - A strange concoction pretending to be black tea - and he won’t take any money.
The Police Vans pass more frequently here. Jamalpur Char Rasta was the one of the most sensitive areas during the prolonged communal violence here. Stabbings were everyday incidents. Crude bombs went off as women calmly shopped for the day’s provisions.
Every one looks at us suspiciously. We are not part of the lorry traffic. We are dressed differently. We are with a camera. “What are these people doing here?” They wonder. We walk back to the Kasai ki Chali. On the way we pass the Behrampura Police Station. It is buzzing with activity. I wonder who among them had fired at Sharif, of Kasai Ki Chali. I wonder who among them had taken money from Bolu as protection money to turn a blind eye when the mob burned up Kasai ki chali and Gasiram ki Chali…

1.30pm

We go to sleep in Chand Bibi’s one room house. She has already decided to shift out tomorrow itself. She has a niece living nearby in Bombay Hotel Area. The lights are switched off, but she keeps mumbling about wanting to shift all her meager possessions to a safe place. Ajay assures her that by tomorrow he will have her possessions shifted to her nephew’s house in Jamalpur.
The door is only latched. The night is full of strange sounds. I keep my eyes open for as long as I can manage. Somebody is talking urgently outside. I get up to check that everything is okay. Ajay is also awake. I lose count of the number of times I get up to check.
There is some loud noise outside. Both Ajay and I wake up simultaneously. Ajay goes out to check… The night doesn’t seem to get over. We sleep in the early morning hours and get up by 7 am.

24 September, 9am

The night has passed by eventless. In TV news, though the terrorists are still holed up inside the temple, equations have already been drawn between the terrorist attack and the ongoing elections in Kashmir, as though nothing ever had happened in Gujarat. The State Congress has already called for a bandh today. VHP has called for a bandh tomorrow. Only some shops are closed. The city seems normal. But there is tension and apprehension that things would go bad. “It looks the same as that day when Godhra happened.” Someone says. Memories are not normal. The pattern is similar. Godhra. 2days of bandh… What after that?

2pm

The chali people have started shifting their goods to safer places. They are getting used to this. But how long will you keep shifting back and forth? More shops have been shutting up for the day. The traffic is thinning out…
3pm

Today morning, according to earlier plans, we shifted from our flat in Dani Limda to an empty flat in the ‘infamous’ Delight flats in Paldi. Aslambhai, the guy who had the key has shifted to the Muslim dominated Juhapura. The memory of the daylong siege here on February 28,of the mobs with swords, of the flats guarded by a handful of people and one firearm… The memories are too recent. Aslambhai will not be coming to this area for atleast two days.

We have moved our luggage from our earlier flat but are unable to shift in to a new one. So for tonight we have no place of our own to stay. Ajay has decided that we must go back to Mumbai tonight itself. We were supposed to leave the day after…

8 pm

The luxury bus passes Kasai ki chali on it’s way to Mumbai. The men are still waiting outside the chali on the stone benches. I wonder what we will come back to…How long will it take us for all of us to understand - that just a couple of mad people on two sides of the extremist fence can put an entire country’s peace at stake…

(Ajay Raina and I make films. We have been working with the riot affected people of ‘Kasai ki Chali’ and have recently started a non-formal school/sewing centre/handmade paper workshop for the children and women of the chali.)