NEVER in my life had I experienced such shock or such a sense of denial. At that
tender age, terms like Indira Gandhi and prime minister were synonyms. Maybe because Indian politics was too one-sided to throw up other prime ministerial aspirants.
Having grown up amid blind support for the Congress by some and bitter insinuations against the grand-old party by others, her tragic death left me dazed.
I am not old enough to have lived in 1948 India when the Mahatma was gunned down by discontent of another kind. So the ramifications of this assassination were not evident, beyond the fact that something tragic had happened.
But when normalcy got affected - schools were closed, we were not allowed to go out and play in the evening, and tense faces only discussed one topic - my bunch of goons and me got a bit psyched.
Most of the day passed amidst conjectures, fears and worries. The real news, first person and authentic, used to land when my father called, or when he returned from the airport.
My father, who used to work in Air India, was stuck at the airport for days together. As were dozens of his staff members. Neither could they return home, nor could other staff members reach the airport.
DELHI had come to a standstill. All that could be seen moving from terraces were the flames, which rose from every other locality. A mob had set part of the adjacent Guru Harkishen Public School on fire.
For Tony and Kulbir, two of my pals, it was part curiosity and part shock -was their classroom burning? Was the canteen gutted? Will there be no prayer assembly when the school reopens?
No one knew, because no one was allowed to venture close to the school premises. It was just adding to the list of conjectures that were doing the rounds.
By the next morning, tension had seeped into our minds. Toying with ideas and guesswork was rudely jolted by the cries that suddenly erupted from the neighbourhood.
A neighbour, in whose household I virtually grew up, was struck. The loving grandfather, Harnam Singh, who had greeted me with chocolates and smiles, had been butchered just outside his brother's house in Uttam Nagar.
Unbelievable! Just the previous morning, he called me over to give me kada parshad that he had got from the gurdwara. More than Indira Gandhi, this shook me up. This death mattered a lot more to me than the prime minister. Grief is grief, and it engulfed me!
A celebrated Indian, who had cornered glory in adventure sports and was my father's colleague, was scared. In the middle of the night came a phone call: "Can you send me some security guards? I am feeling scared."
On sane advice, his glass name plate at the gate was smashed and replaced with an anonymous nameplate. He was asked to sit tight indoors and keep a low profile.
EVERY story and anecdote that I heard from my father is still fresh in memory, word by word. At the Air Traffic Control in Delhi Airport, the voice of a KLM pilot could be heard: "I see Delhi in flames. Please advise if I should turn back." The flight landed after sincere assurances convinced the KLM crew.
Elsewhere in the airport, the entire Air India staff was starving. The canteens were barren and dry. More than a hundred staff members at the airport were without food, tea or coffee.
Finally, the Air India management came up with a bright idea: they airlifted food packets from Mumbai airport to feed its staff at Delhi airport.
Days later, when Delhi had cooled down, we ventured out to get a feel of the world outside our homes. We were left staring: at the ransacked gurdwara with its shattered glass panes, at the school that was partially gutted, at burnt remains of cars, vans and scooters on the roadside at almost regular intervals bearing mute testimony to the madness that had gripped the city in the week.
When schools reopened, it was a strange sight. Quite a few of my friends seemed different. Boys who had studied and played with us with colourful turbans had chopped off their hair to escape death.
It took us time to reconcile to their new looks. But more than that, it took a lot of time for us to get back to a normal state of mind.
Many years and another assassination later, the horror of 1984 is still to fade. Memories which get refreshed by the sight of orphans growing up as scooter mechanics or widows doing the odd jobs to make two ends meet.
I once asked a lawyer who was connected with a few of the riot cases about the probability of the victims getting justice. He said: To keep trying is earning me my bread. The rest is God's will.