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.

By: Siddharta Sarma, Sunday Express, Sunday August 5th, 2005.