Memories: The Day After

It was a winter morning in the charming Bangalore of those days. We, a group of 4 classmates were riding our usual route to college down Hosur Rd. The traffic those days was negligible. Stray dogs would jump the walls of the Military School and cross the road with ease. Students at the nearby Baldwins College would play their guitars on the sidewalk. The air was fresh, the grass was green and the girls were pretty.

So, again, it was just another winter morning in Bangalore. We were heading to college and were surprised to see Trucks entering the city with graffiti scribbled on their windscreens. Things like "Fu*k Advan**" "Suck Advan*".

Ignorant as we were, we entered our large campus to find more people leaving the campus than enter it. Someone told us "go back home before everything shuts down. there are riots all over, the Babri Masjid was razed to ground yesterday".

Yes, the Babri Masjid, an ancient mosque in the North was pulled down to ground by so-called "religious fanatics" and your local rickshaw driver was charging you 4 times more to get you home.

We did not realise the seriousness of the developments and all of us ended up in my flat in cosy Richmond Town. We sat through the day indulging in usual teenager activities. It was late afternoon when we heard a mob in the nearby street bordering the local market where there was a huge Muslim majority. We walked out of our daze and realized that many parts of the city just like all over the country were on Fire. Muslims in the nearby market rushed to shut their own shops while ordering the few Hindu shops shut. Your neighbor suddenly turned your enemy. Buses were stoned, people were thrashed. I rushed to my aunt's house on Cunningham Road just to be in a safer part of town. We watched TV as mobs all over the country turned violent.

India was never gonna be the same again. This was probably gonna be the darkest day in modern Indian history.  Schools and colleges were declared shut for nearly two weeks. It was the second December riot for Bangaloreans after the Cauvery riots of December 1991.

I boarded a bus home on a seat while many others sat on their suitcases for the 12 hour ride across borders...The youngster in me smiled secretly at the thought of the 2 week holiday ahead...not realizing that India's secular credentials were gonna take a beating in the years to come...