I dont know what it is with this story that makes me feel more connected to it each time I come across it. I have read it many times, watched it being made into movies, heard accounts of it and even visited the place myself, but every time I am reminded of that horror it feels like I am hearing it for the first time.
I transcend into that place, with my family and all my friends around me enjoying their time in the baisakhi mela, some distant voice shouting something on the microphone, hawkers bellowing over the crowd. Everyone is dressed in simple plain white dhoti and kurta, some kids running around the place gleely and their parents running after them. My grandfather holding some kid on his shoulders as he used to hold me when I was a kid. I then see brown colored khakhi claddened men rushing mindlessly through the narrow gates and filing into a line. I see a crooked smile on some white colored male who is twisting his moustache and watching in delight. My blood starts to boil. I see people rushing in sheer helplessness, my mother taking some random kid into her arms and leaps into the well just to avoid the bullets being sprayed from one side.
Then there is silence. I am standing in the sea of all these dead people, I cant recognise any faces anymore. My blood feels that it is going to burst out, there is a certain kind of pain at the back of my head and my heart is full of hatred. I am returned to the scene of when I actually visited the Bagh some ten years ago. I see the bullets circled on the old wall, I see the well, I see where they came from, I see red where it has been washed down by time.
I have gripped by these feelings since childhood. When I was 12 years old, I even wrote and directed a play where I tried to bring an image that had my infant brain occupied to life. I failed in that goal. I however have been obsessed with the topic ever and continue to be obsessed. Its not like a bad dream for me, its like an experience which I want myself to be reminded of if I ever question my ambition, if I ever get waivered from my mission. I have to willfully keep away from being consumed by these thoughts sometime, because this is not some story where I feel shallow empathy for, I really feel like all those who died were my ancestors, my family, my friends and am ever so enraged by it everytime.
I transcend into that place, with my family and all my friends around me enjoying their time in the baisakhi mela, some distant voice shouting something on the microphone, hawkers bellowing over the crowd. Everyone is dressed in simple plain white dhoti and kurta, some kids running around the place gleely and their parents running after them. My grandfather holding some kid on his shoulders as he used to hold me when I was a kid. I then see brown colored khakhi claddened men rushing mindlessly through the narrow gates and filing into a line. I see a crooked smile on some white colored male who is twisting his moustache and watching in delight. My blood starts to boil. I see people rushing in sheer helplessness, my mother taking some random kid into her arms and leaps into the well just to avoid the bullets being sprayed from one side.
Then there is silence. I am standing in the sea of all these dead people, I cant recognise any faces anymore. My blood feels that it is going to burst out, there is a certain kind of pain at the back of my head and my heart is full of hatred. I am returned to the scene of when I actually visited the Bagh some ten years ago. I see the bullets circled on the old wall, I see the well, I see where they came from, I see red where it has been washed down by time.
I have gripped by these feelings since childhood. When I was 12 years old, I even wrote and directed a play where I tried to bring an image that had my infant brain occupied to life. I failed in that goal. I however have been obsessed with the topic ever and continue to be obsessed. Its not like a bad dream for me, its like an experience which I want myself to be reminded of if I ever question my ambition, if I ever get waivered from my mission. I have to willfully keep away from being consumed by these thoughts sometime, because this is not some story where I feel shallow empathy for, I really feel like all those who died were my ancestors, my family, my friends and am ever so enraged by it everytime.
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