Earliest memory
What is your earliest childhood memory?
My earliest memory is about the kindness of a random stranger, something that happened 25 years ago but is still so fresh in my memory! It was December 1992 and the Babri Masjid demolition had just taken place and Surat was BURNING with riots and killings and curfews and what not.
We studied in a Muslim school and lived in a predominantly Muslim neighbourhood in Surat during that time and on the day Babri Masjid was demolished my sister and I were in school. Riots broke out very soon and before school riots had broken out and parts of our school had been set on fire by mobsters including the main office building and we lost a clerk in that fire. Thankfully my mother was a teacher in the same school and as soon as she saw the buildings burn, came running to our classrooms, picked up my sister and me and rushed out to try and get an auto to go home. My mother was one of the only two Hindu teachers in the school and my sister and I were the 2 or 3 Hindu children in a classroom full of Muslim kids but not one of us harmed us despite the school being burnt.
My father at that time had been placed in Babrala in UP for 6 months and while he lived there, the three of us lived in Surat. UP, the state where the masjid had been demolished was also burning and we had no way of knowing if appa was even alive or not. Not being able to find an auto because of the curfew, the three of us walked the 3 kms home constantly afraid of being shot or killed or kidnapped. We reached home safely but had no way of knowing what had happened. There were many rumors going around about some Hindu leader being killed, about a mosque in Surat being burnt etc. An indefinite curfew was declared all over Surat mainly for our area because it was one of the few areas in Surat (and still is one) where Muslims and Hindus coexist and tempers were running high. Remember this was pre digital era so there were no phones, no internet, we didn’t even own a TV and the newspaper would only come the next day. Turning on the radio we realized what had happened.
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Now my mother had two kids aged 7 and 10, no way of knowing if her husband was alive, no rations in the house (no supermarkets so my mom would buy vegetables everyday while coming back from school) and no way of going out. I realize now that my mother (31)was the far younger than I am now (36) with no access to any help or anyone and no way of even letting people know she and her children were safe. I can’t even begin to imagine what she was going through. The next day at about 6 am I very distinctly remember our door being knocked very loudly and men shouting at us to open the door. My mother tentatively opened the door (that woman is SERIOUSLY ballsy even today). And we found 4 men armed with sticks and big tikkas on their forhead. They looked at the bindi on my amma’s forehead, the vekanatachalapathy and pillayar photo behind her and warned her to not open the door to strangers and left. We later found out that they had knocked on many such houses in the neighbourhood and most people had not opened the door because they had muslim friends hiding with them.
I keep wondering what would have happened if we had been Muslim or the men had been Muslim and if we they had kidnapped us or done something to amma. To this day I shudder when I think of that possibility and think of how unbelievably lucky we were. Anyhow so we stayed inside for more than 2 days and at the end of it frustrated my mother despite the curfew took both of us with her and walked out of the house with money to buy milk and vegetables. We still had no news from my father so my mother also wanted to go to my aunt’s (atthai) house who lived on the other end of the city where there was no curfew to try and make some calls.
So here we are, a woman and two kids walking ALONE on a road at 10 am with not a SINGLE soul on the road. Not even like a dog or a cat. Just my mother marching both of us till we found a shop that was open. In about 20 minutes a police bike that was patrolling the area came and stopped beside us and he demanded to know what we were doing out in the curfew and didn’t we know that it was unsafe and that we could be killed? That was first time I saw amma break down. She told how she had no milk, no food in the house, two children, girls at that, and how we had been threatened in the morning and didn’t know if her husband was alive or not.
I will NEVER forget what happened after that. Instead of asking us to go home or saying that he would buy milk for us or just driving away, he asked the three of us to get on his bike. He then asked my mother where my atthai stayed and he proceeded to drive us 10 kms to my atthai’s house I remember the incident like it was yesterday. Being the youngest I was sitting in front of the bike. And amma and my sister at the back and I remember feeling like a VIP, with the cool December breeze blowing on my face and riding on a bike with NOT a soul on the road the entire distance.
We reached atthai’s house and as soon as he dropped us off he took off not even waiting for us to thank him or ask him his name. We stayed at my athais house for 2 days till the curfew lifted and then went back home. School didn’t reopen for a month because it had been burnt. I don’t know what the policeman was called or if it was even his duty to ferry people from one end of the city to another but I will forever remember and remain indebted to this stranger and his kindness towards us in times of adversity.
