THAT DREADFUL NIGHT eventually came to an end. As the sun started to make an appearance, people emerged from their homes to survey the trail of destruction and to check on the welfare of their friends and family. Each one greeted the other with the query, ‘Hope all is well at your end?’ The response, more often than not, was a depressing one.
Satnam also spent the rest of the night in grim anticipation of the morning so that he could go to Katra Sher Singh and see things for himself. He had wanted to go there last night itself, but his mother had managed to restrain him.
He left early morning with three of his close friends. The scene at Katra Sher Singh was worse than anything he could have imagined. The sheer scale of destruction in one of the city’s busiest markets made it hard to figure out where the bazaar began and ended. Finding his own little shop amidst the ravaged street seemed out of question. Mounds of rubble extended as far as the eye could see. The bustling main street of the bazaar—a street wide enough to allow two lorries to cross each other with room to spare—had been virtually obliterated. The three- and four-storey buildings on both sides of the bazaar had collapsed into the street, creating huge piles of rubble. The remains of buildings from either side of the street had blended into an indistinguishable, vast mound. A stranger would find it impossible to believe that until yesterday, this had been a busy street and its shops a thriving business hub.
At some places, the heaps of rubble blocking the street had reached the height of a single-storey building and it took a fair bit of effort for the area’s residents to clamber over them as they surveyed the devastation, trying to locate their own properties. The task was arduous and risky because some of the half-burnt buildings were teetering on the verge of collapse. One strong gust of wind and they would come crashing down on the heads of the curious onlookers. A tangled mesh of electricity cables that lay in clumps around the debris posed an additional hurdle for the pedestrians. Electricity poles could be seen crisscrossing the street, some bent at two or three places as though an angry demon had plucked them out of the ground and flung them with all his fury. Taps had broken away from pipes and the water flowing out of them was creating its own channels under the rubble, emerging unexpectedly for a short stretch before burrowing itself under another mound.
‘I think our shop was somewhere around here,’ Satnam beckoned to his friends as he climbed a large pile of debris, his face no longer able to hide his anguish.
‘No!’ one of the friends replied. ‘I think this was the site of the small printing press. Your shop, if I am not mistaken, was over there,’ he said as he pointed his finger to an imaginary location some fifteen or twenty feet further down on the left.
‘Maybe you’re right,’ Satnam sighed.
They spent another hour and a half in the area before deciding to head back via Farid’s Chowk. The scene there was even worse than Katra Sher Singh. Some bystanders were explaining to whoever cared to listen, ‘The shops with the fresh vegetables were around here, and the stalls selling the second-hand coats about there; the shops supplying tents and canopies were just beyond…’
Going through the Karmon Deori Gate, they made their way towards the area that was until recently a row of large shoe shops owned by the Khojas. Just a few days back, you would have seen throngs of customers at these shops. Today, the same shops had been reduced to a large pile of ash and rubble. The odd sandal, shoe or slipper could be seen despondently sticking out of the wreckage, its shiny visage tarnished with mud and grime.
They returned home around lunch time after taking in the scale of devastation in some of the city’s most thriving bazaars. On their way back, they encountered a painfully incongruous sight. Muslims were fleeing from their mohalla with whatever they could salvage, carrying their belongings on a cycle, rickshaw, cart or their bare heads. A hundred yards away, Hindus and Sikhs were immersed in much the same exercise. For Muslims, the idea of staying on in a predominantly Hindu or Sikh mohalla was akin to a death sentence, while for Hindus and Sikhs, the prospect of living in a Muslim mohalla was no longer feasible. The sudden evacuation of so many residents as they sought safety amongst their own community only added to the chaos in the bazaars.
Satnam saw his mother but said nothing. He didn’t have to. Kesar Kaur could tell from his face that their shop had been consumed by the angry flames.