SATNAM HAD BEEN home for barely ten minutes when he heard a shout, ‘Looting has started in Parag Das Chowk!’ The chowk was around the corner from the alley where his own house was located, he dashed out to see things for himself.
The chowk had a substantial Muslim population and a large mosque to serve it. Must be the Muslims out on a rampage this time, Satnam conjectured. The reality turned out to be completely contrary to his expectations. He thought he would see a horde of men wearing prayer caps, long knives glistening in their hands and cries of ‘Ya Ali!’ on their lips. But instead, he saw clusters of black turbans, three-foot kirpans in place of daggers, and it was roars of ‘Jo Bole So Nihal, Sat Sri Akal!’ that accosted his eardrums.
Satnam felt the ground slipping beneath his feet. A large mob of Sikhs from the countryside, accompanied by a pack of local hoodlums, had descended upon the chowk and were busy ransacking the shops of Muslims after breaking open their doors. They were making away with the more valuable stuff and throwing the rest on to the street, possibly leaving some easy pickings for their compatriots.
Satnam joined a small group that was screaming at the mob and pleading with them to stop the looting, but it was a lost cause. Oblivious to their calls, the looters went busily about their mission. Stolen goods were being packed in large bundles of cloth and hauled away.
He ran up and down the street, approaching individual members of the mob with folded hands as he beseeched them to stop the plunder. When that failed, he shouted and railed against them till his throat went hoarse. A few did pause to listen to his appeals for peace and some even seemed to agree with him. They were the ones who didn’t dare participate in the plunder for fear of being caught but had no problem seeing their compatriots do the dirty work. Looking at Satnam, they would nod in silent agreement and even mutter a word or two against the mob without lifting a finger to stop anyone.
He spotted a policeman standing at the far end of the chowk. He appeared to be a Hindu from his attire and as Satnam walked up to him to seek his intervention, he heard the cop exhort the mob, ‘Take whatever you want, Khalsa ji. Clean up the shops of these bloody Muslas.’
Satnam paused. The man in uniform was clearly the one choreographing the spectacle but it didn’t stop Satnam from going up to him and asking, ‘Excuse me! Can you tell me which officer has given the instructions that you are issuing to this crowd?’
The policeman laughed at Satnam as if he had spotted a child who is trying to pierce a hole in the sky but doesn’t know that his bow and arrow are made of flimsy reeds. Glaring at Satnam, he sneered, ‘Sardar ji! It appears that you’ve either been asleep the last few days or you’ve become an agent of the Muslims.’ And he turned his face away to resume his calls, ‘Come on young men! That shop over there also belongs to a Muslim … and I think I just saw some Muslims hiding out in the attic of the house next to the mosque. You might as well take care of them, too.’ The mob turned its attention towards the house and someone shouted, ‘There! I just spotted a Musla peek out of the window … I am sure there’s a lot of them hiding there … let’s sort them out first.’
Within a few minutes, the entire horde had turned towards the three-storey house and were assembling in front of its main door. The door was unusually sturdy and had been firmly bolted and locked from inside. It withstood the initial blows and as the crowd paused to look for a suitable battering ram, a hail of bricks and stones dropped on them from the parapet skirting the roof. The unexpected counterattack forced them to scatter but it also redoubled their zeal to wreak vengeance.
Suddenly, they came up with an idea. Many of them were carrying heavy shawls and blankets that they wrapped around themselves to protect their head and shoulders. Also, instead of approaching the door from the front, they slid against the wall of the house from both sides to stay away from the arc of the bricks. A few still received minor injuries but many others made it without incident. Blows from their axes and swords soon started to split the timber and after about ten minutes, the door lay in splinters.
Satnam stood frozen in his place as he surveyed the scene, dismayed that his shouting and pleading had come to nought. He wanted to sink into the ground, to let the earth swallow his body. But something snapped inside him as he heard the frightened shrieks of women and children from within the house and saw the mob march inside with naked swords and axes. Without pausing to think about the futility of a single man trying to stop a crazed mob, he willed his body to move and charged into the house. A section of the crowd had already made its way to the top floor. He ran up the stairs and recoiled in shock as his eyes took in the scene before him. A wave of nausea rose from the pits of his stomach as he leaned against the wall to steady himself.
Around thirty or thirty-five Muslims were cowering on the rooftop, at least half of them women and children. The bloodthirsty mob had descended on their hapless victims, raining blows with swords, axes and every other weapon at their disposal. There was something particularly repulsive in the way these braggarts wielded their weapons, their ineptitude revealing that they had never used them against a real adversary. After thirty to forty blows, the victims were maimed and writhing in agony, but many were still alive. A swing of the kirpan aimed at the neck would strike the knee, while one from an axe aiming for the chest would end up hacking the ankle.
The commotion from the house attracted other neighbours to their rooftops. Some could be heard calling, ‘Don’t spare a single one, Khalsa ji … look, look … one of them is trying to jump over the parapet to the house next door … don’t let him get away … and catch that one, the one who’s trying to hide in the corner …’ And others could be heard imploring, ‘Please don’t indulge in such brutality, Khalsa ji! Several of us neighbours had met this morning when these people were ready to flee from their homes. We solemnly swore to protect them and persuaded them not to go. We assured them that they’ll be safe here. Please spare their lives, Khalsa ji. Or we’ll have their blood on our hands. Please don’t attack them, Khalsa ji …’ But voices like these were drowned out by the more raucous ones that sought vengeance.
‘Oye, merciless fellows! Leave these poor things alone! At least spare the poor women and children, will you! Attacking them is sheer cowardice! Leave them, for the Guru’s sake! Let them be!’ Satnam shouted at the assailants. His heart-rending cries had the power to melt the hardest of stones. But the persons he was addressing were beyond stony-hearted; right now, their hearts were made from the toughest steel, seemingly immune to his entreaties. Satnam didn’t relent, and his pleas finally started to register on some of the mob’s members and a few voices rose in support of his own, ‘Khalsa ji, the sardar is right … we shouldn’t touch the women and children …’ Others pushed back to assert their own view, ‘No! Not a single one should be left alive. A snake’s offspring is still a snake…’
Satnam persisted, and eventually it was his voice that prevailed. Though three or four women and children had been killed in the first wave, the rest were spared. But by then, each one of them carried some kind of wound. There wasn’t one among them who hadn’t been lacerated by the flailing kirpans.
Every room in the house was splattered with blood. Six or seven corpses lay spreadeagled in the lobby, three or four were seen in the adjoining room, a couple of them were gasping for their last breaths near the parapet and another one could be seen dangling over the wrought iron grill.
Satnam leaned against a wall as he took in the scene and wailed at his own impotence. He wished he had a sword or dagger that he could plunge into his own heart to save himself the pain of witnessing such a tragedy.
He closed his eyes to steel himself but found himself sinking into a stupor. Shaking his head vigorously to rouse himself, he opened his eyes to find that the murderous mob had vanished into thin air. But no, it wasn’t just a bad dream. The corpses were still there, and the pools of blood were spreading. The cries of the wounded women and children echoed in the house. But the handful of young women that he had spotted on the terrace were missing.
‘Good Lord! Such carnage within such a short time,’ he sighed. Some shouts from the bazaar pierced his haze and he shuffled across to the window to look outside. The scene unfolding below hit him with the force of a physical attack on his body. The mob that had left the house a few minutes ago were again assembling outside the shattered door. A few of them were clearly engrossed in preparing to set fire to the house, while the others looked on curiously.
Seeing his head poke out of the window, a few voices floated up towards him. ‘Oye, Khalsa! You’d better come down fast if you don’t want to be roasted with the rest of them. Hurry up, Sardar ji! Come down while the staircase is still intact. It won’t take long for the fire to spread that way.’
Satnam emerged from the door a few minutes later, his appearance setting off a buzz amongst the crowd. A young boy of eleven or twelve was clinging to his neck, blood dripping from several ugly gashes in his back. Three or four middle-aged women and a handful of boys and girls staggered out behind him bleeding from their wounds as they struggled to follow him.
One of the women, perhaps a few years older than the others, barely made it beyond the door. Holding her head in her hands, she collapsed to the ground and lay writhing in agony. And then, she was still. Unconscious. Her drenched clothes made it apparent that she had lost way too much blood.
Satnam looked straight into the eyes of the couple of fellows who stood at the head of the mob and called, ‘Khalsa ji! I am not going to say a word about whatever happened inside. Right now, I have just one request. Please help me take these people to the hospital. And if you are still hell-bent on finishing them off, then go ahead and pull out your kirpans again. Hack them to death if you want, but the first blow will have to be on my body.’
The mob appeared nonplussed by the abrupt turn of events. A few started to murmur as they moved away, ‘Come on, folks! Let’s move on. This fool has clearly lost his mind. Taking them to the hospital? As if…’
The mob soon dissipated and Satnam heaved a sigh of relief as he saw two of his friends running down the bazaar towards him.
A few minutes later, a bizarre little caravan was making its way through the bazaar. Two horse-drawn tongas could be seen leading the way, each bearing a burly young man who was tending to three or four injured persons. They were followed by four labourers carrying the unconscious woman on a charpoy, each supporting a corner of the cot on his shoulder. They were trailed by a handful of elderly women, while Satnam brought up the rear as he escorted half a dozen young boys and girls.
They had barely covered a hundred yards or so when one of the young boys who had a large gash on his back fell to the ground, possibly incapacitated by pain and loss of blood. Satnam extended his arms to lift the boy to his feet and recoiled as the boy cried, ‘Sardar ji! Please don’t kill me! I am ready to become a Sikh but please don’t…’
Already reeling under the shock of the killings that he had witnessed, his heart crumbled as he heard the boy. Picking him up in his arms, he caressed the boy’s head and whispered, ‘Nobody’s going to kill you, son. Don’t be afraid! I am taking you to the hospital and you’re going to be fine.’
Delirious with pain, the boy seemed unable to register Satnam’s words. His eyes were drooping as he wailed, ‘Mother! Where’s my mother? Mustafa bhai has also been killed! Hai Amma! Where are you?’
Satnam picked him up and hurried towards the tonga ahead of him. He placed the boy carefully on the rear seat of the tonga and asked his friend to hold on to him.
Cries of ‘Move aside!’ and ‘Watch out!’ could be heard from the tonga wallahs as the unlikely procession threaded its way through the bazaars, their passage drawing all manner of comments from the onlookers.