It was not easy to make one’s way through the heap of bodies. First there was the shock and the difficulty of extricating limbs that were interlocked. Then there was the fear of being found to be still alive and being attacked again. Mannu stayed in the same position for a long time. Meanwhile, the blood kept flowing. Not all the bodies were dead—small sounds emerged from some of them.
It was an old, isolated house standing in a large compound on the outskirts of the city. Bibighar, they called it. There were several rooms but all the women and children who had been herded out of the bungalows of the white sahibs were thrown into one room. Not all of them were white. There were women who had been staying with the whites—women of mixed descent as well as natives. The room was packed. A window with broken shutters was the only opening to the outside world. The heat from outside and from the bodies inside had turned the place into a furnace. There was the added stench of sweat, excreta and vomit. Every day one or two people died of diarrhoea and dehydration and their corpses lay there, decomposing.
And then, one afternoon, men armed with sabres entered the room. As soon as they came in, they began to strike out, right and left. Mannu did not remember how long the carnage lasted. Since the room was packed with people, some of those who were behind or underneath others escaped. When the attackers left, locking the room, those who had not been killed were not sure they were really alive. As far as they were concerned, the difference between being alive and being dead had become very slight.
The door was opened again the next day. This time those who came in had no weapons. They threw the bodies out, then dragged them and flung them into a well in the yard. Those who wore clothes that were worth taking were stripped. Some of those who were thrown into the well were still alive. Three little boys who were still alive ran round and round the well until they were caught and thrown in. A few who seemed to have no wounds at all were kept apart. Once their work was over, the men dragged and pulled these survivors to the gate.
One of those who escaped both death and the well was Mannu.