Or, how certain places will keep coming back to me.
Lately, I have been travelling and I miss home.
But not one particular corner of a cranny in the mortar and rubble that builds the walls of my home..
I miss Zakir Nagar. My notion of home extends into the lanes and bylanes of this neighbourhood where I have grown up.
And so, it reaches Batla House through a winding road lined with kebab kiosks with a flat five minute stroll.
Following is a piece I wrote late into the evening of September 19th, 2008, the evning of the Batla House encounter killings.
I was at the Mass Communication Research Center, Jamia, when the news
of the 'encounter' came in.
Late into the afternoon, when we were absolutely sure that the
gunshots fell silent...(because we were constantly getting
'eyewitness' accounts that two 'terrorists' had been killed and their
bodies had been dragged into the PCR van)...I was walking towards
Zakir Nagar through Batla House.
The road that leads to Batla House from Jamia Nagar was being manned
by some six hundred policemen at the turn-about. People in the
neighbourhood are now tensed about the possibility of policemen
dressed as civilians combing the area.
As I walked, I overheard the policemen say.."Ram-Ram bolo..Ram-Ram" .
Some of them directly looked into my eye, gun toting and
macho-posturing, and muttered some extra words under their breath.
Apart from the media battery and police force, the roads were largely
deserted. In one of the bylanes, a group of some eight year olds stood
awestruck... they believed they had been witnesses to some film
shooting. Earlier in the day, their teachers at the Batla House
Government School had asked them to leave immediately once the news of
the encounter came in.
And one of the kids wondered what could have happened if one of the
'terrorists' (out of the two the police claimed had fled)...got into
the school and held them at gunpoint? Others said they felt equally
scared outside because there was so much chaos, Nobody knew where to
go..and what could happen.
There was an unmistaken awareness of 'narratives of terror' and the
bunch of eight year olds endlessly predicted the outcome.
The neighbouhood is far too familiar with circumstances of young men
who come to Delhi from remote corners of UP and Bihar to 'build' a
life. People here are casting doubts over the operation and claim that
Atif was as normal a boy as any twenty-four year old could be...that
anyone of them could be easily targetted and made out to be a
terrorist in the future.
This morning between 8am-9.30am, Headlines Today was running a story
about the surrender of Zeeshan (the other 25 yr old student who the
police claims is one of the two terrorists who managed to escape)at
its headquarters.
"His surrender itself raises questions about the claims of the
police"...and while we were discussing this, the channel went on to
scramble mode..and the transmission stopped. It is still stuck.
One hour later, It is a still shot of Atif's elder brother in
Headlines Today Studio. In his interview he had said that he did not
believe the police claims. I checked all the other channels...nobody
was running this story.
All of them were mourning the death of Mohan Chand Sharma; the
encounter specialist in Delhi Police. Patriotic scores like 'aye mere
watan ke logon...' form a poignant backdrop against which a nation is
made out to mourn.
I am also deeply saddened by his death like everybody else but am
wondering how certain other stories that are emerging since yesterday,
have been..or will be.. hushed up.
POSTED BY AMBARIEN AT 7:49 PM 1 COMMENTS
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