There was a hateful stillness in the narrow streets. The air was so heavy that all the smells that wafted out of houses, shops, and kitchens – smells of oil, rubber, vegetables – hung low. Smoke seemed to stand in the air, it drifted away slowly as the car headed towards Dumdum Airport. Angry men roamed the streets carrying forks, axes, garden-shears, spears, hammers and lathis. A woman tore at her clothes and hair as children looked on. A Sikh shopkeeper’s door had been impaled with a steel pole. Pedestrians outnumbered the cars that moved slower than them. As they drove past the bicycle repair shop, two men came out of a house and ran after a woman in a red shawl. She screamed and ran with fright as her water jar fell from her hip. A Sikh chauffeur, pursued by five men, ran behind her. The men threw the Sikh on the ground. He received a blow to the face. He was kicked. His turban knocked out of place. The woman fled from the crowded street, across the road, but more men came and waylaid her. The disorder was exacerbated by the presence of five uniformed police armed with rifles and lathis.

Into Dust

Into Dust

Right after Big Bazaar they came across a roadblock. Policemen had encircled a group of Sikhs. It appeared as though the police were protecting them from the rioters but then some of the police began hitting the helpless Sikhs with sticks. One was desperately trying to get a burning dastar off his head but his hair was also in flames. The policemen did nothing to help him. ‘You really intend to drive into that, sir?’ a policeman asked Sunil Seth through the open window.

‘We must get to the airport,’ the headmaster replied and handed over a hundred rupees. The policeman collected the money with a handshake.

‘If the gods wish,’ the policeman remarked, waving the barrel of his automatic rifle and letting the car through.

Govinda sat beside his mother, who wrapped her black shawl tightly over both of them. She burst into prayer every time the car jerked or stumbled into a pothole. On the main road the hospital clinic was being vandalised. Sikhs were being beaten and some had been set alight. Govinda listened to the cacophony of car horns, the hissing fires, gun shots and exploding tyres. He inhaled acrid smoke and felt the heat in his lungs as the fires bore down on the shops. Roofs crashed and windowpanes shattered. A bus was subsumed in flames, and he wondered if there were people still on board.

Ashok drove through a Muslim neighbourhood past a solitary man dressed in black. Following closely behind him were two women wearing black chadors. They were so modest and restrained it seemed as if they were from another world. The silence was unnerving.

‘The Muslims are quiet. They are trying to stay out of the violence,’ Sunil Seth said to Ashok.