So. It is again this time of year when we remember our sisters and brothers massacred by the Indian army in 1984. I really knocked myself out last year researching and writing posts about this horror. This year, I am directing you to the blog archives in the right hand column. Go to last year's posts from 1 June to 10 June. I am simply not going to put myself through that again this year.
I was there, not actually in Harmandir Sahib, but not far away, actually part of the time in police custody. I wonder what memories are dominant in the minds of other witnesses. I think I remember most the smell. Decomposing dead bodies, blood, defecation, urine, our sacred pool turned into a butcher's sewer. Do I really remember body parts floating there or is that some later dream or imagining? The sweltering heat; Amritsar in the summer is always just too hot.
One friend has told me about a family member's memory of boxes of shoes. Boxes and boxes and boxes of shoes. Big shoes from the men, smaller shoes from the women, and, most tragically, the tiny, tiny shoes of the children.
Another friend has told of bullets flying across their balcony as they ducked down, trying not to be hit. They all survived uninjured in that family.
I realise most of the readers of this blog are too young to have memories of the Bluestar Massacre, many of you were not even born yet! Still, this is your heritage. You need to know and understand what happened. Educate yourselves, please!
NEVER FORGET 1984
KHALISTAN ZINDABAD!!
