A Vacation to Remember
“Can we all get along?”
A short story
Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh, India, is believed to be the birthplace of the Hindu deity Rama. In 1528, following the Mughal conquest of the region, a mosque was built in Ayodhya called “Babri Masjid” after the Mughal emperor, Babur. Nationalist Hindus believe that the Mughals demolished a temple of Rama and built Babri Masjid at the site. Both Hindus and Muslims used the site for religious purposes for four centuries, not always in peace and harmony. India’s population is 80% Hindu, 14% Muslim. Muslims in India, number about 195 million, making it the third-ranked country in the world for its Muslim population.
On December 6, 1992, the Hindu Nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) organized a rally at the Babri Masjid site. About 150,000 of their volunteers overwhelmed security forces and tore down the mosque. The demolition resulted in inter-communal riots between Hindus and Muslims all over the country. The worst affected cities were Bombay, Surat, Ahmedabad, Kanpur, Delhi, and Bhopal. About 2000 people died in these riots.
Two years earlier, our first child, Arjun, was born in Maryland on December 31, 1990. My in-laws came to us from India to provide physical and moral support. My parents in Bombay had not seen Arjun so we decided to make our first trip to India before his second birthday. In mid-December 1992, my wife, Arati, and Arjun went to Kolkata and then to Jodhpur, where my in-laws lived. I followed a week later. We celebrated Arjun’s second birthday in Jodhpur with much fanfare. Although Jodhpur was not affected, we kept hearing news of the communal riots in other parts of India.
On January 3, 1993, Arati, Arjun, and I bade farewell to my in-laws to go see my parents in Bombay. We boarded the train from Jodhpur to Ahmedabad around 4 PM. It was a 4-hour journey to Ahmedabad. We were to catch a connecting train from Ahmedabad to Bombay at 9 PM arriving early the next day in Bombay. The train conductor checked our first-class tickets from Jodhpur to Ahmedabad. He remarked, “You are a day early. Your ticket is for January 4. No problem. Since this is a day journey and there are seats available, you can continue your journey to Ahmedabad.” What a terrible mistake I had made! Not only did we lose a day in Jodhpur, but our connecting train for Bombay was also on January 4, a day later. This meant either we had to stay a night in Ahmedabad on January 3, or we had to get on the Ahmedabad-Bombay train on January 3 without a reservation. I had traveled in the unreserved compartments of Indian Railway trains as a youth. The thought of making my wife and two-year-old son go through that experience sent a jolt of fear up my spine. Talking to my sympathetic co-passengers on the train I learned there would be an all-night curfew in Ahmedabad when we arrived. It would be difficult to exit the station and find a hotel. After a nice vacation in Jodhpur, I felt stressed with no relief in sight.
When we got to Ahmedabad station, a porter helped us disembark with our luggage from the train. Our connecting train was already on the platform. It was chock full of passengers packed tighter than sardines in a can. I instructed Arati, Arjun, and the porter to stay with our luggage on the platform. I went to talk to the conductor of the first-class car on the Bombay train. I found him inside the car being hassled by other passengers like me. All were trying to get seats when none were available. I tried to get the conductor’s sympathy by telling him about my mistake coming a day earlier from Jodhpur. I had tickets on the train for the next day. But I had no place to stay overnight in Ahmedabad for my wife and two-year-old son. I would be more than happy to pay any surcharges if he would allow us to board the car and stay in the aisles without a seat. The conductor had the sensitivity of a porcupine needle. He said, “If you board this car, at the next station, which is an hour away, I will make you disembark in the middle of nowhere. It is better that you not board the train here in Ahmedabad. Why don’t you stay overnight in the station waiting room with your family?”
Dejected, I went back to my family and the porter. I told them we weren’t able to board the train to Bombay that night. The porter said, “Don’t worry, Sir, I will take you to the waiting room. Follow me”. The waiting room was a huge hall. There must have been a thousand people in there, all laying down on mattresses on the floor. The stench of humanity displaced oxygen in the room. We didn’t feel like we could survive the night there. I asked the porter if there were any hotels or guest houses near the station. He said, “Sure, Sir. Follow me”. He took us to the parking lot of the station and tried to get us a three-wheeler autorickshaw. Each driver we requested to take us to a hotel near the station refused, saying there was a curfew in place in the neighborhood. The station area had seen riots earlier in the day. This added to our sense of fear. Finally, a young autorickshaw driver stepped up and said he knew of a hotel that could perhaps take us in.
We got into the autorickshaw with our luggage, toddler, and stroller, and set out into the dark night. The streets were empty and eerie. The driver drove through alleys and side streets to avoid the police checkpoints. He stopped outside a gated building with a sign “Pedhi Hotel”. He tooted his horn. Someone came onto the third-floor balcony and asked, “Who is it?” The driver said, “I have overnight guests for you. They have a small child. They don’t look like trouble makers. Will you take them in?” Someone recognized the driver and opened the gate to let the autorickshaw in. I thanked the autorickshaw driver profusely with a generous cash payment.
They gave us a modest room with a large bed. We were served a hot dinner of rice, lentils, and cooked vegetables. After the waiting room experience at the station, this was five-star luxury. I said a silent prayer thankful for my family’s safety, then drifted into blissful sleep. The next morning, we learned the curfew was lifted. In good spirits after a hot breakfast and shower, we decided to make the most of our day. We called our friends, Siddharth and Tara, in the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and visited them for lunch. We were able to catch the train for Bombay at 9 PM on January 4, consistent with our reservation, and reached Bombay safely.
It was great to see my parents in Bombay. They loved their time getting to know Arjun. There wasn’t much to do because we couldn’t go out much. We kept hearing news of riots in the city. Some Hindus were killed in the Muslim neighborhoods of Dongri and Jogeshwari. In retaliation, members of the Shiv Sena, a Hindu regional political party, attacked Muslim businesses and homes. There was rampant looting, arson, and murder across the city. I noticed the name of a longtime Muslim resident of our affluent Cumballa Hill building had been changed in the lobby directory. The name was changed to a Hindu name to hide his religious identity. Agents of the Shiv Sena, we were told, were targeting Muslim residents of such buildings with violence. One day there was a commotion in our building compound when I was down there. Everyone hurried across the street to another building on the edge of Cumballa Hill. From there we could see the slums in the Tardeo foothills set ablaze by rioters. Slum-dwellers were screaming and trying to put out the flames. The visual spectacle of hundreds of shanties, a whole neighborhood, set on fire was horrifying. The cosmopolitan city of my birth and upbringing seemed alien and incomprehensible.
My brother and his family lived in Mahim, one of the troubled neighborhoods. One day, my brother, his wife, and two young sons were in their car coming over to visit us. A mob of Hindu rioters stopped his car. They wanted to pull him out and beat him, mistaking him for a Muslim. Luckily one of the rioters recognized my brother as a resident of the neighborhood and vouched for him as a Hindu. They let him drive back home. It affected me deeply that my brother was in harm’s way by coming to see me. The people of Bombay were divided into two groups, those who feared for their lives, and those who had lost control of their senses. It was madness and mayhem for the week that we were there.
On the day we were to catch our flight from Bombay back to the USA, my parents had arranged a private taxi to take us to the airport. We left around 7 PM with a Nepali Hindu driver for a flight that was to depart around 1 AM. It was dark and the driver was nervous. We told him we wanted to make a quick stop in Mahim to see my brother and his family who we had not seen the entire time we were in Bombay. He tried to dissuade us on the grounds that Mahim was a rioting hotspot. We promised him our stop would not be more than 5 minutes so he did take us there grudgingly. It was good to hug my brother after his recent negative experience. Then we continued to the airport, the driver muttering his dissatisfaction under his breath. When we reached Bombay airport, we got out of the taxi with our luggage. I told the driver I would check if the airline was operating that night and come back and pay him. He said fine. After verifying the airline would be operating our flight that night, I came back out but could not find the taxi driver. He had hightailed it out of there, he was so scared of driving back alone. Later I learned that my parents did pay him.
It has taken me about 27 years to tell this story. That’s how personal and scary it was. A vacation to remember for all the wrong reasons. The Los Angeles riots, the Bombay riots, and the Rwandan genocide, all occurred around the same time. There have been countless more riots and genocides since then all over the world, demonstrating man’s inhumanity against man. The question that Rodney King asked after the Los Angeles riots bears repeating, “Can we all get along?”
