Blood always leaves traces

'General Dyer conducted soldiers for firing on an innocent crowd of Indians through this passage.'

I read those fifteen words a couple of times before glancing to my right, where the passage began, and then to my left, where it led to the Jallianwala Bagh. I tried to imagine the sounds of Army issue boots that would echo if an entire battalion marched down the narrow corridor, then turned to my left and walked into the Bagh.

There was a slight drizzle but it had not discouraged people from flocking to the place. A little to my right was a stone in the shape of a pyramid, with the same inscription on each face, but in different languages. ‘People were fired at from here.’

I stood near the stone and looked as far as my eye could reach, imagining men, women and children gathering into the Bagh on Baisakhi, decades earlier. Then I thought of muskets being loaded at Dyer’s command, imagined the sound of the guns being cocked, pictured the uniformed soldiers raising their weapons to their shoulders. For a brief moment, I found myself thinking about what would happen if a squad of soldiers opened fire with M4 assault rifles at the crowd that was so happily going around posing for pictures and pouting for selfies on the ground where blood had once been shed.

Shaking my head, I turned my back on my morbid daydream and saw a memorial under a small canopy. Called the Amar Jyot, the perennially burning lamp was placed on a black stone platform to pay tribute to the over 1000 people who were mowed down by guns that afternoon. People were lining up to pose for pictures or selfies in front of the lamp. At least they were taking their shoes off before entering the inner sanctum, I thought before turning away.

A path led from the pyramid shaped stone to the inner part of the Bagh, and as I walked forward, the cold droplets of the drizzle on my skin seemed to be in sync with the tiny pinpricks I was feeling underneath, as I trod the ground where the blood of thousands had been spilled once.

On both sides of the path, the shrubbery had been trimmed and shaped to look like soldiers armed with rifles advancing into the Bagh, signifying the progress of Dyer’s soldiers as they continued their march of death. I walked slowly down the path, stopping at three walls of the Bagh, where the pockmarks made by bullet holes had been carefully preserved for viewers. Each mark was highlighted by a white square, which, in my opinion, was hardly adequate to convey the horror. 

  

While people were busily clicking pictures of each other and of themselves with the walls in the background, I was imagining bullets tearing through the flesh of the innocents before lodging themselves in the bricks. Faint cries of desperation echoed in my ears as I thought of the helpless men, women and children trying to scale the high walls, only to be cut down by the soldiers' bullets. My mind began conjuring visions of people trying to climb the heaps of dead bodies in a last ditch attempt to get out alive before being cut down by the barrage of lead coming from behind them. 

As I walked along the walls, I had to chuckle, although what I saw was far from funny. A stretch of wall between the two bullet-mark riddled ones was covered with graffiti. Declarations of love scrawled across the walls or initials carved into heart shapes decorated the walls which might also have been riddled with bullets had the helpless innocents tried to climb over these walls as well. Similar graffiti covered scores of other pillars that I saw while walking to the next destination on my grim pilgrimage. I saw it from afar before I reached it. The Martyrs Well.

The well into which, when left with no other option, the gatherers at the Bagh had jumped in a desperate attempt to save their lives. The same well became their crypt. A signboard over the well says that 120 bodies were later pulled out of the well. A grill covers the well now, and I pressed by face to it, trying to gauge its depth. Walking around its circumference, I finally found an open spot in the grill and managed to take a picture. Absurdly, I kept peeking to see if I could see any traces of blood. I couldn't but I somehow knew they were there. Blood always leaves traces.

A museum of sorts near the Martyrs Well has a heart rending account of an eye witness, Ratan Devi, who ran to the Bagh after hearing gunshots and ended up spending the entire night among the victims, some of them alive and slowly bleeding to death, due to the curfew imposed in the area. “I found a bamboo stick and used it to fend off the dogs, while sitting beside my husband's dead body. I saw three men writhing in agony, a buffalo struggling in pain and a boy, about twelve years old, entreated me not to leave the place,” Ratan Devi recounts.

The same space also has a painting depicting the massacre. I tried to take a picture but gave up. There were too many people taking selfies in front of it.

I walked silently towards a souvenir gallery near the exit. It contains framed photographs of newspaper articles about the incident, and the ashes of Shaheed Udham Singh, who later shot dead General Reginald Dyer in London. Photography is prohibited inside this gallery, which is a pity, as it also has on display a curiously basic example of how life can be snatched away without a moment's notice. A coin, one of its edges bitten off by a bullet, recovered from a victim's pocket. “The victim later succumbed to his injuries,” the plaque reads.

An old man tried to sell me selfie sticks as I walked out of the Bagh.

Acceptance

They raced through the dark corridors, side by side, knowing fully well how important it was for them to get to their destination on time.

“We need to hurry before the others get there,” she said, sounding worried.  

“If they’re not there already,” he said grimly.

They both rounded a corner and stopped in their tracks, panting. They were too late.

The inner sanctum of the man’s mind was deep, and at the moment, dark. The way it gets when someone goes around putting out all the lights in a fully lit room. Which was exactly what was happening.

As Hope and Resilience stood and watched helplessly, Anger went around pulling all the lights from their holdings.

Hope looked around and almost missed Joy sitting in a corner, head in his hands. She went over and knelt beside him.

“You can’t give up now. He needs you the most at this time,” she tried to coax him. Joy didn’t move. He had taken a blow in the gut, and wasn’t getting up any time soon. 

Resilience stepped forward and at that exact same moment, so did Denial.

“What do you want?” Denial snarled in Resilience’s face.

“This isn’t going to be of any use,” Resilience said.

“Yeah? Well, nothing is.”

“Come on…”

“Shut up!” Denial sneered and walked away.

Resilience watched helplessly as Denial walked around the sanctum of the man’s mind, stomping up and down, steam rising from the floor, as he went about shutting every window, completing the darkness. 

Resilience felt his power ebbing away with each passing second, while at the same time sensed Anger, who was just waiting in a corner now, getting darker and stronger. Hope, on the other hand, was still trying to revive Joy, who was as pale and gaunt as death by now.

“This can’t be happening,” Denial was saying. “There’s no way this is happening. It’s some kind of a joke. Or maybe a test. Yeah, a test. Any minute now, this is gonna turn out to be a test.”

Resilience winced. Anger gritted his teeth.

“I mean, how could this be happening, right?” Denial said.

“Why the hell not?” Anger snapped.

Everyone turned to him.

“WHY THE BLOODY HELL NOT!?” Anger roared, standing up and coming forward. 

Resilience sank to the floor.

“Isn’t that how it’s always been? Hasn’t it always been one big bloody joke?” Anger raged on.

“But everything was so…so beautiful…” Denial said stubbornly.

“Oh yeah. Perfect setting, don’t you think? Build a beautiful dream and then take a goddamn hammer to it. BLOODY PERFECT!”

Dark black smoke was rising out of Anger now. The entire sanctum of the man’s mind was getting hot. Resilience was feeling faint and Hope had sat down beside Joy in the corner, too weak to say anything.

“Please,” Hope begged.

“Stop…” Resilience said.

Anger clenched his fists till he began shaking.

“Every time,” he hissed. “Every. Single. Time…” Anger’s skin was burning now. Huge, black flames were filling up the sanctum.

Everyone watched in terrified awe as Anger started burning to the ground. And from the ashes of Anger rose Grief.

Pale. Thin. Dark. Grief didn’t even look at anyone as she stepped forward. Denial was gone. Anger had burnt away. Joy had rested his head against a wall and closed his eyes. Hope was using whatever strength she had left to hold on to his hand simply to keep him alive. Resilience was curled up on the ground, too weak to say anything.

Grief walked around like a figure in mourning, exuding Depression from each pore. They could hear the man crying. Only tears flowed out of his eyes. His mouth was silent. But his mind was howling. Grief was doing her job well.

Resilience tried to crawl forward. But every movement he took drained him a little more than the previous one. Desperate, he looked to Hope, tried to call out to her. But she was using the last reserves of her very being to hold on to Joy’s hand.

Grief walked around, scattering gloom around the sanctum from her pale white robes. Depression, who hung overhead like a cloud, absorbed all the gloom, getting bigger and deeper. The more Grief shook her robes, the more Depression expanded.

Grief started melting as she walked, turning to tears and flowing out of the man’s eyes in a never ending stream. His mind wept bitterly. Depression kept getting stronger. By the fourth day, Grief had completely melted and turned into Depression.

Dark, scary thoughts echoed into the sanctum of the man’s mind, as he went through the motions of daily life.

It’s all pointless.

It’s no use.

You’re nothing but a joke.

You had no business being so happy.

“Please,” Resilience croaked. “It’s been a week already…”

Did you really think there was going to be a happy ending?

Have there ever been happy endings?

Do you think you even deserve them?

Have you not learned your lesson yet?

You’re stupid, you know that?

It was only on the tenth day that a trench coated, stockily built figure stepped into the sanctum, cutting through the dense could of Depression. Resilience twitched. Hope opened her eyes.

He kept staring at the center of Depression, which held its own. Undaunted, he walked right into the cloud, all the time staring hard from under his hat at the nucleus, which, unwillingly, grudgingly, began to dissipate.

It took another day, but at the end of it, the cloud had completely cleared. The newcomer walked around slowly, his heavy boots echoing through the sanctum, as the last few wisps of Depression took the form of Denial, Anger and Grief.

“If you kids’re done playing around,” Acceptance said firmly, “I got some work to do here.”

Denial, Anger and Grief looked as if they were going to start something. Instead, they meekly walked away and were gone within seconds. Resilience and Hope felt the life returning into them.

“You two,” Acceptance said crisply. “Off your asses.”

They got up with surprising ease. Hope looked down at Joy, who was still looking like a ghost.

“Let him be,” Acceptance said. “He’s gonna need some more time.”

He laid down a sack on the ground.

“Positive memories,” he said as he opened it. “Had to rummage around to pick out the best ones for the man to focus on. Get the lights back, will you? And open some windows”

Joy took his first deep breath in days.