These walls used to be lined with books. Now they hold imprints of a different kind. History was made here that day, and people unmade, in fire, in smoke, in blood and sticky gore.
**
In the stillness of the empty room, you can still feel the heat, hear the hopeless cries, the sense of doom. One by one, it failed. The phone calls, Jafri Saheb saying, “it’s all over now”, the feeling that one’s own home was now a X by X trap. The grills no protection, as they stand outside them in safety, throwing in the killer fuel, and a lit match after it. It was easy, so easy. It was all there, waiting. All they had to do was surround the compound. Not a community living together, but a ghetto. A box of death.
**
 People then, people no less now. All flesh burns, bones mingle. And the mastermind who planned one set of executions to justify the other? I wonder now, does he ever think back to those days 10 years ago? Do no ghosts haunt his dreams?
**
Most of the time, faith is an accident of birth. Which side of the line  you are depends on such circumstance. Whether you are Firdaus or Kokilaben. Anand or Anwar. Are you playing gully cricket, or a ‘missing’ page in family memories? Getting ready for dandiya, or going to be hunted down in a field?
**
And sometimes, whichever side you are on, your name could still be Death.
**
Lina Krishnan lives in Bangalore and writes on culture, travel, cinema and the environment. She blogs at http://linakrish.wordpress.com/about/

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