Katrina-Part I (How I finally reach Louisiana)

Its Friday, the 2nd of Sept, the Labor Day Weeknd is coming up and I have made my pilaans to go to Denver and meet up with friends I made when I was there last year.

Reach the office and there I see a mail from Deepi asking me if I am interested to go down to Louisiana with them to help in Katrina relief efforts as part of a United Sikhs mission.

Oh gosh, I do say yes to her but not sure how do I catch up with them. They would be driving from Dallas. Deepi tells me to reach St. Louis where they could pick me up from.

So, I book myself on a flight to St. Louis and have to get my Denver tickets cancelled. Delta charged me 100$ for cancellation and no refund either. :(

I have to tell Mike that I may be gone for a couple of days. He is a rea nice fella who thanks me for going there and assures me to not to be worried about when I get back. (Sure its a whole lot different story as to when I actually get back) So back to story..

Mike sends out an email to the whole office and even fwds it to the CEO that Jaspreet from IDC is going to Louisiana. Now everyone and anyone in the office knows my pilaans.

Vicky comes in the evening to take me to Midway Airport. Being a friday and that too start of a long weekend, I-290 is jam packed. I start to get a little touchy as to whether I would catch my flight or not. We encounter numerous red lights at intersections and also encounter a RR crossing and alas I miss my flight. :( I can see it leaving the tarmac but nothing can be done now.

So, I call up Deepi and inform them about my flight miss and ask them what to do. I am screwed now. When I go to office on Tuesday, what am I gonna tell them ? Should I tell them lies and make up some stories ? Should I tell them the truth and be mocked at ? Deepi tells me to search for a flight for Jackson, MS which could reach there by 11 am on Saturday. I come back to the hotel, book my ticket for a return trip from Jackson and Vicky leaves for the Gurudwara Saheb. But whats this he has my bag, I run behind them but they are gone. I have to call him up again and again and finally he picks up his phone and comes back to the hotel to give back my bag. Nice of him.

Its almost 1 am in the morning. Flight for Jackson is 5.30 am from O'haire. I manage to get a couple of hours of sleep and get ready to leave. Upon reaching the airport another drama unfolds. The flight has been delayed and I would have missed my connection flight from Houston so these guys book me on another flight with a stopover at Atlanta which would reach Jackson at around 1 pm. Now I have to inform Deepi about this since those guys are expecting me at Jackson by 11 am. I leave a couple of voice-mails on Deepi's phone. Boy she would surely be pi**ed off since I have called her up almost 10 times since yesterday. I am finally able to get across to her from Atlanta and she sounded irritated.

Finally I reach Jackson and call them up. Another small drama, Jackson has 2 airports and these guys first went to the other airport. I meet up with them and am off to Baton Rouge in their chevy.

Another drama now ( no end to them ??), we are running out of gas and Jackson has already ran out of. A couple of stations which had gad had huge lines extending upto 2-3 miles. We keep on driving in the opposite direction and finaly able to fill up our tanks from a station which was almost 70 miles north of Jackson. With our tanks full we head off to Baton Rouge and reach there at around 8 pm on Saturday. Boy what a really LONG it has been.

We put up at Sumir Aunty's house which has been made as a basecamp for United Sikhs. I meet up with her, her hubby, her daughter Vinny, son-in-law Steve, Talwinder, Gurvinder and Hardyal Singh. There were a couple of people more in her house. She's really nice lady. She had almost 15 people in her house but she managed to get each one of them a place to sleep.


For Sunday, we decide to go around the city to look for shelters and places where-in we could volunteer. In-between Deepi lets me know that they wont be able to drop me back to Jackson because of gas shortage. So here I am in Baton Rouge with a flight to catch on Monday from Jackson which is atleast 3 hours drive from here and no conveyance. I however tell Hardyal Singh that I can stay there lonegr and we decide to postpone my schedule and talk to airlines people the next day. Finally having been awake almost the whole day (make that almost 30 hours) with some seista in between I finally drop dead.

Lots more to come in subsequent parts. Bye for now.

1984 Anti Sikh Carnage

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Sikh_Riots

I was around 5 years at that time. All I remember of the time is standing on the roof of the house in Hari Nagar and seeing flames at a distance which I faintly remember were of buses from the Depot being burned. I was real scared.

I realised it much later what exactly happened during the 84 Carnage. It would be a mockery to call it riots since it was a mayhem with thousands of Sikh in Delhi and around the country being killled mercilessly. Cut to pieces, burned alived by tying tyres in their neck, rape of the females and what not.

This is again in the news with Nanavati Commission report being tabled in the Parliament. I wonder why did Manmohan Singh let Jagdish Tytler into his cabinet. Almost anyone and everyone knows that Tytler, HKL Bhagat, Sajjan Kumar, et al had blood of innocent Sikhs on their hands. What was more disgusting was to read today about sikh supporters coming out in support of Tytler and saying he is so peaceloving and would never harm a person. Not sure how much they were paid but they showed money can buy anything.

Personally, I have never been able to forget that and the fact that Congress was behind the massacre. Have heard that 'Time is the best healer' but somehow I can never make myself forget that dark period.

Somehow whenever I hear of that period, my eyes get numb for a moment. A couple of news clips I remember:


1. A newly married Sikh couple had their 1st wedding anniversary the day Mrs Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards. The lady had prepared kheer for her husband who scolded her for celebrating the anniversary when the PM has been assassinated. The lady says in a matter of hours, some goondas barged and killed her husband. The tumbler of kheer was lying intact her husband's body.

2. Justic Phoolka who had been representing these people saying 'Most of us who had scooters in 1984 now have swanky cars, but life for them it has degressed'.

3. All you have to do is to visit Tilak Vihar, one of the settlement colonies and you would come across people who lost their husbands, sons or family members or sometimes the entire family. You can see the look of helplessness on their faces. I wonder where is the DSGPC which is so cash rich ? Why does it not do anything for them ? We have failed them. That is too bad.


A link to go thorugh may be:
http://info.indiatimes.com/1984/

Some excerpts from the above link

1. http://info.indiatimes.com/1984/18.html
Block 32 of Trilokpuri was then a colony of poor Sikhs. About 320 people were massacred in the confines of a small gully about 300-400 yards long. There were houses on either side and the street was littered with bodies. Dark are the images that haunt Bedi. "It was concentrated in a very, very small area. There was nothing on the street but body parts, hair, clothes … People were shrieking … And there was an all-pervading stink of decaying flesh. We were literally walking on our toes to avoid stepping on some body."

"There was a polio-inflicted woman who was sitting stunned at the doorway of a house. She was beyond tears, beyond any feelings. She had sat there for a one and a half day. Just watching. Watching the senseless and gruesome killing. Mercifully, she was spared."

2. http://info.indiatimes.com/1984/21.htm
We decided to return to Chandigarh immediately after the riots, travelling in the cockpit of an Indian Airlines plane.

3. http://info.indiatimes.com/1984/18.html
"In 1947, they took refuge across the border. But 20 years ago, which border could they cross? Where could they hide? We had become outcasts in our own country," exclaims Shyama.

Many Sikh families cut off their sons' hair to shield them

"We somehow managed to escape and hid in a Hindu household for five days. My younger brother was not so lucky. All his belongings were burnt along with his turban. He spent a night at the Nigambodh Ghat (a cremation ground) amongst burning bodies," recalls Singh.

"But our community does not know how to give up. Hume mitti me mila diya tha aur hum phir se sona ban kar dikha diye hai (we were razed to the ground, but we have fought back). We are the strength of this nation and will always be," says Shyama with much pride and satisfaction.

4. http://info.indiatimes.com/1984/15.html
It's all about what you chose to build. When a community starts building up a defence mechanism it automatically creates known and unknown enemies. But when it arms itself with a positive attitude and rebuilds itself from and beyond the debris, it creates a space for itself. A bigger and better space than ever existed. That is the Sikh community then. Not a ghetto that an injured minority huddles into usually, but a robust part of the mainstream again.

This lesson was learnt by not only an individual, but an entire community together. Each Sikh has contributed to this positive attitude. And that is why they are winning, not whining.

5. http://info.indiatimes.com/1984/16.html
"My favorite subject was history and I studied till 10th grade after which I had to quit studying due to financial pressures at home. I really wanted to study further, but I couldn't. Today if my father was living, I would have been still studying," says Gurpal.

6. http://info.indiatimes.com/1984/11.html
MENTION the 1984 anti-Sikh riots to these women and an air of silence envelopes them. They live in isolated worlds of poverty and tragedy, but are inextricably joined by one event - their husbands were massacred in that burst of violence 20 years ago.

7. http://info.indiatimes.com/1984/3.html
BLOCK number 32 of Trilokpuri till the riots was a mix of lower class Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims. But the riots changed the colony overnight. Block number 32 is now a colony of just Hindus and Muslims.

8. http://info.indiatimes.com/1984/17.html
TYRES were put around them till their waist and lit with petrol. They were the best means as it is impossible to take one's body out of burning tyres.

In nearby Kanpur the situation was worse. Hundreds of Sardars were pulled out from the narrow lanes of Gumti area and set to fire in front of their shrieking women and yelling kids.
Two thousand Sikhs were butchered in three days. "When a mighty tree falls, the earth is bound to shake" - came the famous explanation from Rajiv Gandhi.

9. http://info.indiatimes.com/1984/1.html
When schools reopened, it was a strange sight. Quite a few of my friends seemed different. Boys who had studied and played with us with colourful turbans had chopped off their hair to escape death.

10. http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=75904
Women, children and a handful of wounded Sikhs, hiding under dead bodies since Thursday night, were rescued by reporters around 6.30 pm on Friday 6. They were emotionless. They had no tears left to shed.

A three-year-old girl, stepping over the bodies of her father, three brothers and countless others lying in the street, clung helplessly to a reporter, pleading for help. ‘‘Please take me home,’’ she said.

A Sikh youth, his slashed stomach patched up with a turban, crawled out from under the dead bodies and collapsed in the arms of the reporters.