19 January 1990

On that fearful night
I happened to be
a thousand kilometres away
from the blitz and bluster,
but when I recall
the distress phone call
of my horror-stricken sister
who let me hear
through her speaker
the cantankerous uproar
from a thousand loudspeakers and more
hoisted atop the mosques
that rent the valley
exhorting the faithful
to come out of their homes
and throng the streets for a Jihad,
to drive the infidels out,
banish the Pandit males
and subdue their females,
I plug my ears to shut off the echo
as I still shudder with the reverberations
of that cacophony of religious frenzy
which sent three hundred and fifty thousand
of my faith
marching from their homes
into the Indian plains.

They say, ever since,
the ghosts of that holocaust night
stalk the length and breadth
of my homeland
and the big bang of that mob outcry
still re-echoes
from hill and dale
like a curse.

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