An evening at Jallianwala Bagh

It was a chilly evening. I looked up at the darkening sky and then at my wristwatch to realise it was only half past five in the evening. All the walking had drained me off my energy and tricked me into underestimating the Punjab winters. As my rushing footsteps slowed down on entering the Jallianwala Bagh, it struck me how crisp the air seemed. The temperature was gradually falling thereby zeroing the effect of the hot-water head bath I had taken barely minutes before. The moisture in my hair quickly reacted to the decreasing temperature and gave me goosebumps on my scalp and hands sending shivers down my body.

Maybe all these sudden changes had something to do with the place I was in. The dead calm of the Jallianwala Bagh was unmistakable. There weren’t a lot of tourists due to the closing time and I knew I would have to return the next morning to really connect with the place. But to my surprise, the guard found me and instead of warning me of the time, gave me few extra minutes to quickly go around the garden.

I nodded in agreement and began my exploration. The main monument stands right in the centre paying tribute to thousands of innocent people who lost their lives in the garden. And one can still digest that. At the far corners of the garden stand old brick walls laden with bullet holes, innumerable holes bearing testimony to the 16,000 shots of gunfire. Walking away from them was next to impossible.

They were full of stories, of screams and chaos. The red brick structures standing hundred years after the massacre and the enormous stretch of trees have seen too much. There could have been men and women, old and young, children unaware of the sudden attack. They must have tried to cower or shield themselves from the gunfire. Someone’s husband could have been hit by a bullet in the chest and collapsed near the wall. A child could have taken a bullet in his head and died instantly. Women must have run for the nearby well and jumped to embrace fateful death. They all must have screamed and yelled in pain and sorrow and fear…Is there even a word for such a feeling? Someone who must have seen it all happen, who survived for the initial five minutes in the crowd, must have sensed violent death approaching. Someone who just had an iota of life left after being stamped on, must have visualised the faces of their family members before shutting their eyes. Children must have cried in pain unable to look for their parents in the pandemonium of madness. They must have eventually let go. With more than a thousand bloodied bodies, the family members who came to look for their kin, must have felt a knife slice through their hearts and souls.

What a scene it must have been?

wall bearing the bullet marks

Although so well-maintained, there is something that looms over your mind even after you leave. It haunted me for days and pained me as though I lost someone there.

 Today marks a hundred years to the infamous Jallianwala Bagh massacre and we know that wounds heal but scars remain. We know that official apologies have been made but there is an aura of sadness hung over the place. And one can only hope that no innocent loses his or her life and that no stone-cold General Dyers see the light of the day again.