By Shubha Balasubramanyam

This literary-prose style by Shubha Balasubramanyam non-fiction is based on her experiences as a North American born Indian, working in Gujarat during the time of the 2002 Muslim-Hindu riots. She has previously had fiction published in Clean Sheets online magazine and works for WNYC.




Sweating in my private room upstairs waiting for anything, waiting for 604800 seconds -an entire week. The autobiography of Gandhi, with its Indian pages, too thin and smooth, sprawled out on the floor beside my bed. Me, lying on the hard mattress, my body unable to shape it; my head unable to dent the hard pillow; me missing my daily bike ride to the ineffectual NGO in Rajkot where I hated working - but at least it was way out of this stifling apartment.

A week ago I lay down for my Indian siesta, as I had done everyday that spring. As alwaays, I rode my bike back to work at sunset. The CEO’s right-hand man (Hindu) greeted me. Some train had burnt, he said. Everyone had to go home, stay inside for the rest of the night. What did his constant smile convey? His constant brushing everything (childrens’ rights, AIDS, genocides) aside with a wave of his hand, like all Indian hands before and after him, saying he would see me tomorrow.

For what seemed like forever, I paced between my room upstairs and the living room downstairs where my host mom and dad (Hindu, Hindu) slept. The big TV chattered away in Gujarati showing the carcasses of stores on the street I had once biked along to my internship. Showing images of my people: innocent Hindus killed by evil Muslims, they said. All across Gujarat, it said.

The television kept showing Muslims being burned alive, being shot, decapitated, herded around streets, villages, cities, countries, raped, stripped, butchered. People that weren’t just TV images like they were back home in Canada. People burning others alive in my
living room. My people.

I did not go back to work the next day. I was not allowed to leave my house. Nobody was allowed to leave their homes. The police would shoot at sight. The police would shoot us, to protect us? A week ago, I rode to work while my aunt and uncle (Hindu, Hindu) took a train back from a retiree vacation in Rajasthan. They sat on the train, unknowingly hurtling towards the blazing station. Chaiwallahas, plastic blue mattresses, their sleepcar blasting cold air. In traditional hospitality, a family on the train invited them to their village for dinner. They got off the train early. Luck. The next day, amidst a village now in chaos, they struggled to find their way to the airport. Find rickshaw drivers willing to take them through ad-hoc checkpoints manned by killers. Staring into the eyes of centuries, they would venture a guess at the magic password: “We are Hindu” “We are Muslim” “Achaa, pass.” They flew to Madras. Luck.

I asked my host family (Hindu), in words they did not understand, “If I hadn’t just bought this purse with a Hindu Om on it, would I have been killed?” Everyone laughed at me: “You think they need an Om bag to know you’re a Hindu?”

One second, Two seconds, Three seconds. On the chatterbox: Hindus killing Muslims, Hindus torturing Muslims, Hindus raping Muslim girls, Muslim women, Muslim mothers and their daughters, Hindus chaining 50, 60, 100 Muslim villagers together and burning them, Hindus locking Muslims in their houses and burning them, Hindus laughing, Hindus pointing, Hindus sitting in their living rooms watching TV. And me. Me?

I conversed with my host mother (Hindu) “How ironic Gandhi is also from Gujarat and he wanted everyone to live in peace!” “Yes!” she responded emphatically in broken English, “Yes! After all that Gandhi gave them, the Muslims have proven they are really evil.”

Weeks later, back at work, smiley hand-wave guy (Hindu), fat CEO guy (Hindu), aunt and uncle (Hindu, Hindu), aunties and uncles (Hindu? Hindu, Hindu...), news guy (Hindu.): “For centuries we’ve been peaceful and sat back, it’s about time we fought back”. Me: “They raped them and cut up their vaginas in front of their moms!” The rest of us (Hindus): “… still. They need to know what’s what.”

Many eons later, my mom shouts at my 20 year old self across a long Toronto apartment, balcony overlooking Lake Ontario, freshly painted white walls. She shouts “blah blah blah, they’re Muslims! You don’t get it! You are there for 3 months and you think you know what’s going on!” She screams in defense of the chatterbox, screams why it was right and I was wrong, as if this were a parental debate about drugs, or sex. As if this wasn’t about the forced sex between 9 year old Muslim girls and 50 year old Hindu men. She screams at me - a kid who is too young to understand. She didn’t have them there in her living room, burning each other alive, charring the white, white walls.

Me in a New York Ivy League library, Indian characters in books justifying themselves: decades of brainwashing they say, the media, the history, the cultural clashes, the political influences, the psychology of religion. I undo the clasp of my silver necklace, lay it on the antique brown table and slide off my little golden ohm pendant, placing it far away forever.