The similes..- written a year back on the Lynching of Akhlaque in Dadri...

The similes...

Exactly 50 Kms from ground zero Dadri..1992 Aligarh my hometown was burning with communal riots and tension.. 

My father a  well respected Prof in AMU was injured while trying to save a  Harijan boy.in that year...

. A mob had caught hold of this young Harijan boy in our colony .. In a frenzied chaos.. My father rushed into the mob and almost laid himself on the boy and told the mob clearly...They have to kill him first then only they can kill the boy.. I remember myself as a first yr bachelor student.. Young scared but determined girl to save my father come what may...Entering the mob the first thing I remember are the red dripping eyes of those black masked men.. It was a mob of odd 500 of them.. But the ones which struck me .. The unforgettable ones.,,Were these 5 of them. With black masks.. Leading the crowd.. Instigating the mob.... They were clearly the outsiders. The scriptwriters of the whole act had send them for a special purpose..,they had cruel determination in thier red eyes.,With long iron rods and gleaming chaakus in hands.. They were trying to push my father away from the Harijan boy as much as possible.. Someone from the back shouted " kill the communist prof ".. Frantically I started pulling my father away.. At that moment I couldn't think of anything else...except get him out of there.. Then they spotted me.. Realised I am the profs daughter.. They grabbed me.. .... Someone kicked in my tummy..my lower abdomen..I doubled with pain on road..there was blood oozing out from my nose and mouth..My father s Attn was understandably diverted a bit....And the 5 of them stabbed the boy through my fathers thighs..hurting my father too in the bargain..

We could not save the boy.. His pleading eyes haunted us all for yrs.. My father could not sleep for months.. I remember the moment the boys mother and his young bride ( he was newly married) came  to our place to meet my father.. They didn't say much .. Just tried to touch my fathers feet and softly cried...can never forget that moment...it's etched....

This incident almost inscribed itself on my young impressionable mind.. I was hugely affected..but somewhere it also paved the way for deciphering the person I was going to evolve in as.. My detached approach towards religious obsession and it's associated narrow minded ness, became even more strong and determined in me..

But today something strikes me as an odd simile ..it is the helplessness of Akhlaque   and the Harijan boy..same pleading.. Same brutality.. Same red dripping frenzied eyes of thier killers.. Similar sinister scriptwriters.. May belong to different Colors.. ( green or saffron) but the ideology same..mirror images of each other..and the best simile reflects in the mad mad frienzied mob..same madness.. Same brutal sadistic pleasure in overpowering the weaker one...same eerie silence after the killing...