What the communal riots in Delhi have left behind are not just a list of casualties, a litany of woes or charred ruins. What lies trampled underfoot is common decency of people and the taken-for-granted trust that holds communities and lives together. These riot victims had their lives fractured, some beyond repair. A year on, a few of them try to cope with iron resolve and an expectation of ‘justice’. Others straggle on painfully, with reduced reserves of goodwill and hope in their souls.
Through A Mirror Broken
A year after the deadly disruption of the Delhi riots, 52-year-old Mohammed Wakeel has been picking up the scattered pieces of his life. On February 14, Wakeel and his family moved into their reconstructed house in Northeast Delhi’s Shiv Vihar. Their old home was vandalised, then torched, in the riots that killed 53 people and injured hundreds. A distraught Wakeel recalls how his world plunged into darkness when a...
