Jarnail Singh,better known as the journalist who threw a shoe at Home Minister P Chidambaram,has found a more eloquent,non-footwear way to express his thoughts. He has brought out a slim volume on the anti-Sikh riots that followed the assassination of Indira Gandhi on October 31,1984 : I Accuse: The Anti-Sikh Violence of 1984 (Viking,Rs 350). It is the second shoe on the face of injustice, he says. The hardback,in fact,contains traumatic recollections of those widowed in the violence that raged in Delhi for three days and a narration put together with news stories and testimonials to the Ranganath Mishra and GT Nanavati commissions. There is also Jarnails personal story hiding in the attic as a 11-year-old and later watching his polio-stricken brother coming home,beaten and bleeding. The ghost of 1984 never left us, says Jarnail (36). His promotion from a Reebok-lobber on April 6 to an author happened in a week,when Penguin India approached him to write about the riots. Unlike the 2002 Gujarat violence,the 84 riots have not been properly documented, he says. Even many Sikhs are ignorant of the massacres in Trilokpuri and Kalyanpuri. Statistics dont convey the human story. A former reporter with the Dainik Jagaran,Jarnail goes for a straight-forward,footnote-free narrative. Most of the incidents are in the public domain,but that does not soften the blow. Jarnail also,significantly,writes about the aftershocks of the riots. Gopi Kaur,a widow of 84,weeps about her son getting addicted to smack. One Barfi Kaur says she has lost her nephews to drugs. Addiction to drugs is the curse of the children of 84, says Jarnail. You can find many faults with the book: there are few references,people are not identified in detail,testimonials are often partially stated,allegedly makes only a rare appearance and there are 20 pages on Why I Hurled the Shoe. But they only make you realise the spaces that need to be filled,the kind of book that should be written. For now,on the 25th anniversary of the riots,the first line of the book conveys the madness of those days. Charanjeet Kaur,whose house was gutted and husband murdered,tells Jarnail,I did not even know who Indira was. The book,written in Hindi,has been translated into English by Vaishali Mathur.
