'The Lucky Ones' By Zara Chowdhary: An Anne Frank Moment Amid The Gujarat Riots

It rattles me that I chose to read Zara Chowdhary바카라�s memoir in the last week of February, the same dates that she goes 23 years back to, in search of what must have been some of the바카라�most excruciating moments of her childhood. She was touching 16 in 2002, torn between childhood and the calling of adulthood, already used to the world of othering, to the untold act of being kept apart because of an identity she was born into. But that would still not prepare her, nor anyone else with an ounce of humanity in them, for the kind of massacre that would take place all around her, of those living on the 바카라�wrong side바카라� of Ahmedabad in Gujarat of 2002. Only chance and a slew of lucky interventions would save her.바카라� 

 At some point in her memoir,바카라�The Lucky Ones, Zara recalls the diary of Anne Frank, the 15 year old Jew girl who wrote an account of her hidden existence in Nazi Germany before she was caught in the carnage. They were of similar age, both trapping their existence indoors, locking their young bodies away because one day, a crowd had decided that people of their religion had lived enough.바카라� 

Living as a Muslim in Ahmedabad had stripped Zara of the privilege of not having to care about religion or remain unaware of it, as children in more secular parts of the country can.바카라�바카라�Our city, Ahmedabad, has a long history of religious violence, dating back way before 9/11. Doesn바카라�t matter if the clash is over worker rights, caste rights or property; issues have a way of alchemising into a Hindu-Muslim fight here,바카라�바카라�Zara writes before she begins her harrowing account of known and unknown stories of the Gujarat riots, each piercing just as deep as when you heard them the first time. They are not cries for attention, not sob stories as some would disparage them, but can, at will, throw loops around what is left of your conscience, simply by being matter of fact and from the heart.바카라� 

 All the more so when it is coming from the memories of a girl who lived so close to it all 바카라� the horrific killing of Ahsan Jafri, a former Congress parliamentarian, the tortures that young pregnant Bilkis Banu went through when the rest of her family was slaughtered before her. In Zara바카라�s young world, Ahsan comes across as the man who habitually saved sparrows just as he sheltered scared neighbours at times of crises. On February 28, 2002, he had bravely opened his front door to an angry mob wielding weapons, asking them to spare the others and take him. In mere minutes, Ahsan was torn to pieces by a mob that understood no language, least of all that of peace. 

 There are times when you should not shut your eyes to not see the violence around you. These stories need to be told over and over again, because it is important to not forget. And Zara바카라�s accounts of them are close to that of an eye-witness, for only a few miles away, she had clutched her little sister and mother and waited for a similar fate for days on end. Theirs was a household of five, with two more staying over in times of trouble. Amid the rage outside her door, Zara helplessly slips into the tensions within 바카라� the unhappy marriage of her parents, the conniving grandmother, the grandfather who died in the house, the bullying cousin. C-8 Jasmine Apartments becomes as vivid as a painting on your wall, unforgettable. Somehow her stories, from within the house and outside of it, fall into order. Years jumping back and forth weave the lives of this family to the larger picture of Gujarat, and of India.바카라� 

 Zara바카라�s writing is at once lyrical as it is honest. After spending pages with her, you taste a genuineness that can only come from some place deep, for she does not bother to cross out the extra words that could keep everyone happy. Not the chief minister of her state who would go on to be the prime minister of the country, and not the friend who seemed indifferent to the misery of thousands like her. She lets out the skeletons, the ghosts and all. And perhaps because she went ahead two decades, she looks back at those days with a maturity surpassing the 16 year old바카라�s. 

 바카라�We are all Muslim, we have that in common, but when you live in a monotheistic ghetto, the sameness starts to wither, dry and flake into subcategories. In the absence of an 바카라�other바카라� to collectively hate on, you turn inwards, creating your own childish caste system, rating the piety of those within your community바카라�,바카라�바카라�Zara writes, gently, poetically, noting the human tendency to keep finding reasons to push each other away. 

It takes great writing to bring out the emotion of a long ago day without in the slightest way turning to drama. March 2002 바카라� the days of the riots 바카라� was the month of her class 10 boards for which she and all her batchmates had prepared for days and weeks. Yet, when the much postponed exams are finally announced, what she fears most is not how the paper would be, but if she would be recognised as a Muslim girl, risking her life by straying out of her house and into the world like a normal student. She obsesses about her name that was not so obviously Muslim.바카라� 

It rips you apart that for this young girl, practicality became the only way to survive, to live or even to die. She바카라�d prepare herself for what might come, rape or murder. The family would readily cloth themselves to pass off as Hindus and shudder on hearing the sound of their own names, lest they be found out.바카라� 

Beyond the violence of the riots, we trickle down to such nitty gritties of how life had sunk into different sorts of uncertainty 바카라� where will the food come from once the last of the potatoes are cooked, where were the friends and classmates of another safer religion who stopped calling in March, will the wedding of a friend marked for that March ever happen again after her groom was shot down. It became a luxury to worry over smaller losses, like a forgotten birthday 바카라�바카라�바카라�Who could be bothered about a child sitting safely in an apartment losing only her memory, so that one day she would call these her blank years?바카라� 

Among the endless stories of human cruelties, Zara sprinkles the rare acts of kindness, even tiny gestures of mercy looking large when everything else was dark and everyone else had turned away. A teacher who called her beta, a Hindu acquaintance who drove her to exams, a police officer who stood apart from the rest simply by doing his duty of protecting people became her heroes. Even when you know that she would survive this, you worry about every passing moment of the curfewed days of 2002, fearing what the next moment would bring. You wait for the Boards that Zara could finally take, hoping she would reach back home safe each day, even as you know she would conquer a lot more along the way. 

 Zara is now a writer and lecturer at the University of Wisconsin and author of this beautiful memoir, but it is difficult to leave behind the 16 year old who thought that getting to see another day was a bonus given to her. You have to be glad that this version of Anne Frank made it, and made it all the more stronger because of her past.바카라� 

Cris is a feature writer based in Kerala and likes to think what she writes about people and culture and happenings around her are full of wit, if not utterly grave.