'Chal bhai, uth.' Get up. He said it to the politicians like they worked for him.
International press has come, he announced. Rotters, BBC, Newsweek.
Key Points
- Three journalists reached Godhra within hours of the train burning, despite the city already being under curfew.
- With shops closed and no food available, they secured a room at the Circuit House after considerable persuasion.
- During a later curfew visit, a rookie photographer unexpectedly told police they were going for a snack.
- At the Circuit House, politicians gave up their sofa space after officials welcomed the visiting journalists.
- The journalists eventually ate roti and dal while the politicians spent the night sleeping on the sofas.
You know a train burnt in Gujarat setting off a series of unfortunate events.
The day the train burned, three of us reached Godhra within hours.
Anosh and I came from Bhavnagar. Thomas came separately from Ahmedabad.
The city was already under curfew by the time we arrived.
We spent the day reporting, moving from one unfolding incident to the next. I will not go into the case itself here.
I only want to remember that night.
There was nowhere to stay. After a fair bit of persuasion, I managed to get the key to a room at the Circuit House.
This was before anyone realised what a room in Godhra would soon be worth.
By evening the city had gone completely quiet. No shops, no food, nothing.
We were starving. Everything was shut.
Let me jump ahead to another curfew, another visit to Godhra, much later in the riots.
This time it was just Anosh and me, in a car, with a new photographer up front.
The man had a look that could startle anyone. Bald, solidly built, faintly menacing. Underneath all that, gentle as anything.
He had never covered a riot before. A rookie. I told him, when the police stop us, just say Press.
At the barrier, the cop asked, "Kyan chalya?" which was a sarcastic take on where we were headed.
"Nasto karva", our guy replied. Roughly, he said we were in for a snack. Even we did not expect that snacking in such a situation.
The cops stared at us. We turned the car around quietly.
I moved him to the back seat, waited a while, and drove up to the same barrier again.
Same question from the same cop. This time I answered. Press. We were waved through.
A Hungry Night At Circuit House
Back at the Circuit House, we were starving and went straight to the kitchen, hoping for leftovers.
At the reception we found two members of Parliament and an MLA. I will leave their names out of this.
There was a fourth man too, sitting with the quiet confidence of someone in charge, though we could not place him.
We introduced ourselves to him first. He looked like the one who mattered.
Reuters, The Week and FSRN, we said, hoping the names would open a kitchen door.
He turned out to be the head of the Police Housing Corporation. Not a post with much weight on paper, but he clearly carried some.
The sofas were full of sleeping dignitaries. The MPs and MLAs.
No rooms left, he told us. The MPs and the MLA would have to manage on the couch tonight.
Then he waved us over anyway.
Mistaken For Foreign Journalists
'Chal bhai, uth.' Get up. He said it to the politicians like they worked for him.
International press has come, he announced. Rotters, BBC, Newsweek.
None of the names were quite right, and none of us were foreign, but nobody corrected him.
Get up. Let them sit, he said again, and made us sit down.
The parliamentarians stood behind the sofa like they were the ones waiting for something.
These people have come all the way from America, he told them.
They looked at us. Very local faces, speaking the local language, sounding nothing like people who had just landed from America.
But somehow we had reached Godhra within hours of the tragedy, and that seemed to settle it in their minds.
They shook our hands anyway, too polite to ask the obvious question.
We spoke about the morning's events for a while, then moved to what actually mattered. Food.
Is the kitchen open, I asked.
Of course, he said, and called for the cook.
The cook looked at us, then at his shelves, clearly working out what he could actually manage.
Whatever is there, we said.
Roti and dal, he offered. We could not have been happier.
Flour was no problem. The dal was rationed carefully.
We sat there talking until well past midnight.
We had our room. They had the sofa.
The next morning, we woke up to find them still there, one of them brushing his teeth by the window.
They had spent the night on the couch while we slept properly down the hall.
It came down to nothing more than a few minutes. We got the key first, and once the curfew set in, nobody was breaking any locks that night.
That night all that separated a bed from a sofa was who asked first.
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff
