Guest Post by JOHN DAYAL

My aunt and God-mother Sophie Joseph had lived in Delhi a long time, and as a young woman, was witness to the communal frenzy art the 1947 Partition of India.

She would also tell stories of heroism, and greed. Many Hindus saved lives, in return for all the cash they could carry, or for rights over the house that would soon be vacated. Others saved their neighbours out of love. Many lived to cross the borders not because the Armymen protected them, but because the neighbours risked their lives to save them from other marauding neighbours. Sophie, then in her teens, remembered all this. She was no heroine and her lower middle class family was not the stuff of which role models are made, but they were happy they connived in the saving of lives.

That lives could be saved if there was courage of conviction was a lesson she learnt. Her lesson would come in handy almost thirty five years later, save many more lives of other neighbours.

She was now living in the DDA colony at Lawrence, recently re-christened Kesavapuram. She was the only Christian in her block, A-1. Ironically, almost all her neighbours were refugees from Pakistan, who had come into the city in 1947 and 148, shattered their souls wounded, and had rebuild comfortable lives for themselves. For years, Sophie thought she was the only member of a minority community in the block. Her neighbours also thought she was the only minority member. Exotic, as a matter of fact. When she decorated her home for Christmas, children from other blocks would come to see the nativity tableau.

One day the block woke up to the realization that there was another minority community living amongst them.

On 31 October 1984, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was shot dead. Within hours, Delhi was on fire; or rather Sikh shops were on fire. In another hour, 3,500 Sikhs, young men and old but mostly men, were dragged down from busses, pushed off their motorcycles, cycles and scooters, doused.

In Lawrence road, the frenzy was as much. Rumours flew as thick as the smoke from the burning, living bodies

In Block A-1, tiny Bobby was unaware of the momentous event, that a Big Tree Had Fallen and Shaken the Ground. As he played in the house of Sophie, noises were heard outside the Block. There was a mob from another block, from nearby A-2 or from the slums of Trinagar, also close by. They were looking for Sikh families, to burn.

These were the days before they built the steel barricades in colonies. The mob was already inside A-1 when H S Chaddha, Bobby’s father realized he was the only Sikh in the block, and the crowds were after him. Chadha too had a corner flat on the third floor. It was a coveted flat, with extra space which the DDA brochure called a Lucky House. HS Chadha had paid a little more than Sophie for his house, but he was suddenly glad he was on the same floor, just across the landing of the staircase from the Christian house.

Sophie came out and called Bobby’s mother. Come in, she said. The Chadha clan trooped in, in tears and afraid, mumbling their prayers.

Sophie calmed them down, and took them to her own bedroom. They were safe, she said. Her husband was a former army officer. Her nephew knew all the big shots in Delhi, particularly the police commissioner. They were safe, Mother Sophie said. She would guard them with her life.

She did. She chided the neighbours, tried to din some courage into them.

She scolded them, and she remained extremely quite on who were inside her house. Chaddha and other similar families from the neighbourhood. Safe from the mobs as long as Sophie lived. The crowds looked at her, and turned away. Not daring her any further, not daring to test if she meant what she said. Not entering her house.

Her courage infused a sense of community in the block. They were bound to a conspiracy of silence at least.

A section of police jawans came to her block a day later, and stood guard, on and off.

It was days before Bobby and his parents went back to their home. No thanks were needed. No formal thanks were said. The eyes said it all.

Years later, Bobby was a young handsome Sikh, with a curly beard. He was in tears at a prayer meeting held on the roof top terrace of Block A 1 who had died the previous day, and had been buried that evening.

As the prayers hummed low, someone spoke of Sophie, witness to 1947, a small heroine of 1984.

That is how they remembered the old nurse. As Mother Courage.