Certain
incidents so impress us that they leave an indelible mark on our memory. I was
once involved in an incident of which I shall always have vivid recollections.
The
incident occurred when I visited a village in India together with my parents,
sometime during my holidays last year.
Early in
the morning on the day the incident occurred, I was talking with a few of my
new friends in that village. All of a sudden a boy of my age came rushing
towards us to break the news that violence had broken out in the neighbourhood.
Alarmed at this news, we began to protect ourselves, and before long the
violence spread like wild fire throughout our area.
I was a
little confused at first for I had no idea about the cause of the outbreak of
violence there. One of my friends told me that the area had been notorious or such
occurrence owing to rivalry between two parties. Each party tried to destroy
the influence of the other in that area, and the bad blood that existed between
them had caused several deaths and great misery to innocent people for a long time.
Official influence could not be exercised effectively in this area owing to its
remoteness from the centres of authority. The members of the rival parties therefor
enjoyed almost complete freedom of action. The police arrived only when there
was news of violence, and often long after the damage has been done.
While I
was listening to this account of facts and events, the situation suddenly took
an ugly turn. A man who had been standing a short distance away from us ran into
his house most unexpectedly, and within minutes his house was ablaze. My
friends and I then ran towards his house to put out the tire; but we were
stopped by a few burly men who were holding lethal weapons in their hands. They
threatened to kill if.
We offered
any help to anyone. One of them had even struck me on my head with a stick. We
realised instantly that we were no match for them and that discretion was the
better part of valour. We therefore decided to proceed no further.
Soon the
fire from that house began to spread and several houses were burning. There were
frantic cries for help. Men, women and children
were running in all directions in their desparate attempts to save
whatever they could
from the fire, in
spite of the interference
of the gangsters. A few of the
unfortunate ones were burned to death, including the man who had set tire to
his own house. We then concluded that the man must have been so disgusted with
what we had seen for so long that he had more desire to live, and this was his
way of putting an end to himself. It was indeed a pathetic sight.
Then,
after several hours, the police arrived when more than a quarter of the village
had already been burned to ashes. They asked us several questions to find out
if we had ourselves participated in the violence. As I was foreigner who would
be leaving that village the following day, I had the courage to answer all
their questions and to point out the men who had threatened to kill us. Those
men were then arrested together with other suspects.
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