Thread by @DeathEndsFun

For weeks starting on this day (or actually December 7) 29 years ago, Bombay descended into a maelstrom of vandalism and slaughter. I realize half this country wasn’t even born then, but many of us lived through those horrible weeks. #Bom9293 (1/many. Follow along please.)

And we remember what happened. How it happened. Who was responsible. We remember. We don’t plan to forget. Especially not that it was the mob that demolished the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya on December 6 1992 that sparked the violence. #Bom9293

Your fellow Indians slaughtered about 1000 of your fellow Indians then: more than Mar 12 1993, more than 26/11, more than any other bomb blasts in this country. That number is matched only by the Gujarat massacre of 2002, exceeded only by the Delhi massacre of 1984. #Bom9293

That is, your fellow Indians killed many more Indians in those weeks (and 1984 and 2002) than murderous scum like Ajmal Kasab and his colleagues did in 2008. Yet we have no memorials, no plaques, no glittering functions at the Gateway to remember these murdered Indians. #Bom9293

And let’s also not forget: nobody punished for that massacre of 1000 fellow-Indians, like Kasab was punished. #Bom9293

So here’s a reminder of at least some of what happened then. Worth remembering on this day every year but really, always. #Bom9293

(During those weeks, several of us under the loose umbrella of Ekta fanned out across the city to meet and interview victims of the violence. I took notes in a red notebook. From those notes, a series of vignettes about a city.) #Bom9293

Note: Some of the vignettes that follow are necessarily split into one or more tweets. (Also note that I'll post some, take a break, post some more, like that through the day). #Bom9293

1) Residents of a slum we visited saw people from a nearby building throwing bags full with petrol at them, by the fistful, by the dozen. (1/11) #Bom9293

1a) The petrol-bag-throwers followed up by flinging bombs to set off fires in the slum. (2/11) #Bom9293

2) From one building we visited, someone had thrown bombs or something similar onto a communal toilet in the slum, destroying its roof. (3/11) #Bom9293

3) Till today I cannot understand people who would drop stuff, explosive stuff, on the heads of people taking a crap. (4/11) #Bom9293

4) When I asked a man in the building,"Who dropped these bombs?", he said the residents of the slum destroyed the toilet's roof themselves. (5/11) #Bom9293

5) That is, he hoped I would think, as we looked down, that slum residents out for a crap broke their own toilet roofs to make him look bad. (6/11) #Bom9293

6) “How did so many huts get burned down?” I asked him. He said the slum residents did that too. They do it frequently, he told me. (7/11) #Bom9293

7) From the terrace of one building, a man pointed to what he referred to as a "bunker" and "firing range" in the slum far below. (8/11) #Bom9293

7a) What he meant and was pointing to were three sandbags we could just make out from that height, lying on a broken roof below where we stood. (9/11) #Bom9293

8) A woman in the slum showed us bullet marks inside her hut. Then I positioned myself to line up these bullet holes in her pots and on the wall … (10/11) #Bom9293

8a) … When I sighted along them, it was clear as daylight: the bullet had come, unmistakably, from a green window in a fourth floor flat in the nearby building (11/11). #Bom9293

9) Spoke to a milk seller on Reay Road. A mob robbed his house and took his clothes and vessels. (1/2) #Bom9293

9a) Later, another gang of thugs came there, beat him and told him to leave the area. (He didn't). (2/2) #Bom9293

10) An 18 year-old and his younger brother ran a raddi business nearby. A mob broke into the shop and beat up the brother. (1/2) #Bom9293

10a) The mob stole Rs 300 from the shop and also took their signboard, which read "GAMRA METAL & PAPER MART." (2/2) #Bom9293

11) Near Reay Rd, a handcart puller dropped the cart and ran to escape a violent mob. When he returned, his handcart was burned. He had no way left to earn a living. #Bom9293

12) We met a man lying in a bed in JJ Hospital whose account of what happened to him reminded me acutely of Saadat Hasan Manto's chilling story “Mishtake”. (Read it here: thenewsminute.com/article/we-wis…) This JJ hospital patient, like that. #Bom9293

13) Another man I met at JJ Hospital was there because he had been surrounded by a dozen men and attacked with swords. (1/2) #Bom9293

13a) He had wounds on his head, arm, chest and back. He had no idea how he had survived. Nor any idea how he had reached JJ. (2/2) #Bom9293

14) Still another man at JJ Hospital, whose thigh was nearly sliced through, was sitting dazed on his bed, unable to comprehend what had happened to him and why. #Bom9293

15) We came across a small group of men and women weeping quietly. They told me, "We are Marathi speakers. Still they attacked us!" (1/2) #Bom9293

Everything perverse about this tragedy, right there. (2/2) #Bom9293

One man I met was buying cigarettes at a paanwala in Byculla at 930 one morning. (1/2) #Bom9293

Suddenly, forty or fifty men (he said) surrounded him and attacked him with knives. A friend managed to rescue him. (2/2) #Bom9293

A mob set fire to a building called Dalal Estate in Bombay Central. An elderly couple, avid stamp collectors, was trapped in their flat. They died. #Bom9293

18) In Bhendi Bazar, a 29 year-old woman and her daughter left their home at 3pm one afternoon to get rid of their garbage. (1/2) #Bom9293

18a) Both were struck in the back by bullets. (2/2) #Bom9293

19) A woman in Kalachowkie left her hut to wash clothes. When she returned, a mob had burned down her hut. #Bom9293

20) A man in JJ Hospital told us that a group of men ran up as he was walking on a bridge. Pointing to his beard, they lifted him up … (1/2) #Bom9293

20a) … paid no attention to his shouts that he was Hindu, and threw him onto the railway tracks below. Somehow, he survived. (2/2) #Bom9293

21) We met a woman in a building beside a slum who said she had suffered greatly from “throne-stowing”. We wanted to laugh, but she was distraught. #Bom9293

22) On the ground floor of the same building, one resident had boarded up two of his windows permanently, terrified of attacks from nearby slum residents. #Bom9293

23) Elsewhere, we met a man from Uttar Pradesh who had lived in Kalachowkie for 11 years. He had two kids. He ran a raddi-paper shop. (1/2) #Bom9293

23a) “300 to 400 people”, he said, arrived there one day, burned down the shop and looted all his vessels. (2/2) #Bom9293

24) In Nagpada, a 20 year-old woman in the third year of her B Com at the Akbar Peerbhoy College lost her brother in police firing. (1/3) #Bom9293

24a) Two days later, a police bullet hit her in the head as she stood on the street. (2/3) #Bom9293

24b) Luckily she was not seriously hurt. Only, her vision was permanently affected. (3/3) #Bom9293

25) An injured man I met at JJ Hospital could remember only this about his four attackers: two wore long pants, two wore shorts. (1/2) #Bom9293

25a) He also told us a "hotel owner" came to the hospital and distributed Rs 100 each to patients like him, injured in the violence. (2/2) #Bom9293

26) Reay Road: a couple in a shack who had four girls and a boy was saving money in a box for dowry for when they married off the girls. (1/2) #Bom9293

26a) A mob burned down their hut, but not before stealing the dowry money, Rs 5000. (2/2) #Bom9293

27) The man who delivered milk to my uncle every morning also drove a riksha. For several days in the second week of December, no milk was delivered. (1/2) #Bom9293

27a) My uncle finally made inquiries. He learned that the man had been pulled from his riksha and killed. (2/2) #Bom9293

28) A young journalist I knew called in tears one morning. The family had woken to find a prominent “X” painted outside their front door. They have since emigrated. #Bom9293

29) A taxi-driver, originally from Nashik, was walking in a lane near CP Tank. About 15 boys, he said, stoned and then stabbed him. He woke up in the hospital. #Bom9293

30) Riding on the train one afternoon, I saw a gang of men on a low wall beside the tracks between Mahalakshmi and Lower Parel stations. (1/3) #Bom9293

30a) Their smiling teeth gleamed almost as much as the long knives many of the men held in their hands. (Really). (2/3) #Bom9293

30b) Got to a phone and called police to tell them. Man who answered said: “What should I do about it? There are mobs all over the city.” He hung up. (3/3) #Bom9293

31) At the office one evening, I was waiting for a late meeting. An old and very close family friend called. (1/2) #Bom9293

31a) He urged me to leave for home right away: "The Muslims have poisoned our milk and are going to attack from the sea!" he nearly shouted into the phone. (2/2) #Bom9293

32) A timber merchant had been running his business near Currey Road station since about 1951. (1/4) #Bom9293

32a) One night some people came to his yard in a white Ambassador, he said. They flung kerosene all over the wood and set it on fire. (2/4) #Bom9293

32b) He lost his entire stock, suffering a loss of Rs 1 crore. He went to the police station to file a complaint … (3/4) #Bom9293

32c) … only to find that a complaint had been filed against him - for burning a rival's stock, and for selling liquor. (4/4) #Bom9293

33) In the ash of a burned-down set of homes near Bombay Central, I found half-burned scraps ... of explicit pornographic photographs. #Bom9293

34) Also at JJ Hospital, we met a badly injured cable TV employee. In Kamathipura, he had been surrounded by about 12 men and assaulted with knives and choppers. (1/5) #Bom9293

34a) Now most other victims we met were Muslims attacked by Hindus, or Hindus assaulted by Muslims. (2/5) #Bom9293

34b) Horrifying, yes, but at least in line with the twisted logic of those weeks. (3/5) #Bom9293

34c) But this man was, on the face of it, a senseless instance of the violence. He was a Hindu attacked by other Hindus. (4/5) #Bom9293

34d) Why? Because he had a beard that made him - in his own words - "look like a Muslim". (5/5) #Bom9293

35) Came across an unconscious man with a head injury and a fractured jaw lying naked on a bed - in fact tied down to it - in JJ Hospital. (1/2) #Bom9293

35a) His chart said he was "unconscious on arrival", his "pupil reaction was sluggish" and he was "irritable". (2/2) #Bom9293

36) A scrawny young man advanced threateningly on us as we were speaking to the owner … (1/3) #Bom9293

36a) … of a small chai shop near Marine Lines station that had been vandalized and burned down. (2/3) #Bom9293

36b) I will always regret that I did not stand up to that young man instead of walking away. Hell, what can I say, we felt the terror too. (3/3) #Bom9293

37) Woman we met came here from Tirupati thirty years earlier and owned a scrap iron shop near Reay Road station. (1/3) #Bom9293

37a) One day in December 1992, a large mob came and looted her shop. (2/3) #Bom9293

37b) The next day, several more people came, attacked her & said she had better return to Tamil Nadu. She told me she was going to stay. (3/3) #Bom9293

38) So … I remember all these stories when I hear claims that December 6 1992 was a day of "honour" and "pride". I measure those claims by the yardstick of all these vignettes. #Bom9293

38a) The claims don't score so well, you know. #Bom9293

39) Nor, let it be said, do the claimants. #Bom9293

40) I doubt the guy who was thrown off a bridge onto railway tracks below found honour or redemption in the events of Dec 6 1992. #Bom9293

41) Nor the fellow who had boarded up his windows, afraid for his life. #Bom9293

42) Nor indeed the journalist who found the “X” painted outside her door one morning. Probably not the painters either. #Bom9293

43) So let’s ask: How tall does a country stand when it stands on the rubble of a mosque? Let me repeat that: How tall does a country stand when it stands on the rubble of a mosque? #Bom9293

44) December 6 1992: I don't really care if others, or a younger generation, don't remember. Or don’t want to remember. Or if they want to move on. Because I remember. #Bom9293

45) Finally, some of you out there have read it before, but this story never fails to sadden me, besides being a signpost of the madness. #Bom9293

46) This episode I witnessed close-up summed up for me the senselessness of those weeks — For Raju, who died alone: rediff.com/news/1996/1612… #Bom9293

47) "You showed me that the true meaning of all that rubble in Ayodhya is not some reborn national self-respect, not some righting of an ancient wrong, but your death." Indeed: rediff.com/news/1996/1612… #Bom9293