Just as suddenly as they had started the riots stopped. There were a few moments of uncertainty, an abrupt pause and then suddenly, without any indication normal life burst out to fill the resulting vacuum. The city which had been ominously silent over the last 5 days was once again humming with life and activity.

After days of staying at home with the doors locked, even small, everyday things seemed so much more colorful and extraordinary that a carnival mood seemed to envelope us all. Just walking till DDA Complex was like an adventure. The entire colony was out on the streets, the shops were packed and the babble of a hundred different voices filled the air. Everyone you met wanted to discuss the ‘situation’. It seemed like an exciting time to be alive.

That evening as we were settling down to our dinners, a smooth faced, rather grave looking young man sitting in a studio in far away Delhi definitively announced that “normalcy has returned to Vasantgaon” and it was as if the riots had never really been. Over the next few days, normalcy was restored everywhere- in the newspapers, on the radio and on Television. Everywhere, that is, except in our hearts. Overnight our town had been divided into ‘our area’ and ‘their area’, safe areas and dangerous ones. Of course, one had to go across to their area to buy certain items or to catch the bus for office in the mornings, but at night we avoided that area as much as possible. Even the cricket matches between surrounding neighbourhoods stopped, for who knew when an argument over a dismissal might turn into another riot?

Life slowly settled into a pattern. A few months passed and the media moved on to better stories. Only the unstated boundaries remained, invisible to the naked eye and yet as solid and unyielding as the Great Wall of China. Cricket teams still did not play each other and we were ever conscious of the differences between ‘us’ and ‘them’.

It was during this period that a decapitated head was discovered in the naala near Priya Park. It belonged to a mild looking middle aged man with a thick beard and a full head of hair. Someone had neatly sliced through the neck, leaving a rather grotesque mixture of horror and apparent surprise marked on his face. Coming as it did after a few months of apparent peace; the head caused a sensation in our small town.

Who was this person? Why had he been killed? Most importantly, did the murder have any connection to the riots that had taken place a few months back? These questions dominated all our conversations and the mystery was front page news in all the papers. No one had come forward to claim it and no one seemed to know who it belonged to. Some people claimed that this person was one of the leaders of the’ kacchewaala’ gang, while others said it belonged to a hardened convict, who had been ‘encountered’. In the super-charged atmosphere following the riots rumors spread like wildfire. Finally, a local leader from the Munirka area came forward to claim the head stating that the man was from their community.

This “leader”, who had been a small time rowdy and a known history-sheeter before the riots had miraculously transformed into an important person after them. Apparently, he had protected Munirka from attack during the riots and helped out a lot of people with the money he made by robbing them earlier. What his constituency or popularity was I don’t know but he was treated with a lot of deference by both the media as well as the police. However, he could not offer any identification for the head apart from the argument that the man had a beard and so, was obviously from his community. This, of course was hotly contested by the Vishweshwarriyya Math whose spiritual leader Swami Jag Premi ji Maharaj had been claiming that the head belonged to one of the sadhus of the mutth. New claimants were emerging with every passing day but no one could provide any clinching proof and so the police refused to hand over the head to any party.

Whatever the truth might have been, this news shattered the uneasy peace that had developed in our town. Fiery speeches were made by various leaders and protest marches taken out as allegations and counter-allegations started to fly. In short, the city was once again teetering on the knife edge of disaster. We did not know it then, but things were just about to get a lot worse.

A dead body is bound to attract vultures, and so it is with those who profit from such situations. Suddenly one day we heard that Pratap Singh of the Rashtriya Jaagaran Party was going to visit our town. Overnight, the whole town was swarming with media and security people. Keeping in mind the volatile situation the authorities closed off MG Road where Netaji was staying and the area right from Chaar Rasta to Chilkana was literally crawling with security men.

Next day at the Azad Maidan, with the national media in full attendance, Pratap Singh gave a rousing speech leveling allegations of a cover-up against the police and asking for a CBI enquiry. The crowd which had been whipped into a frenzy and with no one to vent their ire on (since the other community had entirely stayed away), started beating up all the media persons they could find. I believe 2 media persons died in the melee and 13 others lost their lives in the stampede that followed.

Pratap Singh left that very day by helicopter, but the fallout was immediate- all of us started preparing ourselves for more violence. Every day, there were rumors that truckloads of rioters armed with swords and bombs were going to attack our neighborhood at night. In response, our residents association formed a local defense committee and started special night patrols to safeguard ‘our area’. This defense committee which comprised of a motley group of unemployed youth, English speaking college students and retired havaldars from the army, would roam around the neighborhood armed with hockey sticks, rods and sundry other ‘weapons’. However, these soon proved to be a pain in the neck as under the guise of random checks and searches the patrols would enter different houses, ogle the women and polish off food. Moreover, their demands for chanda and chai-paani were getting exorbitant.

Thus, when the police announced that they had found the body as well as some personal effects, the entire town heaved a sigh of relief. We all felt sure that now the case would be solved and trouble would be avoided. But it was not to be, for another controversy now erupted.

You see, while the head had been found in Gandhi Bazaar, the body had been found near Ghanta Ghar. And thus arose a fight between two different police stations regarding the jurisdiction of the case. After Pratap Singh’s speech, the case had assumed political overtones and with the pressure coming in from a number of quarters the officers involved wanted to just wash it off their hands. The Gandhi Bazaar Police station SHO even went on record stating to the media that since 75% of the body had been found in the Ghanta Ghar area it was the Ghanta Ghar Police Station that would be investigating the case. The Ghanta Ghar police too were unwilling to accept the case, as the case had first been registered in Gandhi Bazaar.

The deadlock was finally sorted out when one of the biggest businessmen in town identified it as the body of a known black marketer. This greedy fellow was apparently out and about during the riots supplying essential commodities to locked-up families and charging them exorbitant prices for it. Unlike our business class, who were scared for their property and were carefully hoarding goods waiting for the curfew to lift, this fellow being a criminal himself had no such fears. In fact, he was even greedier than our politicians for he made no distinction between communities when he went to supply his goods. Driven by the lure of money he would visit any locality and apparently operated throughout the city unlike our public servants who had disappeared during that time and would not do anything no matter how big the bribe.

When I read this news, I realized that perhaps this was the most honest man in town. I wanted to go over to the Police Headquarters to salute this brave, misguided soul but then I thought the better of it. I am a law-abiding, educated man after all- why would I want to mess with the police? So I really didn’t get to see either the body or the head first-hand and I don’t even know what happened to them for nothing further was reported. Perhaps they are still lying forgotten in some dusty corner of the Police Headquarters. In any case, the media and the townspeople have moved on to other scandals by now.

Lately, a new rumor has come up in town. A number of people claim to have seen a ghost walking around at night with its head in its hands. Before this rumour there were at least a few people who would be going out at night, but now even that has stopped. Ask anyone in town and they will tell you about it. Every Saturday night this ghost walks all the way from Gandhi Bazaar to Munirka and walks back again towards the early hours of morning. They say that this is the ghost of that same headless dacoit who was killed while trying to cross the boundary to do his dirty blackmarketeering.
The boundaries still remain intact today but I guess they are only for the living.