As I entered through the gates of Jallianwala Bagh Gardens, I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to envision the reality back in time. I could feel a chill running through my spine as the stampede ran all around me, bullets fired in random, bodies dropping dead, children crying for help and right across the alley, people jumping into the well, only to choose a better death.
As I came back to the present and opened my eyes, the eerie silence today with the whispering winds seemed to silently whisper the events of the past, the painful events of an otherwise peaceful procession turned into a horrifying scar. I moved silently ahead, towards the Amar Jyoti, the flames of the torchlight glowing as if trying to cleanse the inside of my mortal body, taking me to the path of a new revelation about myself. All those men, women and children who stood there did so, only for one single purpose- to ask the right to live their lives in freedom. Their own lives, their ways!
I went near the Martyr’s Well, the depths of which seemed to call out from inside; the cries of all those people seemed to funnel out of that well, and it reminded me of the time, our people had been brutally annihilated. Today, everything around seemed awfully silent. A small museum holds a collection of the remnants of the aftermath, and pictures of the old times, as if the people would come out of them, to let me know how they feel. The air that I breathe today, the seasons that I enjoy, the rainfalls that I cherish, I owe every bit of them to the martyrs here. Today, I rejoice what belonged to them, as they stood here and asked for their freedom, that which I enjoy today…my freedom!
I saluted the unsung heroes as I stood in front of the memorial; the winds silently whispered from behind, a message for me to remember that the freedom I live today has come with sacrifice, and that responsibility to behold that freedom now lies unto my shoulders, and to pass it on as it is to my future is my duty.
This trip was originally published on Pack-'Ur'-Bags.