Remains Of The Day

They Went Chasing a Dream That Turned Into a Nightmare. The Story of One Man, Manjinder, Reflects the Collective Tragedy of Mosul

- Asit Jolly

Two entire villages—Bhoewal and neighbouring Chananke in Amritsar’s Baba Bakala tehsil—turned out for his funeral. Tears that had been on the brim for four long years flowed freely, as the lone, varnished wood coffin was carefully lowered onto the pyre at the unusually crowded rural crematorium close to dusk on April 2. His old father, still unwilling to believe that it was really his son that lay within, quietly asked that the tightly nailed casket be opened. Inside was a whole lot of dust and what remained of the skeleton—the legs, one arm and skull with a noticeably shattered right eye socket. A black polythene bag where his feet would have been contained his bloodstained shoes and a few other personal belongings. Numb with grief, his sister grabbed and clutched it to her bosom as the flames consumed what remained of her younger brother.

Back in April 1990, when Sukhwinder Kaur and Hardeep Singh Dhalliwal were blessed with their second-born, they simply didn’t possess the means to fittingly celebrate the birth of a boy. Besides their ramshackle, two-room house at the centre of Bhoewal, all the couple had to their name was a five-and-a-half kanal (less than one acre) agricultural plot that Hardeep had inherited. But born as he was in the bountiful month of Baisakh, Sukhwinder recalls thinking that “our son would be the one to pull the household out of penury”. They named him Manjinder (meaning ‘strong-willed’ or ‘tenacious’), though at home, they liked to call him Manu.