My Father Was Not In Dubai.

[BibaKaur]

My father was not in Dubai. He was dead

AVIJIT GHOSH & CHIRDEEP BAGGA

TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 10, 2005 01:28:24 AM ]

NEW DELHI: Rashpal Singh never saw his father at home. But he didn't mind. Few kids his age at the resettlement flats in Garhi had seen their fathers. "My mother had told me he was working in Dubai," he says. "I thought all fathers stayed away from home."

It was the <banned word filter activated> box that spilt the beans. When he was around 14, Rashpal was channel-surfing one day when he saw a report on the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. Then it struck him that something was amiss. "I confronted my mother," he says in halting tones, "and then she told me all that had happened."

Now 20 years old, Rashpal was in his mother's womb when the killings took place. To him, as for many other kids who lost their parents, the riots were a mystery — a story with gaps and absences that they have spent their lives piecing together. And that is not easy when mother works in office all day to eke out a modest living. Several kids who grew up in these flats dropped out of school. Some turned to alcohol, a few to drugs.

The first feeling that swept through him when he learnt that his carpenter father was killed at his Shakarpur home along with his two brothers and grandfather, was anger. "I just wanted to be there to help him out," says Rashpal. "Even though I too might have been killed eventually."

Time has passed since then. And while the bitterness remains, Rashpal is trying to put his life together. It is tough, though.

[Balwinder Kaur]

[KH4L1$T4N1]

A very sad story

[Khalsa_Girl_1]

Waheguru Ji Ka Khalsa. Whaeguru Ji Ki Fateh.

......im so speachless......

very, very sad story. we have to understand that the Punjabi Ppl who are still living today are exremely lucky...i pray to God God help us all.

Waheguru Ji Ka Khalsa. Waheguru Ji Ki Fateh.