Jarnail Singh, better known as the journalist who threw a shoe at Home Minister P Chidambaram, has found a more eloquent, non-footwear way to express his thoughts.

He has brought out a slim volume on the anti-Sikh riots that followed the assassination of Indira Gandhi on October 31, 1984 : “I Accuse: The Anti-Sikh Violence of 1984” (Viking, Rs 350). “It is the second shoe on the face of injustice,” he says.

The hardback, in fact, contains traumatic recollections of those widowed in the violence that raged in Delhi for three days and a narration put together with news stories and testimonials to the Ranganath Mishra and GT Nanavati commissions. There is also Jarnail’s personal story — hiding in the attic as a 11-year-old and later watching his polio-stricken brother coming home, beaten and bleeding. “The ghost of 1984 never left us,” says Jarnail (36).

His promotion from a Reebok-lobber — on April 6 — to an author happened in a week, when Penguin India approached him to write about the riots. “Unlike the 2002 Gujarat violence, the ’84 riots have not been properly documented,” he says. “Even many Sikhs are ignorant of the massacres in Trilokpuri and Kalyanpuri. Statistics don’t convey the human story.”

A former reporter with the Dainik Jagaran, Jarnail goes for a straight-forward, footnote-free narrative. Most of the incidents are in the public domain, but that does not soften the blow. Jarnail also, significantly, writes about the aftershocks of the riots. Gopi Kaur, a widow of ‘84, weeps about her son getting addicted to smack.

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