Ibrahim Rahimtulla has a direct interest in the findings of the Justice M.S. Liberhan Commission. This cattle-shed owner’s home was burnt on the night of January 10, 1993, by people he identified as his neighbours, by name and as Shiv Sainiks, before the Srikrishna Commission, and again in court where they are being tried. The trial began only last year, and is still not over. Ibrahim is now close to 50. He and his neighbours continue to live in uneasy peace in the same area, and though 16 years have passed, he has not forgotten that night when he and his wife sustained burns in the attack.

The lives of thousands of Mumbaikars changed in the weeks following December 6, 1992. 900 people died; 2036 were injured (Srikrishna Commission Report) in those dark, hate-filled days and nights. Their families have moved on. Those whose only sons died have got their daughters married off; but feel in a myriad ways, the lack of a young man in the house. Children whose fathers were killed have grown quickly into adulthood, keenly aware of their mothers’ sudden transformation into breadwinners. Some have managed to make it to college, struggling every year to pay the fees, ashamed to ask for help.

Then there are those like Ganesh Mahajan, who remembers a happy childhood spent among Muslims. Hiding in their home, he saw outsiders looting his own after smashing the idols of the ancestral temple where his father was the pujari. This was the morning after the Babri Masjid demolition. The trauma proved too much for the 15-year-old; the family left their downtown home for a Hindu-dominated suburb 50 kms away. The daily commute aged his parents prematurely. But Ganesh was fortunate; other kids had to drop out of schools in Mumbai and move back to their villages in UP after their homes were destroyed in the riots.

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