MY WORLD IS DARK AS NIGHT

Osama recounts the story of an innocent man who, like hundreds of others, lost his hopes for the future in the communal violence in Aligarh
Our population has been increasing menacingly, we will emasculate you. Since you stare at our girls, your eyes will be gouged out. And they have translated their words into action, quite literally.
It is not the theme of a horror story but a macabre and horrible incident, that occurred at Tappal adjacent to Aligarh, a town once known for its locks and scholarship. The current wave of communal riots which ripped through the whole district has left behind a 32-year-old man, Mohammad Ayub Quraishi, bereft of eye sight and manhood.
It was winter and Mohammad Ayub was returning to his village from Burhaka at noon with a buffalo. Barely one kilometre away from Burhaka, eight youths, probably students — Mohaminad Ayub says some of them had books — surrounded him and asked to free the bufalo and snatched away his lathi. Claiming that they were taking revenge for the killings of the kar sevaks at Ayodhya, they overpowered Ayub and started attacking him.
According to Ayub, the unbearable pain knocked him unconscious. Then they gouged out his eyes with a sharp weapon.
For Ayub, who now lies in the Aligarh Muslim University hospital, the incident has upset the simple world around him and his ambitions of raising his four children and providing for a wife. He is so depressed that he has already made two abortive attempts at suicide. ‘Meri duniya gup andhera hai” (My world is dark) he says. There is no saying that he will not try to take his life again.
There has been no healing touch. Though politicians have not missed the opportunity to visit this unfortunate victim, they have done little to reduce his misery. “Mulayam Singh Yadav came to see me and assured me of providing pension, free education for the children and so on,” murmured Ayub. But there is the fear that these may be empty promises.
Ayub has survived to tell the h tale. So has Rashid of Jogipura, in the heart of Aligarh, who escaped the physical torture but lost all his family. They were burnt alive. The man, driven out of his senses, is keeping their ashes in a box. But there are hundreds of others who are not alive to tell other chilling stories of the violence.
Insecurity and terror haunt the poor, illiterate people of rural India. Indeed, communal violence has spread from the’ urban streets to the once peace full villages. In fact, there is a migration which, some believe, may be the start of a permanent demographic upheaval. Muslims are leaving the country side for the comparative safety of the urban ghettos.
How long will this continue? Will the country be torn apart? Will there be more bloodshed?
Amidst the heated debate on communalism, there is Mohammad Ayub Qureshi who sits in grim silence in his black world filled only with pain.