Long before I had read Nobel laureate Günter Grass’s The Tin Drum, I had wondered why one fine day everyone in my town started beating steel saucers with spoons. As a 15-year-old living in a sleepy, docile town not far from the birthplace of Lord Ram, I wondered why people got on their rooftops every evening and beat kitchenware.

The deafening frenzy buried all hopes of a debate. The saffron tide had a nation at its feet.

Barabanki is an hour’s drive from Ayodhya. In the government files, it’s a Muslim-majority area and a sensitive city. But in the cobbled bylanes of the town (I use the wrong administrative title for the city, as its character has always been town-ish to the core), peace dozes off on loose bamboo cots basking in the sun. It knows no religion. Local sufi saint Haji Waris Ali Shah’s shrine has even Brahmin priests dressed in yellow robes to help murids (devotees) offer ziarat (worship). A skull cap, a salaam or ‘Jai Ram’ is no criteria for knowing one’s religion here.

In November 1992, however, the town started changing its countenance. It didn’t happen overnight, but it was difficult for the 15-year-old to note those undercurrents. The markets became overcrowded and streets very dusty. There were frequent complaints from my mother that there wasn’t enough milk or vegetables in the market. And I wondered where so much of the supplies disappeared.

Saffron flags sprung up on most buildings. I persuaded my father to allow me to unfurl the one silk saffron flag a sadhu had given me one day while I was on way to school.  I believed it to be an enchanted divine gift from a holy man and felt proud when I neatly folded and hid it in my schoolbag. I knew my friends envied me for this. But my father’s stern ‘no’ dashed all hopes for that ‘neighbours’ envy, owner’s pride’ moment, which lay waiting in my schoolbag for long.

I was also the proud owner of a cache of lockets, badges, rings, wristbands and kurtas with posters of ‘Ram’ on them.  

Long after the local Ramlila got over (my friends and I had full-blast night-outs throughout the nine-day affair in November), tableaux showing Ram chained in a mosque were taken out in processions. Old and middle-aged men in flannel-shaped khaki half-pants started showing up everywhere. They were in parks and maidans every morning, exercising and shouting slogans. After that daily ritual, they stayed out, chatting with the neighbouring population till noon.

Evenings were most interesting. Soon after dusk, people climbed on their rooftops and beat utensils. Muslims boys also came on their rooftops and they too wanted to join their Hindu friends. But their parents didn’t let them. I felt very bad when my friend and nextdoor neighbour, Shadab, and I stood still every evening on a roof we shared; we were not allowed to beat the kitchenware and all our friends on the neighbouring rooftops who were part of the utensil-beating brigade cocked a snook at us for our plight. 

My two-and-a-half-kilometre-long town is rounded by the Grand Trunk Road and one of its bypasses on its two sides. Just across GT Road is my school, a dilapidated 60-year-old government structure with no boundary walls. Big boys in our school never allowed one to stand long even if the government raised it. Most teachers came from nearby Lucknow and had stopped reporting to work at least a fortnight in advance. But we still went to school every day. Because it was very interesting to be there and watch the unending traffic on the road.

We sat just outside the unmanned school, saluting camouflaged armoured vehicles of the security forces and indulging in impromptu competitions of eloquence to read out names of foreign media houses on their slow-moving huge and colourful OB vans that passed us. But yes, the best was to shout in unison in response to slogans of kar sevaks who walked steadily in unending rows towards Ayodhya. They walked day and night for days as we shouted “Jai Shri Ram” and they shouted back in a deafening roar. Shadab loved doing this.  

December 6, 1992 was a Friday. At noon, I was waiting outside a nearby mosque where Shadab had gone in to offer namaz to start our daily escapades, when my father came in a huff, held my hand and took me back home. Without an explanation, we were locked inside throughout the day. And the next day and on many more, even when I saw Shadab and our glances met despite our best efforts to avoid that, we didn’t talk to each other and quietly took our separate ways.

Only now I know why.