Fifty years ago, recalled on the centenary of a broken April, the cruelest month.

 (April 13, 2019)

The Gandhi Jayanti year brought us into contact with many who had been associated with the freedom movement. Two of our house guests who had known Gandhiji himself were my mother’s uncle KS Acharlu, and Gandhi’s biographer DG Tendulkar. We learnt a lot about the freedom movement from them and from my parents, both of whom had participated in the Quit India movement of 1942 and been arrested. Another reason for us to have been doused in this knowledge was my father’s involvement in the organisation and design of the Gandhi Darshan exhibition, and another exhibition about the freedom movements from the mid eighteenth century onwards. 

The month of April 1969 marked fifty years since the horrific massacre at Jallianwallah Bagh in Amritsar. I had just started school. At age six, I was no longer very young, and had become what my younger son would many years later call a “poemist”. Immature poet that I was, it seemed natural for me to take a rhyme written by the immortal Anonymous, and give it a topical twist:

"Fire! Fire!" said General Dyer;

"Where? Where?" said Colonel Dare;

“In the town," said Major Brown;

“Do some damage?" said Captain Savage;

“Kill them all," said Sergeant Hall.

My mother chuckled, and relayed it to my father, who repeated it to his colleagues at work. Before the end of the day, the verse was bouncing around the corridors of power in the South Block. (Somewhat like the Scarlet Pimpernel doggerel.)

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The Original

"Fire! Fire!" said Mrs. Dyer;

"Where? Where?" said Mrs. Dare;

"Up the town," said Mrs. Brown;

"Any damage?" said Mrs. Gamage;

"None at all," said Mrs. Hall.