The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: The End is Not Apocalypse by Tanya JADE VINE Singh

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Content warning for genocide, death, and violence.

The end of the body is where it begins

Frenzied mobs of young Hindu thugs, thirsting for revenge, burned Sikh-owned stores to the ground, dragged Sikhs out of their homes, cars and trains, then clubbed them to death or set them aflame before raging off in search of other victims.

– Simran Jeet Singh, It’s Time India Accept Responsibility for Its 1984Sikh Genocide

In 1984, the attackers had set Sikh homes, shops and gurdwaras on fire. One of the most brutal tactics was to “garland” Sikh men with tyres and set them alight.

– Sonia Sarkar, From 1984 to 2020: A tale of two “riots“

XIII

I cannot cry so I sigh irregularly, my arms falling sickly. My mother tells me to rely on god but god, I know, is miserable. I visit him when I can. He moves mechanically and curses a lot, tells me I’m late when, in fact, I’m an hour early. I offered him a foliage of trees, the neighbor boy sitting on the bathroom stool, my hands covered in menstrual blood. God did not say a word. All he wants is to take and take. I’m standing in the rain and it is pouring sadness. Just a little green, just a little more, I ask the painter. I name this story so nobody else names it before me: Let god see the light through the window, everyone finally seated at the dinner table. We are all playing a game of pretend—I’m dead, I’m not dead, he’s dead, he’s not dead, they’re dead, they’re not. I can very well make up the rest of the story at this point, but I do not. I leave it all to the church bells, visions of spring, kisses under the mistletoe. I leave it where no one can find us dead or pale under the moonlight. I leave it to you, the reader.

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