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"That’s the Secretariat,’’ said the chirpy taxi driver as we drove into Hyderabad city from the airport, “And that’s Lumbini Park,’’ he added with emphasis, pointing now in the opposite direction.

What could be so special about the park that the driver felt compelled to highlight it, I wondered. It seemed like one more of those ill-planned gardens that dot our cities, offering functional rather than aesthetic value. However, the hapless public deserved some relief from the claustrophobia of senseless urbanisation, so this was it.

I was to learn later that the Lumbini also had an open air auditorium, which redeemed the value of the park somewhat in my estimation, but that was clearly not high on the agenda of the taxi driver. “You’ve not heard of this park?’’ he asked me disbelievingly.
“The whole world knows about it. That’s where the bomb blasts took place last year.’’
It is in the human condition to commemorate both triumph and tragedy. From time immemorial, philosophers have reminded us that joy and sorrow are two sides of the same coin. A park, which was otherwise defined by the ordinariness of everyday living, has now become a landmark in the city of the Charminar because people were blown up here last August in an act of dastardly madness.

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If you’ve lived as long as I have, the harsh reality of communal riots in the country is inescapable — as also the utter ridiculousness of it, and the unhappy predictability.
I can recall vividly the time this menace broke into my consciousness. It was sometime in the late 1960s. I had hopped across to Pune during the school holidays, and was staying in congested Ganesh Peth with my extended family in the carefree abandon that only boyhood provides. Suddenly one day, the idyll was shattered.

“Riots have broken out in the area,’’ said the eldest cousin who was forced to return home early. “There have been some stabbings and stone-throwing.’’ How did this happen out of the blue? “Nobody knows for sure,’’ reported the cousin, “but some man was seen desecrating a street-side temple, and that has sparked off trouble.’’

But why would anybody do this shameful act? “This is election time. These actions are instigated to win over vote banks. You think ordinary people in their right senses would want to hurt themselves?’’ said the indignant eldest cousin. The holiday was marred, and in many ways, innocence was lost too. The situation eased out in a few days, but not before some serious damage to life and property had been done.

I was reminded of the Pune riot after reading about another such incident on Friday last in Bhainsa district in Andhra Pradesh. Here is an extract of the report that was front-paged in the Saturday edition of the New Indian Express in Hyderabad:

“…Trouble started around 3pm with members of one community taking exception to gulal being sprinkled during the Durga Devi immersion procession in the Gaddenna Vagu falling on their place of worship. Also, the drum-beating processionists were asked to take a different route as those praying inside were being disturbed. By and by, the verbal exchanges led to scuffling and stone-throwing. Matters went completely out of hand when the disputants took to sticks and knives.’’

For the record, these riots left three people dead, 20 hurt and 40 shops were set on fire. In itself, this is a horrendous set of statistics, but perhaps we also need to focus on the texture of the riots. The pattern does not appear to have changed in decades. The objects of communal abuse change — sometimes one community is targeted, at another time the other — but the methods, motives and the consequences remaining pretty much the same.

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Late Saturday afternoon, while going to the cricket ground to watch the ICL match, I asked the taxi driver who had driven me from the airport if he ever felt apprehensive plying around the city after the blasts in 2007. “For some days, of course. But life must go on, so why can’t we learn to live in peace?’’, he said.

I want to know too.
Email: ayaz@dnaindia.net