'The Lucky Ones' captures the intersection of the personal and political

A book about an event from over two decades ago that exposed our darkest instincts serves as a reminder not to let ourselves fall so low again

The Lucky Ones

Author:  Zara Chowdhary

Publisher: Westland

Pages: 324

Price: Rs 699

On the morning of February 27, 2002, a few coaches of Sabarmati Express catch fire in Godhra, Gujarat, killing the people trapped inside, a majority of whom are pilgrims and kar sevaks on their way back to Ahmedabad from Ayodhya. The cause of the fire is still disputed, but the horrifying incident sparks rampant violence against the Muslim community, members of which were accused of being responsible for the incident. For the next few days all over Gujarat, reprisals rage, aided and abetted by the state and its various agents, from ruling politicians and the police to organisations such as the Vishva Hindu Parishad and local gangsters. Ahmedabad sees recurring brutal outbreaks for three months and such incidents occur with regularity across the state for a year. These riots are commonly known as the 2002 Gujarat riots but Zara Chowdhary prefers the term “pogrom”, citing the disproportionate level of death and mayhem amongst the minority Muslim population. Her incredible memoir, The Lucky Ones, is a chronicling of this debilitating period and centres on her family and their ties to each other as well as the land. 

Ms Chowdhary was just 16 in 2002, spending most of her time escaping the dysfunctionality of her home and preparing for board exams. She lives in Jasmine Apartments, a trio of closely-packed tall residential buildings in Khanpur, a predominantly Muslim ghetto in Ahmedabad. She goes to a Christian missionary school. She has Hindu and Parsi friends. Her life is a picture of plurality, though all is not right under the deceptively tranquil surface. Hate and bigotry just need a catalyst to explode into a conflagration. She writes: “Who we were before 27 February as a neighbourhood, city or country—the many layers of where we work, whom we know, whom we are friends with, and who counts us as friends—none of this matters anymore. Now we are numbers and names on a list, vermin to be cleaned out of our fortresses and homes and holes under the bridges or up in the sky.”

As is obvious, these fault lines always existed. What the atrocity on the Sabarmati Express and subsequent violence did was expose them. Ms Chowdhary writes movingly about the ordeal: “It’s as if our pain hasn’t registered for anyone except us. Our loss doesn’t exist. Our horror isn’t real, it never happened… We have sat beside one another for years, learning from the same books, fighting for the same half grade, dreaming of secret crushes and future careers and someday weddings. But we have also lived across a river that drew the line between ‘us’ and ‘them’... We live in two different Ahmedabads, two different Gujarats, two different Indias.” It would, however, be wrong to characterise the entire non-Muslim population of the state as villains. For every wilful participant in the mob, every bystander who went about their lives as usual, there were also people who provided support.

This is a memoir that will disappoint readers who are looking for an exhaustive investigation of the 2022 riots or what makes people kill their neighbours and citizens as part of a mob. That said, Ms Chowdhary zooms out from time to time to touch upon some central figures and incidents with a good amount of detail. These chapters are the most harrowing and disturbing to read because she does not skimp on spelling out the horrors. There is a chapter on Ehsan Jafri, a Congress politician, who was brutally killed in the Gulbarg Society massacre. Another on Bilkis Bano, a pregnant woman who was gang raped by men who slaughtered most of her family. The book is also peppered with excerpts from SAHMAT’s preliminary report on the disturbing events in Ahmedabad. Ms Chowdhary stretches the memoir genre to its full potential with flashbacks, character studies, even creative juxtapositions.

The focus, however, is on the Chowdhary family and their battles that are contrasted with the violence outside. Theirs is a patriarchal household where daughters are paid scant attention. The father, brought down by Islamophobic office politics and microaggressions at work, is a domineering alcoholic prone to outbursts and abuse. Dadi is given to daily cruelties,  especially toward her daughter-in-law from Chennai. Zara and her younger sister, Misba, navigate the quicksand of conditional love throughout their childhood and adolescence. Her relationship with her father is complex and his death is one of many occasions where it is palpable: “I have prayed for years for freedom from his tyranny. But to lose him entirely is not the price I ever wanted to pay.”

In May 2002, Ms Chowdhary moved to Chennai with her mother and sister, never to live in Ahmedabad. Those months are seared in her memory, but that does not mean her outlook is bleak: “Our idea of India and being Indian Muslims… gave us a code to live by: the pursuit of justice at all costs. My home is in this memory I hold of India, of who we once were. And my uprising is to keep this story writ into history no matter how much erasure stamps over it.”

The Lucky Ones  is a perfect distillation of the personal and the political to explore an event that showed the worst of us, especially since many perpetrators still roam free. As we careen towards right-wing xenophobia the world over, her book must serve as a reminder to not let ourselves fall so low again. Ms Chowdhary asserts: “We own everything that is great and beautiful and redeemable about our country.” We must live true to that vision.

The reviewer is a Delhi-based writer, critic, and translator. He is @bankrupt_bookworm on Instagram and @Broke_Bookworm on X