by SHEILA CSILLA BALI

I was born in Budapest, Hungary and currently reside in the Bay Area in California, U.S.A.

Two years ago, when I was writing a book, I happened to meet a beautiful young Sikh woman. We exchanged a few words over a cup of coffee. Having learnt about the book, she became curious to know about it. I told her that it was based on my experiences during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.

To my surprise, she also had a story to tell about the 1984 massacre of Sikhs in India. I was unaware and ignorant of the magnitude of her agonizing story, as she of mine.

I was moved by this young woman’s story, now embedded in history. How unfortunate that we gravitate only towards the things that are near and dear to us, and tend to forget about the rest of the world! We keep treasured the things that matter to us, and shrug a cold shoulder to the things that don’t!

I turned seven in 1956, the year of the Hungarian Revolution and my friend turned eight in 1984, the year of the Sikh Holocaust.

As young girls, each one of us lived in very different times, different places and thousands of miles apart.

I recall my father waking me up in the middle of the night. And while we ran in the cobbled streets of Budapest, he tugged my hands to move faster, to catch a train. My father, my mother, my sister and I fled when the Soviet tanks rumbled into the capital city. We fled because my father had become part of something big - bigger than life. He had joined the resistance fighters against the communist Soviets, and was caught, but he managed to escape from execution.

He was targeted as ‘a wanted man’. His crime, like that of so many millions, was that he wanted a better life for his family, and have his country back from the grips of communism.

My book talks about the wishes and dreams of a people who lived 55 years ago. From November the 4th to November the 10th, 2,500 Hungarian people and 700 Soviets troops died in the struggle. In the two months - November and December - 200,000 young people escaped Hungary to begin new lives.

Mine is just one of them. It needed to be told.

In 1984, my Sikh friend witnessed a very different episode from mine. Her father also held her hands, not on a train, or in the streets, but on an ordinary commuter bus, in one of the very quiet and calm cities of India. Just a few moments before the vehicle was to depart from the bus stand, an individual from a Hindu extremist group jumped aboard and singled them out - they were visibly identifiable as Sikhs!

He threatened them with a steel rod, and menaced with fiery eyes. “Let me kill the Sikh! Kill this man, he killed our mother Indira Gandhi!”

The burning words frightened the child. Her father stayed focused and calm, gripping the kirpan he wore on his side. Some passengers shouted to the extremist, “The Sikh is alright, he’s a fine man. Leave him alone. He’s known to us.”

The frightened and traumatized eight-year-old could not understand this shameful and inhuman behavior.

Thousands of Sikhs were persecuted, massacred, and burnt to death, just within a few days after Indira Gandhi's death, for which they had absolutely nothing to do.

Both the events occurred long ago, touched us as children and have stayed with us till now with the same intensity.

Sometimes I relive the big escape of '56, walking the farmlands from Sopron across the border to Vienna in the blackest of nights - the sights, sounds and the peculiar smells of the wet soil and leaves linger in my soul.

In these very same weeks, we commemorate the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and the 1984 Sikh Genocide.

What have we learnt from these events? Did we forget?

Does history need to be told?

Yes, history must be told, and then re-told over and over again, and remembered for ever, otherwise it will repeat itself.

My life’s journey from then to now and from there to here has uprooted me physically and emotionally. In time, I learned to yield and stretch into a living elastic band. I adapted. Orphaned from my birthplace, heritage, relatives and language, I immigrated to Canada with my family. I lived there for most of my life, and then moved to California.

I am not lost, despite the repeated uprootings in my life. I am blessed. I am blessed because along the way, I learned much about people. I learned that one can physically be a citizen of one country but at heart be a citizen of the world. We can learn to see all people alike.

The journey for my Sikh friend came as an emotional uprooting too, a disconnectedness from her home country. She felt betrayed. Betrayed by her own people.

She never cheers, will never cheer, for an Indian team ever again. To my surprise, she did not even celebrate the Festival of Lights that was on the calendar only a few days ago.

”It was an Indian tradition," she said. ”I am not an Indian!”

Later, when my friend and I had talked for hours about our past, we discovered that we shared something special.

Friendship. Our new blossoming friendship.

Time and distance transcends all obstacles. What matters is that people can come closer and celebrate what the world offers. That there can be peace.

Amen ... Waheguru.

November 2, 2011