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The Day the Sky Split


 Ram  grew up believing Kerala was immune to madness.

His childhood was stitched together by festivals—Onam pookkalam, Christmas carols from convent classrooms, Eid biryani from neighbors who never let him return the dish empty. In his lane, religion wasn’t a line; it was just different doors that opened into the same laughter.

He wore a cross around his neck during school choir practice, a sandalwood chandanam streak during temple visits, and a skullcap once during a friend’s Ramadan prayers—because the aunty insisted he looked “cute” in it.

At ten, Ram thought this was how the whole world lived.

He saw the national news sometimes—places burning, people shouting, words like communal tension and riot. He looked at those images the way children look at distant storms.“Not here” he would whisper.“Not in Kerala. We know better.”

His world was small, safe, well-lit.

Until the day it wasn’t.


1992 — Poonthura

Ram didn’t understand politics, or Ayodhya, or why grown-ups argued over gods they prayed to with the same trembling devotion. But he understood fear—fear has a way of teaching itself without vocabulary.

One evening, shouts erupted near the coast—shouts that didn’t sound like quarrels, but like something breaking. Doors slammed. The adults around him moved differently—quick, tense, purposeful. His father’s face took on a shape Ram had never seen before—half shadow, half worry.

There were rumors. Confusion. A suddenness that felt unreal.

Ram saw neighbors—people he had drawn rangolis with, shared sweets with—speaking in hushed voices that carved invisible borders through the air. He didn’t understand why their eyes avoided each other.

His safest streets suddenly felt like unfamiliar alleys.

He wasn’t directly in the violence, but he was close enough to feel its heat.

Close enough to see how a community changes shape in a single day.

Close enough to realize that the line between “us” and “them” can appear even where it never existed before.

For the first time in his life, Ram felt small.

And worse—he felt helpless.

The news spoke of deaths, accusations, provocations, politics, betrayals.

But Ram, only ten, carried a simpler pain:

How could the place he loved fracture in front of him?

How could people who celebrated each other now fear each other?

Wasn’t Kerala different? Wasn’t it safe?


The world answered with silence.


After

Days passed. Then weeks. Life stitched itself back together, but the seams were visible.

Neighbors resumed their routines, but their eyes held something cautious, something cracked. Conversations became shorter. Doors opened slower.

Ram watched all of this, absorbing more than he could express.

Something inside him shifted—quietly, permanently.

He realized that hatred could arrive even in places that believed they were immune.

That harmony is a daily choice, not a birthright.

That innocence is not the same as safety.

Years later, when he looked back, he could still smell the sea that night—the salt in the wind, the distant commotion, the uneasy moonlight on the waves.

He wasn’t harmed.

But he was changed.

The boy who once believed Kerala was beyond the storms of the world now understood:

Storms don’t skip places.

They only wait for the cracks.

And when they pass, the world doesn’t return to what it was—

only to what it can still salvage.


Ram never lost hope.

But he never saw the world in a single color again.


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