1984 | Rekha Bahl

1984 must be one of the loudest years of independent India. I had just completed college from Punjab University but my final exams were postponed due to Operation Blue Star carried out at the Golden Temple in Amritsar by then prime minister Indira Gandhi, leading up to her assassination 3 months later and Hindu-Sikh riots right after. India was still coping with the two tragedies when a gas leak at a pesticide factory near Bhopal exposed 500,000 people to poisonous gas and killed thousands overnight. It is still considered the world’s worst industrial disaster. With the passage of time, the screams only seem to go louder and I want to put that up on the map.