Bharpoor Singh

“Sikhs … felt like rats trapped underground,” the lifelong Amritsar resident says of the widespread sentiment during the curfew that shut down his city in June 1984.

Bharpoor Singh, who was born in 1915, lived just four kilometers from Darbar Sahib. He remembers being unable to sleep the first night of the attack, oppressed by the ceaseless firing and the restless June heat. Lying in bed, he counted seventeen blasts during those early morning hours.

Weeks later, when he tried to visit Darbar Sahib with his son, the belittlement continued. A soldier hovering by the temple scolded him like a child, admonishing him to look down, not at the gurdwara.

“Whatever life I have left, I will never forget that.”