A Tragedy in Virginia

Today's tragedy in Virginia, where a gunman killed over 30 young people and injured countless others, provokes a deep part of my heart. I know what it is like to be in a room, unassumming, thinking it is like any other day, and then to be suddenly sent into shock because there is a mad gunman in the room. This can't be real is the only thing that runs through your head. This has to be television, a movie...not my life.

It happened to me, a few years ago, when I was sitting in a gurdwara during a January Sunday afternoon in El Sobrante. The room was mostly empty, just a scattering of people who had still hung on for the 2:30 bhog.

I am sitting in the women's section, close to the front, like I like to be so I don't get too distracted from seeing the comings and goings into the room. And I am setting myself into a contemplative tone, getting ready for the hukam to be given. The granthi starts to chant the benediction for the hukam.

And suddenly I hear gasps. I turn my head and there is a giant rifle, less than three feet away from me. This cannot be real. This cannot be real.

The gunman shoots up into the domed ceiling; the glass ceiling which I have often stared up into, daydreaming. Today all daydreams are shattered.

Suddenly the room is in chaos. People are getting up to run. Some to run out. Some to cautiously approach the gunman. They are the heroes. Everything is moving in slow motion. But I am not moving. I am still. I still cannot believe this is real. This cannot be real. This cannot be happening. This does not happen in gurdwaras. This does not happen.

Something stirs me out of my shock. It is the flow of shrieking women rushing out of the room. I get up and turn with the other women. Suddenly everything shifts to fast-forward speed. Things are moving too quickly for me to think. An old woman who cannot run grabs my hand, using me as a crutch and also guiding me towards the door. I am numb, as if I am floating through a film, and hold her hand, scurrying out of the room while the richocheting soundwaves of bullets are hitting against my back. She squeezes my hand tightly, and it is the only way I know I am alive.

I am safe.

A man who I admired and looked up to was killed, right there. Two minutes earlier we had made eye contact. And a few minutes before that, I had watched his daughter whisper into his ear that she was going home for the day.

It took me over a year to feel like entering a gurdwara again. I hated everything about gurdwaras for a complete year. The safe space was dead for me.

I still feel uncomfortable in large rooms. I often need to check what is behind me. Loud thuds give me chills, more often than they should. But I have moved on.

Today in Virginia, many young people died, under a similar fate. All were innocents. Leading their daily lives. They each will leave behind a mourning home, a mourning city. The young survivors, those injured, and those not injured, will carry this day in their hearts and bodies for a long, long time.

Guns have their place in this world. That place is not in gurdwaras, not in churches, not in parks, not in playgrounds, not in high schools, not in colleges...not in our collective safe spaces.

The gunman will be called crazy, mentally-unstable. We will all mourn the lives lost. There will be a void. This is the pattern. The pattern of our so-called peaceful society, our civilization. This is real.