Gurleen Kaur's painting shows an artistic expression of what went through in the mind of an eyewitness, the artist, during the massacre of 1984. The artist, Gurleen Kaur, lived through the holocaust in Delhi. Living through those days of 1984 was an experience nobody can forget. The painting was originally painted immediately after the massacre by her as a student artist.
In broad daylight the gravest crime happened – for all to see.
The well-known and powerful people, who were nothing but the snakes around our necks, planned, organized, directed and supervised the whole massacre. Everybody knows them – but to the law of the country, they still remain faceless.
The hands, drenched in blood were there for all to see, everybody knows the face of owner of the hands, but it still remains invisible!
Sikh males, specially the youth were the target of this planned massacre. They were burnt on the roads with tyres around their necks – Death danced on the roads of the capital of the biggest democracy of the world! Countless were killed and burnt, burnt and killed in front of the eyes of their loved ones and the whole world. There were rows and rows of the corpses that every body saw but no one saw! None except their families saw this happening!
The properties, businesses, dwellings and everything they had was burnt! The whole city looked like a ghost town.
This deadly dance left rows of thousands of widows - sufferers of the life long agony of losing their husbands, thousands of mothers - a life long wait for their lost sons and thousands of sisters – left with a never fulfilling wish of seeing their brothers again!