Director, Harpreet Kaur

In the Western part of New Delhi, there is an area called Tilak Vihar. When you get to the center of the main street in Tilak Vihar, you get dwarfed by the view of several story high buildings, all demarcated in yellow paint as if outcaste by the rest of the surroundings. The dwellings in these buildings,however, have one thing in common. Each one belongs to a Sikh widow. Their husbands were all killed in the Anti-Sikh
pogroms of 1984.

Having read several books and testimonies of these victims, having listened to their accounts from experts and human rights activists, we felt the need to capture their accounts, their feelings and glimpses of their lives on video and show to world that these people are real. What happened to them is not a chapter of history but a misery that has become a part of their everyday living. Till this day, they mourn the death of their husbands and await justice.

We were intrigued by this subject a few years back with we read a 1984 publication of the Manushi magazine. The stories of these widows and their trauma became unbearable. However, at that time we had no other way to express our restlessness other than create awareness of the topic. In fall of 2003, we finally decided to jump into the project. We
weren’t sure of the condition in India for projects like these, the resources available and of the willingness of these widows to talk to us and tell the world their story.

With a few contacts we had, we started the project with defining what we wanted to cover. In our first trip, we started the project with Nishkam Welfare Sikh Society as our key resource in locating these widows and identifying the best candidates who would be able to provide and account of what had happened to them. We took interviews of several widows,
their surroundings, homes etc.

To endorse their viewpoints and their stories, we interviewed subject matter experts like Mr. H.S. Phoolka, the lead advocate who is taking up several of these cases and is also the focal point for several commissions. After the interview and speaking to him on other later occasions, it was decided that certain key individuals had to be captured in our documentary to give an overall picture of what had happened and make our statement stronger.

To complete this, we made a second trip to New Delhi in 2004 and we believe that we now have enough footage to cover our objective.

Below is a list of interviews we have completed that we will select from:

• Widows from Tilak Vihar
• Widows from Garhi in East of Kailash
• Widow – Darshan Kaur
• Widow – Hindu (Palam)
• Orphaned girls in Govt. Apartments
• Orphaned boys of Tilak Vihar
• Tilak Vihar surroundings
• Tilak Vihar Gurdwara and Museum
• Sultanpuri and Mongolpuri surroundings
• Trilokpuri Gurdwara Shaheedi Samagam
• Trilokpuri streets and description of the killings
• Demonstration by several Human Rights organizations
• Sikh Forum Meeting – (Gen. Arora, Just. R.S. Narula, H.S. Phoolka)
• Attorney – H.S. Phoolka
• Author – Patwant Singh
• Editor – Kuldeep Nayar
• Justice – Rajinder Sachhar
• Justice – R.S. Narula
• Editor & Activist – Madhu Kishwar
• Legal Expert – Jaskaran Kaur

While we could have continued with more interviews, we wanted to keep the focus on the story of the widows and use the input of experts only to add weight to their testimonies. We interviewed several widows and have captured over 40 hours of footage for this project which will be used to create our feature documentary.