Band,Baaja Bullet

Khatri was shot in the head when a member of her neighbour’s wedding procession passing below pulled the trigger as she stood watching. Karotia ended up taking a bullet from his uncle’s gun at his own wedding as he took his in-laws’ blessings. Shivam fell to a bullet to his throat. “It was this long,” remembers Karamveer,extending the index finger of his right hand and touching its base with the tip of his thumb to show its size. Karamveer’s wife is sister to Shivam’s mother Meena.

It was his daughter’s marriage that day,in the community hall opposite his house at the Kharkhari Jatmal village near Najafgarh,in the city’s south-west. “Jaimala (the exchange of garlands) had just taken place,and the bride and groom were seated on a raised platform. Two young men who were part of the baraat got onto the platform and raised their rifles,” said Karamveer.

He says the elders asked the men not to fire. “They were drunk. Several of us asked them to desist. They said their rifles were empty. Then they said they would fire into the ground if firing skywards was too dangerous. But something went wrong.” The youngsters — both from Haryana — had been using borrowed licensed rifles.

In trigger-happy Delhi — as in the north Indian heartland – weddings are not only about raucous brass bands and young men dancing in unembarrassed abandon. They are sometimes laced with the whiff of death,and the sudden silence that comes after a bullet has missed its mark. The Delhi Police does not keep tabs on the number of people who die at weddings. Compiled media reports indicate no more than five reported firearm deaths per year at weddings – this is dwarfed by the 74 cases of firearm murders the city had in 2010.

In the second week of February,two separate and unconnected events involving policemen were reported — from Punjab and Uttar Pradesh. If it was an assistant sub-inspector in Tarn Taran who allegedly killed two,it was a Ghaziabad-based sub-inspector in Muzaffarnagar who allegedly shot and killed one person during a wedding. Both reportedly used their service weapons to celebrate,and kill.

Karamveer says that since that night,no wedding in Najafgarh has featured guns. “We make do with crackers. The police also come around to ensure that no one fires weapons,” he said. That said,villagers say a woman had been fatally shot during a wedding in the neighbouring Surhera village less than a month before Shivam’s death,on November 19 last year. The residents of Tajpur,too,have started to substitute guns with crackers after the death of Ranbir Singh on January 21 this year. Ranbir was shot while attending a wedding at Nathupura. “The villagers say that Sonu (Ranbir’s nickname) was a good man,and that it would be wrong to use guns during weddings,” said Rohit Balyan,a relative of Ranbir’s. Tajpur,near Narela,is known for its wrestlers,and Ranbir was an amateur himself. The farmer was to join a national camp in the first week of February.

Villagers admit that they rarely have a say about the use of firearms during weddings. “It is always the groom’s party which carries guns,and since we are mere hosts,all we can do is to suggest they stop it after a few rounds,” said Rohit. The same sense of helplessness was also expressed by Karamveer,at whose daughter’s wedding Shivam died. “It is a matter of pride. Those who have guns are always invited to weddings so that they will bring their weapons along,” he said.

Guns used in Delhi weddings are usually borrowed from acquaintances across the city’s porous borders,or are unlicensed weapons. “It is a migrant city,and the mobility of people and goods across borders is quite high. Borrowing of illegal firearms also poses another problem to the police; it becomes difficult to trace the owner,” said Sonal Marwah of the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey,who coordinates the India Armed Violence Assessment Project. According to the National Crime Records Bureau,of the 74 firearm murders in 2010,only two were committed with licensed weapons. There were 94 cases of firearm usage in the same year,causing 48 deaths and 58 injuries.

As of February 8 this year,Delhi had 52,513 licensed weapons. A district-wise breakup of this figure throws up an interesting statistic. The Outer District,which includes Narela and Tajpur,has only 425 licence holders. Apart from much smaller districts like the Raliways and Airport,Outer has the least number of gun licenses.

Sociologist Susan Visvanathan thinks there is something about Delhi. Visvanathan,who teaches at the Jawaharlal Nehru University,argues that the people of the city have found themselves in the middle of so many wars that they think of themselves as being besieged at all times. “People who live in Delhi seem to feel that they are constantly at war. It is not just the culturally genetic memory of the Mahabharata – because you look at Kurushetra essentially in terms of this legend. But whether it is the attitude to women or warfare,it is very explicit. It is the idea of a metaphorical frontier,” she says.

Guns,she says,are a natural extension of caste domination coupled with new-found wealth. “In the north,it’s definitely because new money has come in,and people feel they have to defend themselves.

And there is the idea that shooting in the air is part of a celebration. Now they have got so much money that they need to protect themselves,and then there is a shift to the idea where the gunshot is a representational form of a pataka.”

“We are too poor to have someone with guns at our weddings,” said a youngster who identified himself only as Ashok. As the baraat that Ashok was part of meandered its way through the narrow lanes of Palla village near Tajpur at 11 in the night,crackers went off,informing the village of the arrival of the groom. A boy was in charge of the fireworks. He followed the procession with an iron pipe welded onto a metal platform,and would halt at regular intervals to set the apparatus down and light up the sky. “Of course,guns at weddings are dangerous,but they are a part of the ceremony. I stay far away when someone pulls out a weapon. It’s okay right now,but soon,everyone will be pretty drunk,” said Ashok,pointing out progressively-emptying bottles of alcohol being passed around in the crowd.