Arshad was only 9 years old when his entire world was collapsing around him. The once quiet and peaceful neighborhood of his youth in Delhi was engulfed with explosions and gunfire. Coffins were carried past his home by weeping relatives. Only months earlier, India was carved up into three separate regions and a Muslim homeland of Pakistan created. What was supposed to be a time of great hope and promise now devolved into chaos.
The community’s day long tension baked into an unbearable heat at night and Arshad would often hear the men and women waking up in terror screaming that the rioters were attacking. He would later learn through his extensive career that what he was witnessing were the symptoms of PTSD. Awakened by their fears, his neighbors would climb to the flat roofs out of their homes and converse – it was safer to talk high off the streets.