Bereft: Women who lost their families in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots; lawyer H.S. Phoolka photos: prem singh

The boys of Garhi, a resettlement colony for the 1984 riot victims in south Delhi, call themselves free. Free is their word for being unemployed. Those who were barely four years old or less ? a couple even in their mother?s womb ? when their grandfathers, fathers and uncles were slaughtered have grown up to be tall, gawky men.

Most of them dropped out of school early and grew up playing in the bylanes of these humblest of DDA flats their mothers received after spending months in the relief camps. But you can?t blame the mothers for their lack of education. Before their lives changed so dramatically following the anti-Sikh riots, they were homemakers for mechanical engineers, ex-armymen and shopkeepers.

Suddenly, with every grown-up man in the family dead, they had to go out on work even though the job wasn?t much to be pleased about. They worked, and still do, as errand women, dais, gardeners and cleaners. Any job that keeps the home fires burning. At daytime on weekdays, you will not find any middle-aged woman in the colony.

Young Jagjit Singh knows how he grew up. ?I grew up standing in the queue for water,? he says. The C-block, where these victims live, has an acute water problem. Pots and pails lie in dozens outside every flat; everyone queues up when the water-tanker comes. Like him, his 24-year-old friend, Gurpreet ? with a Salman Tere Naam Khan hairstyle ? never finished school. A few months ago, he bought a second-hand Maruti van on loan. But the boys from the bordering mohalla keep breaking its glass. He doesn?t know much about J.J. Singh, all set to become the first Sikh army chief. But he knows that when there is a fight, sometimes those boys taunt him with the question, Bhool gaye kya?

The widows of Garhi are not eagerly waiting for justice, though each one will welcome it with open arms. They just want to get out of this endless cycle of misery that circumstance has thrust on them. ?We lost our men,? says Bakshish Kaur, ?but today the government should be thinking about our kids?.

One of the boys points out the irony of their existence. ?Sometimes they make fun of us and say, you have a Prime Minister but you still have to stand in queue for water,? he says.