The scene at dawn
Dawn shows the riot scene. Everything busted and smashed. But no more bodies. I go to Chinna Lane where emergency trucks and cars ferry the wounded to hospital. Volunteers ferrying the wounded wear crude red crosses which is the universal symbol. Everyone is dazed. Moving like robots. The dead are covered very neatly. Some Buddhist priests are praying. I see a Christian priest praying too. I see one guy weeping by the canvas covered body while he held one dead hand. The Gay looked up at me and wept. ‘My lover. My lover. My lover.’ A trash collector in his dirty uniform comes over and hugs him awkwardly before resuming his job of checking for wallets to write license numbers and names on labels to pin to the dead to identify them in the morgue. I make my way back to the Moon Park camp as the mounted sheriffs redeploy to secure the scene. I am dumbfounded. The barricades held here! That part of the camp is intact! So what was on fire?
