It happened 33 years ago. A fresh postgraduate in agriculture, I was travelling along with a friend from my hometown, Nagercoil, to Chennai (then Madras) in a Thiruvalluvar Transport Corporation bus. The aim of our overnight journey was to take a test for the position of sugarcane officer with the Tamil Nadu Sugar Corporation the next morning.
We were woken up in the wee hours by what appeared to be a commotion. The bus had come to a halt, and people were standing in groups all around the bus, talking in loud voices. It all appeared like a dream to me until the bus conductor announced that the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had been killed during an election campaign meeting at Sriperumbudur and the bus would go no further.
So in the early hours of May 22, 1991, two girls, with dreams about the future, were held up in an unknown place with no hope of resuming the journey, let alone appearing for their exam later that day.
