Perhaps, it's possible, the boy from Gali Anarkali, was up to no good. Then again, perhaps Vishwakarma, their neighbour from Gali Milwali, was just imagining that Nasim Ahmed — 'Babbu' to his friends, had been eyeing up his sisters. Either way, Ibrahim Ismail, there with his family that evening, stepped in to stop the escalating brawl — and then, everyone waiting for the 9 pm movie at Palace Talkies, the pride of Mohalla Kishanganj, turned away and forgot about the unscheduled pre-show entertainment.
The next morning, Nasim showed up with a street posse at the home of a friend of Vishwakarma, demanding an apology. The friend, Khalil Ahmed, failed to extract one, and a battle erupted on the street.
Within hours, home-made bombs were being thrown from the roofs of the Imliwali mosque, and snipers opened fire from inside homes along Bahadurgarh Road and Fhoota Road.
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Eleven people were killed — eight Hindus, two Muslims, one Sikh — before the Delhi communal riot of May, 1974, ended. Precisely why did the people decide to kill each other, multiple police investigations and a high-level government inquiry could not establish.
This week, as Delhi struggles with the fallout from weekend violence which ended in a temple in the city's Chawri Bazaar area being vandalised, the 1974 riots — one of the deadliest Hindu-Muslim clashes in post-Independence Delhi — are a useful prism to inspect what happened, and why.  Ever since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rise to power, there's been growing, global concern about the apparently-inexorable rise in communal violence across India. The Delhi riot tells us the story isn't about Prime Minister Modi — nor as simple as the headlines might lead us to believe.