Zakia Jafri, who fought an over two-decade-long legal battle to secure justice for the victims of the 2002 Gujarat riots, died at the age of 86 in Ahmedabad on February 1. Her husband, former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri, was among the 69 people who were killed inside Gulberg Society, a Muslim neighbourhood in Ahmedabad, during the riots.

“Out of hundreds of Gujarat cases, Zakia Jafri’s was the one that insisted: this wasn’t just a personal tragedy, it was an attack on an entire people,” Zara Chowdhary, the author of The Lucky Ones: A Memoir, told Greeshma Kuthar. In a freewheeling conversation, Chowdhary and Kuthar discuss Zakia Jafri’s struggle and legacy, the erasure of collective memory, and Chowdhary’s book set during the 2002 riots, among other things.