KALYUG (6 page)

At the same time, he saw the pattern, recognized the tactics. While Powerhouse was not just Infinity Pvt Ltd, a large chunk of the former’s day-to-day dealings – not to mention the management of over half its assets – was routed through the latter. By crippling Infinity – even for a few hours – Powerhouse itself was being compromised. It was a very familiar tactic to Gyandeep, having adopted it himself from time to time against stubborn corporate organizations aligned against their interests. But this was the first time that he could ever recall being at the receiving end.

‘Quick,’ he said, suddenly realizing that the only office left was the mother-ship – this office, the nucleus of Infinity. ‘Clear all our files. Check the desks. Delay the officials, whoever they are – ask Security to check and verify each and every identity card with their head office over the phone. Then hold them up again until our lawyers arrive.’

He moved towards the doors that led to the special elevator that would take him straight to the helipad. ‘Leela, join me as soon as you’ve got everything set here. I need to alert the rest of the council. They’ve got to be appraised that Kalyug is happening right now – and
we
are under attack!’

He had barely spoken the words when the entire building went dark. The backup system, which normally ensured uninterrupted power supply, did not switch on immediately, however, and Gyandeep was suddenly afraid that the attack might perhaps be of a more violent and less legal nature than he anticipated. Leela, once the surprise had worn off, moved to the switchboard and toggled the switches in vain. Finally, realizing the futility, she looked at her uncle. With the windows that looked out over the harbour as the only source of light, he appeared as a silhouette.

And for the first time since she could remember, about as decisive.

22nd March, 2012. New Delhi.

The young woman from National Daily News Network ran a nervous hand through her hair as she went over her report one more time. The first take had been squashed by her producer for being too ‘dry’ and in the oldest and noblest of television reporting tradition, ‘advised’ her to use her judgment to draw more ‘inferences’ to add ‘some meat’ to the report. If she screwed up the second take as well, she was sure the producer would send someone else to take over. Live television did not leave much room for error.

Meanwhile, her cameraman fiddled with his camera, checking all the connections one last time to make sure that everything was where it should be. A colleague of his – a veteran himself – had recently been fired for losing the audio during a twenty-second spot with Aishwarya Rai Bachchan
and her daughter, and he had no intention of letting history repeat itself. Around him, jostling for space and the best shots of the shattered façade of the mall and the human carnage, the other news agencies went through similar routines.

A tinny voice over their headsets alerted both of them at the same time that there was no time to shoot another take. It would be a telecast that would go, without even the slightest delay, across the ether and into hundreds of thousands of television sets at real-time – often entrusted only to the most seasoned of reporters, or at times of maximum sensationalism.

A terror attack in the heart of the capital city qualified for maximum sensationalism.

The countdown started. The cameraman checked the viewfinder, tweaking the focus with his left hand as his right hand counted down the seconds.

‘Three . . . two . . . one . . . go,’ he mouthed silently.

‘In a dastardly and cowardly attack less than an hour ago,’ she began, then almost stammered as the cameraman gestured for her to slow down a little. Drawing in a deep breath, she forced herself to calm down. ‘Four armed men attacked the Fortune Mall here in New Delhi. They had AK-47s and grenades; the innocents they attacked were armed with nothing more than shopping bags and ice-cream cones. It was a sadistic carnage, a show of brutality that will scar all of us for years to come.’

The tinny voice whispered in her ear, ‘That’s good. Keep going.’

Encouraged, she swept her right arm towards the mall. As if on cue, the camera swung towards the scene, panning across the covered bodies, the shattered glass, the ambulances and vans that had ferried the emergency response teams, the ATS men and their guns, the forensic teams and their evidence markers. The lens moved back towards her just as she was about to speak again.

‘Early reports have pegged the casualty at seven dead and fifty injured, fifteen of them critical . . . but unnamed sources fear that the number could be much higher. The terrorists used two grenades as well, even while firing indiscriminately, and it is still unknown how many more injured are fighting for their lives inside the glass walls of one of the most popular malls in Delhi. The authorities are not allowing anybody to go inside, not even friends or relatives, and the medicos are using the underground parking area to treat those they can, and load them into ambulances if needed. Most of the injured – from the outside – have already been taken to the municipal hospital nearby.

‘This incident has once again highlighted how vulnerable we are to such terrorist attacks. India remains a soft state and we, its citizens, easy targets.

‘A more worrying sign is the fact that even now, almost an hour after the attack, the authorities seem to be no closer to identifying the terrorist group behind it. The general consensus seems to be to wait for one of the groups to accept responsibility on their own . . . From Delhi, this is Richa Naik with cameraman Vinod Kumar, for NDNN.’

16th September, 2012. New Delhi.

The general used his encrypted SatPhone to make the call.

‘It is done,’ he said without needing to introduce himself. ‘The minister will be unavailable for at least the next few hours.’

‘Thank you, General,’ came the reply. The voice was suave, cultured; the sentiment seemed genuine enough to a man who prided himself on being able to gauge sincerity quite accurately. ‘And I would like to confirm that the package has reached Siliguri safely.’

‘That is good,’ said the general gravely. Like any good soldier, he had the instinctive pessimism that assumed no plan would survive its first contact with execution. Nobody appreciates Murphy more than a man who’s seen war.

The person at the other end must have sensed the unspoken question that hung in the ether between them. ‘I gave you my word, General, and I intend to honour it. No one will be harmed. This will be a bloodless operation.’

‘I am glad to hear that,’ replied the general, his turn to be sincere. ‘However, I do want you to know that I am going to issue an order that the boycott cannot exceed nine o’clock tonight.’

‘That was not the plan,’ the voice protested.

‘It is, now,’ snapped the general. ‘Every minute that I allow this boycott to continue is a minute closer to danger for our nation. You have until nine p.m. to deliver your side of the agreement.’

A moment to assimilate the new terms. ‘Acceptable,’ said the voice finally. ‘You are right. If we can’t do it by then, we won’t be able to do it ever.’

‘And my successor?’

‘Your nominee,’ confirmed the voice. ‘As you wished. And if it makes any difference, we agree with your assessment. The lieutenant general has an illustrious record and clean hands. Unlike the other one, of course. But are you sure you will not stay on? At least for a little longer? We could use your experience.’

The general hung up without bothering to reply. What could he say, he asked himself. That he had, good intentions or not, sullied the high office he held? That he could never deem himself worthy of the lofty ideals of the Army after endorsing the boycott, after approving what was for all intents and purposes a mutiny against the government it was answerable to? That it was his way of making recompense, a penance for not being there for a friend when he had been needed the most?

He opened his briefcase and started clearing his desk. He started with one of his most prized possessions, a framed picture that showed Tiger Hill towering over a group of tired, wounded, victorious men. Next to him stood the man who had, on a cold wintry afternoon, pushed him to the ground and taken a bullet into his own shoulder instead.

The sense of guilt was too much. He dropped the frame into the briefcase face down.

Why couldn’t I have done more, Qureshi?

16th September, 2012. In the air.

‘I should have guessed,’ I remarked.

‘Of course,’ Raghav Menon agreed. ‘Even Indira Gandhi had to go to then President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed to get him to sign off on the Emergency – as constitutional as it was. If you look at it another way, every new government – voted or coalesced – has to present itself to the President first to stake a claim. Why change tradition?’

‘Why indeed?’ I muttered sarcastically, albeit quieter than I intended to.

At that precise instant, the door to the cockpit opened and the co-pilot walked over with a folded sheet which he handed over to Raghav. With a slight bow, the co-pilot retreated to his place while Raghav unfolded the sheet and read the message. A genuine smile of satisfaction briefly lit up his face; then abruptly, as if he had suddenly remembered my presence, the saccharine smile was back. He passed the note over to me.

Clockwork, said the message. Maintain STA.

‘STA?’

‘Scheduled Time of Arrival,’ he explained. ‘As I am sure
you might have guessed, there are other . . . events, shall we say, that are happening on the ground even as we are on the move. Everything’s choreographed to the last second, action and reaction accounted for. Chess pieces, if you will, playing towards an inevitable checkmate.’

‘The best laid plans of mice and men,’ I pointed out.

‘You really are a ray of sunshine, aren’t you?’ he asked, but there was no malice in his tone. At least, none that I could detect. Then he stretched his hands high above his head, almost touching the overhead compartment, before standing up.

‘There’s a loo at the back, if you want to use it. I’m going to have a coffee from the pantry – do you want some?’

I shrugged my acceptance of the second offer, but the power of auto-suggestion soon had me falling in with the first offer as well. I walked over to the back and used the small toilet there to relieve myself, returning just in time to find Raghav Menon placing a cup of coffee in the recess in my armrest.

‘Thanks,’ I said reluctantly as I sat down. The brew was hot and fragrant – probably out of a flask and not a machine, I thought automatically. You don’t live in any of the southern states without learning to identify the type of coffee with just a whiff. I took a sip that confirmed my diagnostics – hot and strong – and my estimate for the company I had went up just a slight notch. At least, I thought to myself sarcastically, I wasn’t dealing with an amateur coffee-maker.

‘O bat els bisapening?’

I barely recognized the words coming out my mouth. In fact, I barely registered the sensation of a thicker tongue, for the plane suddenly seemed to pitch and sway menacingly. I raised my hands to my face and clasped it quite firmly with all twenty fingers, but that seemed to have little effect on the way my vision danced languorously in front of me.

Too late, I realized I had been drugged – or worse, poisoned. As the world faded to black around me, I knew that I would be unharmed. Killing me with a poisoned coffee was pointless, especially in light of the effort that had been expended in getting me into this aircraft and plying me with fantastic tales. My last coherent observation was my book slipping off my lap and falling to the floor and I slumped into an uncomfortable, and involuntary slumber as the flight continued on its way to New Delhi.

23rd March, 2012. New Delhi.

Terror strikes Delhi again
, screamed the headline in a national daily. Beside the main column, inside a box barely four inches by six, another headline informed,
Decorated General’s Wife Among Victims.

Inside the box, affixed with a photo stamp, the Press Trust of India elaborated:

22 March, New Delhi:
One of the most high-profile victims of yesterday’s attack has been identified as Mrs Syeda Qureshi, wife of decorated war veteran Major-General Iqbal Qureshi of the 21st North Battalion. According to eye-witness accounts and CCTV footage retrieved from the mall, it is now believed that Mrs Qureshi had actually finished her business at the mall and was on her way out when the attack took place, killing her instantly.

Mrs Syeda Qureshi worked as a teacher in Don Bosco International before leaving to accompany her husband. Sources close to the General reveal that Mrs Qureshi was a devout woman who was socially very active and well-liked by everybody at the camp. She was also involved in setting up vocational trainings for the spouses of the soldiers, as well as heading the Widow Welfare Association that looks after the families of soldiers lost in service.

While Major-General Qureshi himself was unavailable for comment, the local Army Liaison office has requested that he be allowed to grieve in private. The Qureshis have a son who has also followed in the father’s footsteps and is in active service in an undisclosed location in the country. At the time of this report, it is not confirmed whether the son is aware of his mother’s death. –PTI

They came for me at midnight,
a posse of them . . . armed with truncheons, flashlights, pipes and evil grins . . . there were too many of them to fight . . . blink, blink them away, I thought, but each time I shut my eyes and opened them again, there seemed to be even more of them . . . I held up a hand to protest as they threw a gunny bag over me . . . the world went dark once again . . . no, not dark. Brown. A dark light that was actually brown. The smell of jute. Rancid breath, of cigarettes, alcohol and meat. Hands slapping the bag, slapping me, not caring where they hit . . . I begged, but even I couldn’t hear anything coming out of my mouth. A nightmare, muted . . . but familiar . . . far too familiar . . .

I woke up with a start.

I was in New Delhi.