03:02

by Mainak Dhar

‘Is this serious? How the hell can they ask for these things?’

  I waited for it to sink in. It was a lot for people to deal with. It is one thing to reconcile with the fact that there is evil in the world, but quite another to come face to face with it. One thing to read about victims in the news but quite another to realize that you could be the next mark.

  I saw Bhagat in a corner, his face pale. He had a twelve-year-old daughter, and no doubt he was thinking of her. I looked around the room and saw the same look on many faces. Many kids were there as well, and while some were perhaps too young to fully comprehend what was happening, I could see a few teenage girls begin to break down and cry. Bhagat caught my look and stood up. ‘What can we do? You saw what they did to the airplanes this morning and how they destroyed Raheja Vihar. We are not soldiers, and even if we do have a few guns, we cannot hope to stand against that kind of firepower.’

  Ketan was also standing up now. I knew he had a teenage girl. ‘We’ve tried to adapt to the situation we find ourselves in. Believe me, we’ve tried. We’re cleaning toilets, we’re planting food, and we’re ferrying drums of water. We have done as we were asked and whatever was needed to take care of our families and our community, but what can we do if an enemy of this sort comes? We’ve all heard about your chat with Suri this morning, and I know it’s probably no safer anywhere else, so leaving isn’t an easy option, but what do we do?’

  I looked at both of them; at their helplessness and their desperation. Then, without saying a word, I walked out of the meeting and back to my apartment. I passed Megha, who gently touched my arm. ‘Aadi, they need you. They’re scared.’

  I smiled at her. ‘Megha, I don’t think I have the words to help reassure them, but I think I can at least do what I feel is right, and let them follow or not as they choose.’

  Ten minutes later I was back, and I saw groups of people part as I walked between them. I saw Megha look at me with a strange expression on her face, and as I passed her, she squeezed my hand. Pandey saluted me as I walked by, as did Akif and Ismail. I could see Yash and a few of the youngsters visibly straighten. The General winked at me and Mr Sinha gave me a thumbs-up sign.

  I had changed into black jeans and a black t-shirt, and put on one of the bulletproof vests we had appropriated. In my shoulder holster was the 9mm that the General had given me, and I was wearing the ammo pouch I had taken from the terrorist I had killed at Nahar, filled with spare clips. One of the terrorist’s knives was at my belt. I had applied black shoe polish on my forehead and across my cheeks.

  My uncle had once told me about his raids in Kashmir and how they would steal out in the middle of night to do battle with fidayeen, often ending up in hand-to-hand combat. As a child I had been smitten with his tales of action and still remembered him showing me how to ‘dress’ for the part. I’d thought of him when I smeared the shoe polish on my face. Mayukh kaka, what would you have done if you were in my place? What would you make of me if you saw me today? Somehow, somewhere deep inside, I knew he would approve. I knew that if he had been in my place, he would have done exactly the same thing. Of course I was scared, and of course it’s only in the movies where people spout patriotic lines with no fear of death. But thinking of my uncle and how he would have reacted gave me strength as well as peace.

  I stood before everyone, thinking of words that would work, and finally just said what was on my mind. ‘Forget all this has happened. Imagine that we’re back in the world that existed before last Sunday morning, before the Blackout. I am a vice president at a firm, one of you is a teacher, another an executive, someone else a homemaker. Each of us has the same identity that we had before the Blackout. The kids here go to school, we go to the mall to shop and watch movies, we can order pizzas and, yes, instead of standing in front of Chili’s talking about all this, we can go inside and take advantage of happy hours and drink beer.’

  A few people chuckled, no doubt thinking of the lives they had led.

  ‘Now imagine that you’re back in your home, sitting in your living room, maybe watching TV. Bhagat, maybe your daughter is sitting next to you. Kundu, maybe your son’s playing video games in his room, and General, maybe you’re boring Anu with old war stories over Scotch.’

  They smiled, and I could see a few eyes mist over.

  ‘Now, imagine a group of men breaks into your house. They are big, they are strong, and they are armed. They want to rob you, rape whoever they fancy and then leave. What will you do?’

  The mood suddenly changed, and my voice was raised as I said the next few words. ‘Would you sit and wonder how you would resist? Would you call a committee meeting to decide on a course of action? Would you consider moving house?’

  I could see anger on several faces.

  ‘Rohit, Yash, Kundu, all of you. I see you becoming angry, and yes I would be angry as well. Hell, I would be pissed off, and you know what I would do? I would fight as hard as I could and, even if I were to die, I’d make bloody sure I took as many of the bastards with me as I could. This is my home now, and these men are threatening all of us. I know what I am going to do, and those who want to join me are welcome. For the others, there is no shame in being afraid. I am not a soldier. I spent my whole career sitting in a cubicle making slides, but we are not defined by the jobs we do. We are defined by how we react when those who matter to us are in danger. The only label that counts in the world is whether you are a coward or not.’

  The whistle was blowing from our checkpoint again, and I saw Mahadev drive in on his auto-rickshaw at a manic speed.

  ‘The son of a whore is back. Just the guy who came earlier, and now he says he is to convey our answer back to his masters.’

  I nodded at several people around and Akif, Ismail and the two others carrying AK-47s piled into an auto-rickshaw while I got in with Pandey in Mahadev’s auto-rickshaw.

  The General came up to me. ‘Son, they have demanded something of us that we cannot give them. Not if we want to be able to look ourselves in the mirror ever again. But they are also not here to attack, not just now. They are here to see if they can bully us and also to judge our strength. That’s why they’ve sent only one man. When you meet him, remember something a US Marine General told his men once.’

  ‘What’s that, General?’

  ‘Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.’

  I asked Akif and Ismail to wait in the auto-rickshaw and the others to keep their AK-47s out of sight. There was no point in revealing the full extent of our firepower. However, as I walked towards the checkpoint, seeing me was quite enough to give our visitor a fit.

  ‘You…you have their vest and knife. They will show no mercy to one who has killed their brothers.’

  I sized him up. He was thin, stood barely up to my shoulder, and was unarmed. I would have gladly smashed his face in and killed him there and then if that would have ended the threat to our community. Instead, I remembered the General’s words and said calmly, ‘You can tell them that their demands will not be met here.’

  I could see fear in his eyes as I continued.

  ‘Why are you doing this? Is it because you believe in their cause or because you are afraid of them?’

  He seemed confused, as if this conversation was not at all going in a direction he had expected. ‘It doesn’t matter why I do what I do. They will destroy you like the other society this morning. And they will take revenge for the deaths of four of their brothers.’

  I was about to ask him something when I looked beyond him, down the narrow path that led to Ghatkopar. I couldn’t be sure but I thought I’d seen some movement. They were out there, no doubt watching me through the scope of a rifle or a pair of binoculars. I felt exposed, knowing that a bullet could come my way any time. I was happy that we had concealed the AK-47s. They would likely guess we had at least two of them, but there was no way they could definitely connect us to both incidents. I thought I could throw them off-balance with some misinformation, so I
turned my attention back to the messenger. ‘Four men? We only chanced upon two near the airport.’

  I saw him process the information and then he tried one last time. ‘I have no enmity with you people. I was born in Mumbai and I’ve lived here all my life. I take no pleasure in seeing people like you suffer. Agree to their demands and you’ll be safe.’

  I leaned towards him till our faces were inches apart. ‘My friend, we are not cowards or traitors like you. Now get lost before I drop this polite façade and stab you in the eye.’

  He scurried back down the road and, as I walked back to our people, Akif asked me what had happened.

  ‘I did the polite and professional part that the General asked for; now let’s get ready to kill some people.’

  ‘When do you think they will attack?’ Yash asked.

  I told him that it was safe to assume they would attack soon. That’s how they would keep the element of surprise. ‘Assuming their main forces are coming from the airport, they could be here in less than an hour.’

  The look on Yash’s face was one of panic. I knew we had to set aside all our fears and focus our energies in preparing for the attack. The first thing I did was to get all the kids on guard duty busy with ensuring sandbags were in place and that all approaches were being watched. I hoped that this would distract them from giving into panic. After that, my first port of call was the clinic.

  ‘Doctor, please have both ambulances ready. Two long whistles mean casualties needing immediate attention.’

  Guenther looked at me grimly. No doubt he was as afraid as all of us, but he was keeping it hidden, and his calm demeanour was doing wonders for the morale of those he had with him. His wife, Marie, was with him, as were three kids who had been studying medicine and were now our de facto ambulance corps and medics. And, of course, Megha.

  ‘Aadi, is this how it all ends?’

  I held her close.

  ‘No, one day we’ll be calling the kids wondering why they aren’t home after their partying.’

  She laughed as she dug her head into my shoulder.

  ‘Megha, stay strong. I don’t know how this ends or when, but just know that I will be fighting first and foremost for us, for the life I want for us to have together.’

  She stood outside the clinic, watching as I left with Mahadev to our next meeting. I looked at her as we sped away, wondering if I would see her again. God, I hoped this was not how it would end. I felt a stab of regret at not having told her how much she meant to me, about how much I wished we had met in other circumstances, but there was so much to say, and so little time.

  I found the General in a good mood, laughing and drinking from a hip flask, surrounded by Mohit and his friends.

  ‘General, I take it you’re celebrating something I missed.’

  He smiled as he saw me and called me over.

  ‘Aadi, these kids are brilliant. I thought they were hiding somewhere while we dealt with this threat, but they could well have the thing that saves us today.’

  ‘And that would be?’ I asked, turning to Mohit and the four other students with him.

  One kid came forward, a pretty overweight young man wearing a Star Wars t-shirt and with long hair that was almost down to his shoulders.

  ‘Blowing things up. My name’s Nasir and I’ve been spending the morning preparing, ever since that complex was attacked.’

  We went inside the room where they had been working and Mohit filled me in. ‘Nasir is a chemical engineer and one of the things he loved to do in his spare time was experiment with explosives. The profs discouraged it but he would blow up stuff for a prank and put it up on YouTube, stuff like that. Turns out, he can make a nice big bomb with fertilizer and some other stuff.’

  He then looked at the General, who smiled appreciatively at Nasir. ‘When he told me an hour or so ago what he was up to, I decided to help out. We now have our very own IED, the favoured weapon of insurgents around the world.’

  ‘We aren’t insurgents, General.’

  ‘Oh yes, we are. And the men we are up against are not used to being the ones to fight insurgents; they are not used to being the ones with the advantage in firepower. They will not expect to have their own tricks used against them. I’ve seen it in Sri Lanka—a well-placed bomb can wreck a fair bit of havoc and allow men with rifles to take on a column of tanks.’

  I looked at the metal cylinders on the ground, with wires sticking out of them. Each was no bigger than a mid-sized bucket. Nasir smiled at his handiwork.

  ‘Got them from the Häagen-Dazs shop. They used to store ice cream in them. All the ice cream is long spoiled, and nobody seemed to be around to have any use for these.’

  ‘How many bombs do you have?’

  ‘I’ve got three ready to go.’

  ‘General, what’s the plan?’

  The General was all business now, his smile gone. ‘Aadi, the big problem we had to solve is that we didn’t know which approach road they would take. I would rule out the road from JVLR. Why would they take the longest route when they haven’t been given too many reasons to be cautious of us? At most they think they’re up against civilians with a couple of rifles. But that still leaves the Chandivali and the Ghatkopar roads. Their local toad would no doubt have told them that the Chandivali road is the shortest way here, but if they have military experience, which no doubt many of them do, they’ll see that it is very congested and their vehicles will at best be able to come through one at a time. I’ve already asked Kundu to take a team and jam it further with vehicles.’

  I saw that the General had been hard at work.

  ‘So that means they will likely come down the Ghatkopar road.’

  ‘Yes, and that’s where we need to ambush them. They will have more men with guns, rockets, probably heavy machine guns mounted on vehicles which they used to down the planes and on Raheja. The only way we can survive is to surprise them.’

  ‘With the bombs?’

  ‘Yes, but that’s not the only way.’

  He called out to Akif and Ismail, who had joined us earlier for what was fast turning out to be our council of war. ‘You two are a big part of the strategic surprise we can have. They have no idea any of us knows Arabic. By listening in on their radio transmissions, I’m hoping we get an idea of what they’re planning.’

  Akif smiled, as did I, and our plan began to take shape. As we talked it over, there was only one aspect on which I disagreed.

  ‘General, why do you have to be one to trigger the IEDs? Nasir’s already said that, because of the length of the wires, it would mean you’d have to be well outside our checkpoint and outside any cover. Let someone else do it.’

  ‘Aadi, has anyone else here ever seen an IED explode, let alone blown one up?’

  He peeled back his shirt to reveal a long scar on his left shoulder.

  ‘I got this near Jaffna. Our convoy was headed with stocks to our boys who were pinned down there. I was in a five tonne truck, and when the bomb hit us, the whole bloody thing flew like it was taking off. After that, we made sure we learnt all we could about roadside bombs and how to deal with them. If we miscalculate when to use our bombs, then those sons of bitches will go right through us, and you do know what happens if they get past our checkpoint, don’t you?’

  I stepped away, trying to compose myself. The General was hardly at an age or physical shape to be putting himself in harm’s way, but he did have a point. I looked at the people around me. Bhagat was carrying a cricket bat while Kundu had got hold of a golf club. It was heartening that so many of them had overcome their fear and would fight if it came to it, but the reality was that they would die fighting. There was no way—armed with golf clubs, bats and kitchen knives—they would stand any chance against trained killers with automatic weapons and rockets. It would be a massacre and the only thing standing in the way of that massacre was our ability to hold the enemy at the checkpoint.

  I went back to the General and, to his utter surprise, hugged him.


  ‘We need you, General. We need you. Please be careful out there and please come back.’

  He choked up as he hugged me back. ‘Boy, don’t make an old man get sentimental. Let’s save that for the party we’ll throw once we kill those bastards.’

  There was just one more thing to do.

  Yash and Subin had taken down the big tricolour from the front of the CRISIL building and now a team of teenagers took it to the rooftop of the highest building in the neighbourhood. I heard a cheer go up as people saw the large flag fluttering in the wind.

  The General smiled and saluted the flag. ‘Now we’re really ready to go to war.’

  I looked at the flag and imagined our enemies seeing it as well. It declared our defiance far louder than we could have expressed it in words. They would be coming soon, and now, as we all looked at the flag, we were reminded of who we were and what we were truly going to be fighting for.

  THIRTEEN

  I was sitting near the Ghatkopar checkpoint. Akif had insisted I take one of the Kalashnikovs. While I had not fired a rifle for years, he was right that I’d at least had some practice back in the NCC. For the last one hour, while we waited, he had been giving me pointers on how best to use it.

  Ismail was at the Chandivali checkpoint, along with Pandey and two boys armed with pistols. Most of our firepower was concentrated where I was, but we didn’t want to leave the Chandivali entrance totally vulnerable in case the enemy surprised us. Kundu’s crew had completely blocked that entrance by pushing stranded cars across the narrow approach roads, so even if they chose that route, we hoped we’d have enough time to move our forces there.

  The radio in Akif’s hand crackled to life.

  ‘Sounds like their base at the airport is communicating with their forces out on the mission,’ Akif translated.

  The General, who was sitting a few feet away with Nasir, asked, ‘What are they saying?’

  ‘They’re asking them to take the longer road past the mall. So they will likely come through here. And Aadi, there’s something you need to know. Their leader wants your head. They talked about a young man wearing black and their bulletproof vest.’