by Samit Basu
Five minutes later, it is over, and the rape gang is but another bad memory. Tias drag the bodies back into the van. Already, a flock of crows has assembled in the sky above them. She’d tried to scare them away, to reason with the last few, but she didn’t know if they had even understood her Hindi. Some of them looked like Afghans; they could have been from any of the war-torn fiefdoms that now ran from western Afghanistan to central India.
Tia pushes one of the bodies into the driver’s seat, merges back into a single body, puts the dead driver’s foot on the accelerator and starts the vehicle. The van drives off the highway, runs into an abandoned petrol pump and crashes into a vending machine. Tia walks away, imagining herself in slow motion, waiting for a huge explosion behind her. But there is none, the pump has been abandoned for years.
She walks for two hours, pausing occasionally to take a swig from the NutriPac in her bag. She passes broken housing colonies, burnt malls, cracked flyovers. The ruins of Gurgaon do not impress her, she’s seen worse. She does, however, take pictures in passing of the craters left by Indian Army artillery; she has a separate photostream for craters and cacti.
It’s almost sunset when her search finally ends. She walks by the old, abandoned international airport, remembering a day that seems so long ago now, a flight that had seemed noteworthy only because she’d thought her love life had reached rock bottom, that it was time to begin again. She laughs out loud.
Her laughter dies when she sees the SUVs pulling out of the airport’s parking lot. It’s another gang, but one of the richer ones: the cars are newer, the wheels equipped with cutters, there’s a rocket launcher on the roof. This is no casual rape-gang; these cars have seen battle. Tia replicates herself quickly; two Tias run into the airport, pulling out their slender pistols. Another takes cover behind a pillar. One Tia, resigned to a gruesome death, turns and runs down the middle of the road. She hears the inevitable war-whoops. The SUVs swerve towards her.
And then comes the sound she’s been waiting for: a tiger’s roar, played over tinny speakers, not too far away. She hears the thunder of motorbike engines behind her. She turns.
Five ancient Bullet bikes, painted orange and black. One driver, one rifle-toting pillion rider each. Behind them, three hybrid auto-rickshaws, fronts loaded with pointed bars and barbed wire. They move fast, streaming dust behind them. The SUVs, now just a few seconds away from Tia, swerve, screeching, leaving burn marks on the tarmac, and power off into the distance. Tia keeps a close eye on them, wary of a stray rocket, but escape from Sher’s warriors is clearly the only thing on the gang’s mind.
The warriors break formation as they reach her. She sees the striped tattoos across their faces and arms and sighs in relief.
“Why are you here?” their leader demands.
“Just taking a walk,” says Tia.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he says. “It’s not safe.”
“A girl should be able to go for a walk when she feels like,” says Tia. “Do you know what year this is?”
“It’s asking for trouble.”
“If I hear any variation of the asking for it line,” says Tia, stepping towards him, “you and I are going to have a problem.”
“I didn’t mean because you’re a woman,” says the leader, stammering a little. “I meant because you’re a human.”
“Good,” says Tia.
“We just saved your life, sister. Aren’t you going to thank us?”
“You made me wait for hours before showing up. Presumably because it takes you that long to put on your makeup. So no,” says Tia. “And I don’t need saving. Now take me to Sher.”
The leader refuses to do anything of the sort, but then an elderly Sher acolyte sticks his head out of one of the autos and tells the offended biker this strange woman has visited their lands before. He pushes the tiger-tattooed AK-47-toting teenager in the auto’s rear seat out, and offers Tia his place with something approaching gallantry.
The auto’s seat is upholstered with, predictably, tiger-skin patterned leather. As Sher’s boys restart their engines and roar off, back towards Gurgaon, Tia leans back and watches the dead city flash by.
The last time she’d come to the urban warzone was just after Sher quit the Unit, and disappeared from the world. They’d thought he’d gone off to find himself, like Vir, but Sher’s quest hadn’t been anything so high-minded: all the women in his village in Haryana had been killed or carried off in a caste war, and the one thing Sher wanted was blood. No one knew the whole tale of Sher’s rampage through the wild lands of north India, or how he’d built his army after that, but Sher’s name quickly became legend, a whisper of dread that ran from Varanasi to Kabul. More than the armies that tried to redraw their countries’ borders, more than the warlords that ruled the new provinces, more than the supers who’d tried to build their own territories in the beautiful ruins of Kashmir and had failed, one by one, the rumour of Sher’s approach sent men scurrying back to their bunkers, and let women walk the streets without fear.
Tia’s auto is assigned two bikers for security, despite Tia’s protests. The rest of Sher’s squadron returns to its patrol. Their sworn enemies are the rape gangs, the local warlords are safe as long as they leave the villages alone, and pay Sher their tribute. They play their roar proudly as they charge through a broken highway toll booth. Tia watches them leave, and wishes them well.
By the time Tia’s convoy reaches the entrance of Sher’s present headquarters, the sun has already set. Gurgaon in the evening is neon-lit and deadly; smugglers, arms dealers, and shady characters from all over the world lurk in garish bars, ogling rich kids who have bribed their way out of Delhi’s walled cities to see exotic dancers from Central Asia gyrate to remixed qawwalis. Tia had met Sher in a delightfully sleazy pleasure palace the last time, but clearly the tiger-man has grown more ascetic in his tastes.
The MegaMall was built a few months before the war that broke Pakistan and took a huge bite out of India’s north-west in 2014. Uzma had ended the war after a week with a stern closed-door summit meeting, but no one could have healed the damage of that week easily, and sticking around to watch nations heal wasn’t the Unit’s style.
The MegaMall had been, for a brief and glorious period, a towering temple to high-end retail that rivalled the best in Dubai, but a Pakistani plane piloted by a rogue supervillain had changed all that. The F-16, one of the last of its kind, is still embedded wing-deep in the mall’s eastern side, a dagger in the heart of the region’s aspirations. The deluxe farmer’s market in front of the mall now crawls with tattooed militia, and a wide range of modified combat vehicles stand in front of the grand entrance, ready to roll out at a moment’s notice. Tia whistles appreciatively as she spots a line of tanks and artillery vehicles, bright orange and black, glittering in the mall’s neon lights, reflecting large signs offering cheap pizzas and expensive massages. Sher’s soldiers stand outside, waiting for their orders. Among them are women in sleeveless vests, proudly displaying tiger-tattooed arms with bangles on them. They wave at Tia as she drives by.
Tia notes with some amusement that the mall entrance’s metal detectors are still in place. Utopic logos on them, even here, even now. Sher’s soldiers take her bag, and march her inside. Some of the shops are just empty rooms full of rubble, shattered glass and mannequin limbs; others have been turned into offices and living quarters. Tia is taken to the grand movie theatre that occupies several floors on the west side of the building. She walks through corridors full of tattered movie posters.
Sher meets her in the lobby. He’s in tiger-man form – legend has it that he has sworn not to wear his human face again. He’s using human hands, though, to dig deep into a large carton of popcorn. As Tia enters, he tosses his snack to an aide and lumbers towards her.
“What are you doing here?” Sher rumbles.
“It’s good to see you too,” says Tia. “We need to talk.”
Sher walks up close to her. He’s even larger than she
remembered, but there’s something about him that seems slower, older – did he age in tiger years? Tia remembers the first time she met him, in Aman’s old Versova house, standing in the living room behind Jai, radiating danger. There had been so much going on then that she’d forgotten to be scared. There’s no question of being scared now. She leaps forward and hugs him, flinching a little from the tiger-man’s rank odour.
Sher growls from his stomach, and steps back.
“Wait outside,” he commands, and his troops file out of the lobby, trying not to grin.
When they’re all gone, Sher looks sternly – not that he ever looks anything but stern – at Tia.
“Don’t do that in front of my soldiers again,” he says. “I’m trying to run an army.”
“I’m sorry, love,” says Tia. “I suppose they won’t find you intimidating any more? How nice it would be if you had a tiger’s head or something.”
Sher emits something between a bark and growl; Tia has made him laugh before.
“I have an ammunition raid to plan, three captured rapists to kill and an ISI spy who wants to bribe me,” he says. “So tell me what you need.”
“I need to see Kalki,” says Tia.
Sher’s whiskers twitch. “So why come to me?”
Tia shrugs. “I don’t know,” she says. “I thought I’d try you, since you’ve been hiding him for years now.”
“No,” says Sher. “You can stay here if you like. I must leave you now.”
He turns, and strides towards the exit.
“You owe me,” says Tia, and Sher spins around and roars, a deafening sound that shakes the whole lobby. Tia flinches and replicates herself nervously.
“I owe you?” Sher demands. “For what? For standing by all these years while I tried to save our country alone, when you could have been the army I needed? Do you know how many lives we could have saved?”
Tia composes herself, and blends into one.
“I really don’t have time for this, Sher,” she says. “Aman’s been captured, and the world’s supposed to end in a couple of weeks. I don’t know what to do. I’m tired of sparring.”
Sher stands, breathing deeply, staring at her.
“Why did you say I owed you?” he asks finally. “Who cares? It doesn’t matter. Just help me now.”
“What can I do?”
“Kalki. I need to see him.”
“Even if I could take you to him, what do you need from him?”
“Well, Kalki grants wishes, right? That’s what I’ve heard,” says Tia. “I need to save the world. Or at least find out how.”
Sher shakes his head. “You know I never lie, Tia,” he says. “So this is how it is. You cannot see him.”
“Why?” Tia’s eyes sparkle. “What do you want from me, Sher? You want me to cry? Beg? Break down? I don’t have time. I need this.”
Sher tilts his head to one side. “And you would do anything, wouldn’t you. You’d fight me, even.”
Tia grins. “Oh, fight you? Of course I’d fight you. We both know I’d win. But why are we even talking about this?”
Sher paces about the room, his tail twitching slowly.
“The reason you cannot see him,” he says after a while, “is that it is too dangerous.”
“Why?”
“What Kalki does is more than grant wishes,” says Sher. “He changes words into truths.”
Tia frowns. “He changes reality?”
“Yes,” says Sher. “And because of the way he was born, and the way his powers have been growing, I do not know what he is capable of.”
“And that’s why you don’t want me to see him,” says Tia. “Because you don’t know what I would ask for.”
“You will have to ask through me,” says Sher. “That is not the problem.”
“What is?”
“I cannot afford to trust anyone,” says Sher. “And there are too many people trying to kill him.”
“You can trust me,” says Tia.
Sher snorts. “What if you are the one Tia who chose to work for Utopic?” he asks. “My answer is no.”
He looks up, to see seven Tias in a row.
“Then we have a problem,” says one.
Sher pops his claws and studies them lazily.
“Have I ever killed you?” he asks.
Tia looks offended. “You don’t know?”
“The faces blur after a while,” says Sher. “Just go away, Tia. This hunt would bring me no joy.”
“Actually, I wasn’t even threatening you,” says a Tia. “I was offering you an army.”
Sher bares his fangs, and they glitter in the light of a neon cola advertisement to his right.
“Well if you grant my wishes, I suppose it is only fair I grant yours,” he says. “I will take you to him.”
“Does this involve blindfolds and helicopters?” asks Tia.
“No,” says Sher. “We can use the escalator. He’s upstairs.”
The problem with Kalki, Sher explains as they leave the lobby, is that he still can’t speak any human language, or write. Over the last eleven years, all of his foster parents have tried to get him to talk, or learn any kind of sign language, but they’ve failed entirely. Even now, Sher does not know whether Kalki reads minds, or just blunders his way through the world on instinct. Despite his godlike powers, Kalki was dealt a horse’s language skills with his horse’s head.
“But you can speak,” says Tia. “Animal head or whatever.”
“Yes, but I knew how to before I turned into this,” says Sher. “And it was difficult. I had to learn everything again.”
“But he must understand what people tell him,” says Tia. “How would he grant wishes otherwise?”
“I don’t really know what he does,” says Sher. “Sometimes people find their way here, and he gives them what they want.”
“How do they find him?”
“It is a mystery to me. Dreams.”
“What has he given you?”
“Nothing. I won’t ask for new realities. I will change the one I’m in.”
Tia pats Sher’s shoulder. They stand outside a large pair of doors. Sher is about to swing the doors open when he stops and turns to Tia again.
“What will you wish for, Tia? You need to be very sure. I don’t know whether he understands my words, or whether he reads the asker’s mind.”
“Well, can’t you figure that out from what happens when he grants his wishes?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because Kalki does what he wants. And he doesn’t always give people what they ask for.”
Tia’s eyes narrow. “What do you mean?”
Sher shrugs. “I think he really is a god, Tia. And we’re not supposed to understand gods. Kalki gives people what he feels like giving them. Not what they want. But perhaps what they need.”
“Example.”
“A few weeks ago there was a businessman who had walked all the way from Gujarat to meet him. Barefoot. Led by dreams. A super. Could spout cash from his hands.”
“What did he ask for?”
“He wanted a son. I didn’t want to ask Kalki, but there was something magical going on – there was no logical way this man could have found us, or survived his walk. So I asked Kalki to give this man a son.”
“And what happened?”
“Kalki took his power away.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” Sher looks Tia in the eye. “So. Are you sure you want to do this?”
Tia scratches her head. “Ask a crazy pre-pubescent god for a boon?” she asks finally. “Yes. Yes, let’s do this.”
Sher swings the door open, and Tia is immediately assailed by a strong cocktail of smells and sounds. At least four different songs are playing, and the air is filled with marijuana-flavoured smoke, but Tia doesn’t notice any of this: her ears and nose are in the queue, waiting for her eyes to recover.
It’s a small film theatre with a large screen, an e
xclusive viewing hall for rich patrons. A playlist of Bollywood trailers is playing on mute on the screen. It’s been sped up, and Tia sees one of Wingman’s summer blockbusters flash by. Most of the seats have been stretched back all the way, like a bumpy red velvet carpet. The occupants of the seats are mostly stranger than the images speeding by on the screen in front of them: Tia spots a young boy doing chemistry homework, a couple of Chinese gamers with little holo-screens, a full-bearded Hindu ascetic meditating on top of a wrestler doing push-ups, and a maglev-emo band that seems very close, given how entwined they all are. Assorted limbs can be seen moving rhythmically over the seats at the rear, and a group of women in what appear to be football uniforms lie in a huddle near the entrance. What really gets to Tia, though, is something that she cannot quite define: a strange, cloying, grasping feeling, as if some presence had its fingers in her brain and was prodding around – and not too gently.
“I thought this was supposed to be a top-secret hideaway?” Tia whispers.
“They find us,” says Sher. “We lose them. We keep moving.”
Kalki sits on a tall red velvet chair, the only one with the seat up, in the centre of the theatre. His body is an eleven-year-old boy’s, normal except for the fact that it’s blue and he has four arms, all of which hold bright red glasses. Four straws channel streams of cola into Kalki’s mouth. When Kalki was a baby, his horse’s head had seemed too big for his body; it had lolled grotesquely, and he’d been incapable of controlling it. Now it’s up, and he moves it from side to side, watching Tia and Sher as they enter. His eyes are incredibly large, shining black pools, Tia can see the screen reflected in them.
“Do you think he might remember me?” she asks. “Some kind of special deal for old babysitters?”
“Be very careful what you say here,” says Sher. “Anything you say or think could change the world.”
Kalki throws his cola cups aside, tosses his electric-blue-dyed mane, whinnies enthusiastically and beckons them forward.
“So what do you want, Tia?” asks Sher.
“Is there a three-wish deal?”
“Pick one thing. You don’t want him confused.”
