Kumbhpur Rising

by Mayur Didolkar

  “Right and what can change the air? The composition of the air?”

  “Pollution, of which there is none in that oh-so-virgin jungle,” now Happy and Neeraj were completing each others sentences so effortlessly that it sounded rehearsed.

  “Right once again. We need smoke, we need heat, and mostly we need the gases that are produced whenever a tree burns, it will change the composition of the air. I just remembered that it was all downwind from the town side to the beach where the jungle ends. So if we trigger an explosion at the town side of the jungle, the wind will carry the smoke, the fire, the CO2 right through the heart attack county, rendering it incapable of stopping our hearts. Then we charge in,”

  “Yeah, we charge in and instead of dying of a heart attack die of suffocation and burn wounds, nah give me a good old heart attack any day Neeraj,” Rakesh said, and there was disappointment writ on his face. He had thought he was the dim bulb of this bunch, but his ex boss and the killer were stealing a march over him in the area of stupidity.

  “You think I overlooked that Rakesh? Give me a break, for you guys this is new territory but I have planned, premeditated and killed six men in the city with cops on every corner and forensic science of the 21st century. Believe me I can take these country bumpkins,” Neeraj said.

  “Six? Shilpa told me you were wanted for two murders,” Vinit asked.

  “Let’s say she never learned about the rickshaw driver, or the high school bully, or this guy I once ran across in a pub, but look that’s not the point. The point is I have a plan, and the less time I spend arguing with you the more chance we have at succeeding, so what do you say you stop playing twenty questions and just listen to me Inspector?” Neeraj was showing some signs of agitation, again was a first for him.

  “I want to listen to Mr. Joshi, he seems to be the only one among us with a plan for all situations,” Happy conceded.

  “Me too,” Rajat said and Ragini nodded.

  “Ok, first let me tell you what I need each one of you to do. Ragini and Happy walk into the nearest house, and get me about half a dozen sarees and as many dupattas you can get your hands on. Rakesh you watch their back, just in case, Inspector you and Rajat come with me to town.”

  “What for?”

  “To get the petrol tanker we saw while coming here, any other questions?”

  There were none. Rakesh picked up his rifle and checked its magazine. Happy and Ragini took their first tentative steps outside the temple. Ragini felt her breath getting sucked out involuntarily upon leaving the security of the holy land.

  “I though it was over when we reached the temple,” she said, “I thought we reached the good place and the evil could not touch us there, I was wrong.”

  “That place is not a refuge of cowards Ragini. It is merely a resting place for the battle weary to catch their breath, lick their wounds and get back to the battle. The good is not weak to hide inside a place, that is the message the temples give you,” Happy replied and walked ahead of her. Rakesh followed them; once again in what he had come to think of as his Rambo crouch.

  The first row of houses consisted of old fashioned single storey houses with stone verandah in front, and a low lying thatched roof above. As expected the doors were open.

  They were greeted by two dead bodies sitting in the living room in the first house. Both were men in their late thirties and both were hacked to death. Ragini almost threw up at the sight of their bloody caved in chests, and the way their hair was plastered to their bashed in skulls with bits of flesh and gore sticking out. But she choked back on the bile and crossed the room to go inside. There was another dead woman lying with her throat cut open on an iron cot. Ragini and Happy crossed the dead woman to reach an old fashioned Rolex iron cupboard, and opened it. They found sarees neatly folded in the lowest drawer. Ragini sat on her knees and patiently discarded the silk sarees and only took the cotton or synthetic ones.

  “Why are you sorting through them?” Rakesh asked, “I don’t think you are going to wear them,”

  “I am not, but I guess I know why Mr. Joshi asked us to bring these peculiar items of clothing and let me just say that cotton burns faster than silk,” Ragini said and got up with a stack of neatly folded sarees tucked beneath her arm.

  “Take dupattas from the side shelf Happy. Make sure you take enough,”

  “And how many would be enough?” Happy asked.

  “There are six of us, aren’t we?” Ragini replied and walked out.

  ***

  There was silence in the Scorpio mostly as Rajat drove the SUV and Neeraj and Vinit sat out behind, their rifles ready and facing outside. The vehicle had taken a hell of a pounding while battling Adesh and now there were plumes of smoke coming out of the crimped hood. There was a distinct scraping noise coming out of the engine. Rajat just hoped that the vehicle would not stall and quit on them when they were in the middle of nowhere.

  They turned on the main road and Rajat took another U turn to reach the town’s only petrol pump where a petrol tanker lay abandoned. He came to a stop a good ten feet behind the tanker and set the handbrake.

  “Okay nobody takes any chances, guns out, muzzles facing ground, safety off,” Vinit said and Rajat took the handgun from the seat next to him. He got out of the vehicle holding the gun in both hands, its barrel pointing down like as per Vinit’s instruction. They fanned out and Neeraj motioned Rajat to stop when he was near the tanker. Neeraj and Vinit moved cautiously on either side of the tanker. Rajat knew he was the backup. He took a couple of steps backwards till he could see both of them and then waited. Neeraj held his rifle in one hand and used his free hand to pull at the door of the tanker’s driving cabin. The door swung open and it blocked Rajat’s view of Neeraj, he saw his jeans clad legs moving swiftly backwards till he came in full view again and then a body thudded to the ground. Neeraj bent to do a swift examination and said clearly, “Dead,”

  Meanwhile Vinit opened the door on the passenger side and pulled another dead body out of the cabin and dropped it to ground. Rajat relaxed a little and walked towards Vinit. Neeraj joined him.

  “The freaks surprised them as they came to make a routine delivery, slashed them to pieces, bits of them are still in the cabin,” he said.

  Rajat had seen the HR number plate; this truck built in some factory in Haryana was driven all the way to rural Maharashtra, the crew of driver and cleaner probably from out of state too. They had come more than three thousand kilometers to meet their death in this town that otherwise would hold no place in their memories.

  Neeraj gave his rifle to Vinit and climbed the circular fuel carrier built on the truck body; it had the usual slogan of “Highly inflammable” and numbers to call in case of emergency. There was the usual two line Hindi poem about the truck pleading her drivers not to drive her when drunk. Neeraj climbed on top and opened the hatch on top. Even on ground Rajat could feel the hiss and the odor of petrol as the compressed air in there escaped.

  “It’s full,” Neeraj said and climbed down. “Ok, now we leave your jeep here and take this truck back to the temple. Better still, you take the jeep and leave it on the junction near your home. We will pick it up on our way back,”

  ‘Way back from where?’ Rajat wanted to ask but thought better. He walked back to his vehicle and climbed inside. He waited for Vinit, who drove the fuel tanker, to maneuver the heavy vehicle around so that it faced the way they had come and then he too took a U turn and pulled up behind the truck. At the designated corner he got out of the SUV and jumped in the cab of the truck. The seats were still slick with blood and the instruments panel was nearly invisible with the blood and gore pasted on it. Rajat pulled the widow down and did not look inside till the time they were back at the temple.

  ***

  With the truck standing right in front of the main gate, Neeraj gathered all of them around him and explained his plan. Rakesh and Rajat felt looseness in their bowels as they listened to this operation which was audacious or ma
dcap, depending upon your viewpoint. But as Neeraj continued filling the gaps with his knowledge of inflammable gases, jungles, and wildfires along with his uncanny understanding of the human (or inhuman) psyche, their sense of disquiet slowly settled down only to dull resignation. They were in this situation and the situation had to be dealt with. This killer had a plan, so they would listen to him and risk their lives.

  Vinit drove the truck while Happy, Ragini and Rakesh sat crammed up in the cab. There was no way all of them could be accommodated, so Niraj and Rakesh rode outside with their feet resting on the footboard on each side. Vinit drove slowly, partly out of concern for his comrades outside and partly because the mud and the dead bodies lying all over the road made driving well, a little bit slippery. He glanced at his wrist watch and saw it was four in the morning. A day before at the same time in the morning he was fast asleep, though only moments away from getting a phone call from his station informing about Dr. Thombre’s murder.

  They turned onto the main road and passed the police station. The building was vandalized. Its wrought iron gate lay broken on the road. The wooden gate of the main building was similarly demolished by the angry mob. The building looked like a decrepit warehouse where the rats might be bigger than your boots. They drove on.

  Just before they came to the turn that would have brought them to Rajat’s farmhouse, Neeraj tapped Vinit on shoulder and asked him to stop the truck. Vinit stopped it just ahead of a narrow alley which was covered with half grown shrubbery on either side. It terminated about fifty feet inside where the trees grew denser.

  “Now, what you have to do is to back the truck as far as it would go in the alley. Remember back it; I want the rear facing the jungle,” Neeraj said to him “All right. Time for the action folks, everybody get down,” he said and jumped from his place. On the other side Rakesh too jumped and then Rajat, Ragini and Happy climbed down from the cab. With Rakesh directing, Vinit slowly reversed the truck and began to turn it right so that it jammed in the narrow alley. The road had a dangerous slippery slope to it, and his bigger worry was popping the clutch and crushing Rakesh, who seemed completely oblivious to the danger while directing him like an over eager boy scout. Tree branches snapped and drummed against the wind shield, and some even grazed his hands as he drove deeper in the jungle. Up ahead he could see Neeraj and Ragini sitting on the ground and preparing a long twisted coil out of the bundle of sarees. Rajat with his assault rifle was keeping an eye out for all of them.

  Finally Rakesh hailed him to stop, and Vinit jumped out of the cab. Rakesh was already climbing up and opening the enormous round lid on the fuel tanker. He pried it open, and dropped it on the ground. Then showing the kind of mental frostbite that grabbed him from time to time, he started to light a cigarette, pleased with his work.

  “What the fuck you are doing,” Vinit shouted “Plan is to blow this, not with you sitting on top of it. Get down!”

  Rakesh considered the danger for a moment and then he slid down and smiled shamefacedly.

  Neeraj, Happy, Ragini and Rajat walked to them, dragging the makeshift coil of some fifty feet in length behind them. Neeraj climbed the tanker body and Ragini paid the coil till the entire twisted length was in his hands. He began dipping it methodically ensuring that all parts of it were soaked in petrol inside the tanker. Then he dipped one end of the coil inside the tank and threw the other end down. Ragini and Happy caught hold of the soggy cloth line and they began walking away and parallel to the truck, disappearing in the trees behind them. Vinit lifted their guns and followed them. Rajat and Neeraj too picked up their guns and followed them. Rakesh was left behind to warn them when the coil came out of the tanker.

  The clothesline broke when they were about twenty five feet away; one of the sarees tied with the other slipped and the end in Ragini’s hands came free. She looked at Neeraj, “Enough distance yet?”

  “No tie it back together and keep walking, I want at least seventy five feet between us and this shit,” Neeraj said. Rajat dropped to one knee, and tied the loose ends back together. Ragini realized that they all had stopped talking to each other. The tension in everyone’s face had enough electricity to light a football stadium.

  The line paid out near a mango tree and when Ragini tried pulling more they heard Rakesh shouting from the truck, “Stop. The other end is coming out,” Ragini dropped the line and sat down. Like everyone else she was breathing heavily.

  “Ask that stupid fuck to drag his ass, he is sauntering like a cowboy,” Rajat muttered, as they watched Rakesh make his way back with them.

  “Give him his due, he thinks there is movie camera on and this is “Night of the Living Dead” Ragini said and they all laughed. Neeraj watched them. He was calculating which one of them was likely to break in the heat of the battle. He intended to stay away from that person. His mental bet was on Happy and the cop. The cop had been through more than they were and his disciplined mind was not yet up to the idea of blowing a jungle apart. There was a streak of nihilism running in the city group, a streak that probably had saved their lives so far. But like the clothesline lying at his feet, Happy seemed to be at the end of his rope. Ragini, on the other hand, seemed almost eager for the festivities to start. Her lips were slightly apart and trembling She seemed aroused. Rajat seemed philosophical about the whole thing. Waiting to do his do and not worrying about the results.

  Rakesh lumbered his way to the group and sat down heavily next to Ragini.

  “Took your time, didn’t you, now get off your ass and start walking again,” Ragini said. Rakesh groaned and got up. They all assembled around Neeraj for one final round of instructions.

  “Walk a hundred paces exactly in the same direction and wait there,”

  “Why so far? This line must be fifty feet at least,” Rakesh said.

  “You ever saw a fuel tanker with a thousand liters of petrol blowing up Rakesh?” Neeraj asked him.

  “No,” Rakesh said as if he was told this was what was going to happen for the first time. For a moment, he expected Neeraj to say that not only he had seen one blowing, but he had blown one. Surely this would not be beyond the wonder boy.

  “Neither have I, but I bet its nasty and it’s not exactly umm benign…..so let’s be overcautious if that is what you think we are and walk the fuck back,” Neeraj said and lit a cigarette.

  Walking backwards as Rajat and Rakesh watched their backs, Ragini would never forget the way she saw Neeraj. He just stood there smoking with his lighter held open in one hand. Then at a moment he seemed to have chosen as carefully as he had done everything else, he bent and put the flame against the saree lying at his feet. They were now thirty feet away from Neeraj and their view was partially obscured by the thicket of trees between them. Neeraj ensured that the cloth caught the flame and started to burn. Then he too walked away. He stopped after about ten feet and watched the line burn. With the highly flammable petrol on it, it burnt a bright orange in no time at all, the wet leaves around the line caught fire and they began smoldering too. Soon there was the faint, not unpleasant smell of smoke on a wet morning. While the loose leaves and smaller branches caught fire the line traced its fifty feet path towards the tanker.

  While backing out, Neeraj knew exactly when they would stop controlling the fire and the fire would control them. The place where the line came out of the bushes and traced its final twenty feet on more or less plain ground to climb inside the fuel tanker, it would happen in a blink of an eye. He followed its trajectory, when it was five feet from where it would come out of the bushes; he turned around and broke in to a run.

  “Go, go go….. Dammit go… come on…” he shouted and ran, not caring if they were attacked at this moment. He was counting backwards, giving himself a count of twenty five before the explosion. He caught up with the remaining group on the count of eight. As he pushed them backwards and hurried them on, he never stopped counting. When he quickly spotted a small ditch behind a thick mango tree, he dove headfirst in ther
e and pulled Rakesh and Happy with him. Vinit, Ragini and Rajat, trusting his instincts, dove right behind him. Neeraj was at the count of twenty four when the explosion happened.

  In Happy and Rajat’s mind the giant blast seemed to last for at least an hour, when in reality it finished inside a minute. One moment, Rakesh was about to say something halfway funny about banging his head and the next moment the whole jungle shook with an explosion unlike anything they could have ever imagined. From their shelter behind the tree, Ragini just saw a big ball of fire as the thousand liters of petrol caught fire. The tanker was ripped from within like a plastic balloon and the air was thick with flying, flaming, big pieces of iron. Ragini thought she saw one such piece shear a ten foot tree trunk like knife through melting butter. The cab of the truck flew in the air, before dropping back on top of the smoldering burning skeleton of what was left of the tanker and then there was another big blast as the tires and the fuel tank of the tanker caught fire and then the whole thing became a big ball of fire roaring towards the jungle. Trees fell and caught fire and the air was thick with the screams of metal tearing through wood hardened with centuries of growth. It was as if Mother Nature had woken up and was shrieking at her loudest for being violated like this. Happy and Ragini almost stood up to watch fascinated by the sight, when Vinit rudely pulled them back in. They all sat in a huddle and waited for the explosions to end.

  Since all the fuel had caught fire at one go, the explosions got over quickly. Now the whole air was thick with the acrid smell of burning rubber, metal, and wood. The road where they had left the tanker was completely covered with thick swirling smoke as the wet jungle around it was catching fire slowly. The smoke began traveling towards them slowly, the fire would follow later.

  “Now everyone remember, our target is almost dead straight, so no deviations from this path,” Neeraj pointed out to the narrow path through the mango and tamarind trees. They all covered their faces with dupattas taken from Ragini’s bag. They were to leave only a slit open to let them see and breathe through that cloth.