Miss Laila, Armed and Dangerous

by Manu Joseph

  NOW HE UNDERSTANDS that the approaching and fading light was always this girl who is lying on top of him.

  He wants to know what exactly he has been mumbling. From what the girl has told him, it is clear that he has been rambling about that day when he had shadowed Jamal and Laila, the day he recalls every moment of his life.

  That is bad, very bad, but he might be able to contain the damage. After all, he was dying. He is not a traitor, he was just a dying man who was not in his senses. He hopes he has not said much about what followed the night Laila was captured.

  AS IT TURNED out, at the end of that long night, Mukundan did not rescue Laila from the farmhouse. Instead, he drove for seven hours to the heart of Mumbai, deposited the car in Bureau’s care and took a bus home.

  Two days later, early morning, he saw the news on TV. He threw up where he sat. That was all he did that morning. But he did not feel anger or guilt or even sorrow. He only felt queasy. When that was done, he set out to find out what had happened.

  THREE WEEKS BEFORE he was asked to shadow Jamal, the Beard Squad had abducted two Pakistani terrorists, Rambo-1 and Rambo-2. They were taken minutes after they reached Ahmedabad by train. They were held in two safe houses and put on wiretap. Among those who called Rambo-1 was Jamal Sheikh. Jamal had been employed by a man in Dubai to run supplies for the Rambos. The first delivery was four illegal satphones. Rambo-1, following the instructions of the Bureau and the Beard Squad, asked Jamal to go to Ahmedabad with the phones. The cops set a trap. They were hoping that he would pick up other suspects, but he picked up a girl. The Bureau did not want to abduct the girl, but the Beards of the crime branch wanted her.

  On the first night of captivity, Jamal confessed to his association with Rambo-1. About Laila Raza, he said she was under the impression that they were going to meet garment merchants. But the girl did not speak a word. After she was abducted, and her screams died in the vehicle, she and Jamal exchanged a glance. She did not utter a word after that. She said nothing during the two days and three nights she was imprisoned in the farmhouse. But the cops did not touch her. They only repeated their questions and left.

  On the third night of their abduction, Rambo-1 was taken to the farmhouse. He, Jamal and Laila were blindfolded and driven to a section of a desolate road. There, an unmarked vehicle brought Rambo-2, who too was blindfolded. The blue Indica was parked in the middle of the road. Half a kilometre away, two cops diverted the thin approaching traffic.

  Laila, Jamal, and the Rambos were made to stand near the Indica. They stood in their blindfolds, but their hands were free.

  Eight Beards, including Bhim, opened fire. Some rounds were fired on the blue car. The Beards also fired at bushes and the road from a different set of weapons – six AK-56 rifles, which they left near the four bodies. The guns were a gift from the Bureau, from its stash of confiscated weapons. But the Beards forgot to get the fingerprints of the dead on the guns. They would realize that only days later. But it didn’t matter.

  After the four were killed, their bodies were laid out on the wayside. At sunrise the press landed. The official story was that the police had got a tip-off about four Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists who were travelling in a blue Indica. They tried to stop the car, the terrorists opened fire. As usual, no cop was injured but all the terrorists died. The police identified the three men by their names. Laila was, at first, called ‘unknown young woman’, but as the day progressed the police released her name. They said she was a suicide bomber. She was not strapped to a bomb, though. ‘Like a writer is not strapped to pen,’ Bhim told the journalists, ‘and a photographer is not always strapped to a camera. But have no doubts, at the time of her death, Miss Laila was armed and dangerous.’

  She lay on the road, her arms and legs spread, one shoe missing, mouth open, eyes open.

  IN THE MORGUE, four low-caste men sat like giant frogs on the corpses and removed the innards. It was not a task for higher people. Outside, an old rubber farmer from Kerala arrived to see the body of his son.

  Parents waiting to collect the bodies of their children – Mukundan has watched the sight many times. Usually they stood, sometimes with hands on the hips; sometimes leaning on the wall; or with a hand on a human, any human. They sat, too. They didn’t always cry. They ate, they even spoke on the phone.

  Jamal’s father was alone. He was an elegant man with orderly silver hair and the sharp nose of a high-caste Malayalee. The widower looked like the kind of man who would have many friends and two generations of relatives, but they might have thought it unwise to accompany him.

  ‘My father looks a lot like you,’ Mukundan lied in Malayalam.

  Even in those circumstances, the old man lit up when he heard his language. He was far from home.

  ‘My son looks a lot like you.’ He lied, too. But then he said, ‘I am sorry I said that.’

  ‘Why must you be sorry. I am sure I look a lot like your son.’

  ‘You won’t say that if you know about my son. Do you know what they say about my son?’

  ‘I know your son. Everybody here knows your son.’

  ‘I am waiting for my son.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘When they give him to me, I will take him in a box, in a plane. Imagine taking your child in a box. Should I just take him in a car? It’s cheaper. I am told you can’t take your son in a box in a train. That’s not allowed.’

  ‘Is there anything I can do to help you?’

  ‘I am a Hindu.’

  ‘I thought so.’

  ‘My son was a Hindu.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘He became a Muslim because he loved a woman. Do you hate him? Do you hate my son?’

  ‘I don’t hate your son.’

  ‘There are men in this world who only wish to sleep with women and dump them. My son relinquished his religion for love. He became a Muslim. Of all the things, a Muslim. He was a lover. Some men are like that. They are lovers. They can’t help it. He was not a terrorist. He didn’t care about Allah. He only cared about his wife and his kids.’

  ‘Have you eaten anything this morning?’

  ‘There must have been so much dirt on the road.’

  ‘I don’t follow what you’re saying.’

  ‘On the road where they put his body for the world to see. It was so dirty. They put my son on the road.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When my son was a boy and he used to fall down and get hurt, I could not bear to see his wound. Parents are retards. They cannot bear to see even a scratch on their child’s knee. But you know what I saw on TV? My blood-soaked son lying on the road. Couldn’t they have at least had the decency to cover his face? Didn’t they think, the boy’s father might be watching TV?’

  ‘Can I get you some tea?’

  ‘My country shot my son. The fence itself ate the crop.’

  The old man’s face became a slow rustic scowl. It was a scowl Mukundan used to see only on old Malayalee women. Do old men acquire some traits of old women?

  ‘It’s that girl,’ he said. ‘That Laila girl.’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘It was her plan. She was the one who was on her way to meeting the terrorists. She knew my son dealt in satphones. She lured my son into this.’

  THE CORPSES OF the Rambos were helpful in identifying their country of origin. They were carrying Pakistani passports on them, freshly printed passports. But the passports were entirely in English with not a word in Urdu. The Beards had never been under pressure to be competent. It was not surprising that they got even the Pakistani passport wrong. They didn’t have to fabricate any such evidence but they did because that was their habit.

  The bodies of the Rambos were not claimed by anyone. They were buried in secrecy in a government dump. Prayers were said, of course. Prayers, always. The republic has great respect for the dead.

  WHEN LAILA’S BODY reached Mumbra, thousands of Muslims gathered around her coffin. They had no evidence but the
y knew that she had been murdered in cold blood. A lot of people, who were not Muslim, who were even important people, were saying the same thing on TV. Her body was carried through the streets of the filthy suburb where she was born and raised. Crowds chanted that she was not a terrorist.

  Days later, her mother made a mistake. She told journalists that a few hours after Laila left home, she had called her, which was true because Mukundan had seen the girl in a phone booth, and he had, later, obtained the records of the phone she had used. She had called home. Her mother said that her daughter had sounded terrified because Jamal had brought ‘two strange men along’.

  Mother had fallen for the Beard Squad’s tale about three men in the car and she had fabricated a little lie to disengage her daughter from those men. The Beard Squad now had Laila’s mother on record claiming that the girl was, indeed, in a car with three men who had direct links to terror.

  Mukundan did not seek to know if Laila Raza was indeed a terrorist. He did wonder why she had fallen silent after she had been abducted. It was not the act of silence that was intriguing but the capacity for silence. But he did not wish to know beyond the fact that the Beards themselves were not sure whether Laila Raza was a terrorist. It really did not matter, it would not alter what Mukundan had decided to do.

  SINCE HER MURDER, Mukundan has often explained her death to Laila. During those moments, she is seated in front of a blue screen and stares at him without opinion as if he is about to take her passport-size photograph. It is this face of Laila that has endured in national memory. A pretty girl with a blank smile in a cheap provincial studio. Many believe she was a terrorist, many believe she was just in the wrong car, but almost no one believes she died in a gun battle.

  It might outrage Laila but there is a fact he whispers to her now and then. Bhim decided to kill her because in his view it was simpler that way. Nothing personal.

  The Squad always knew they would execute the Rambos and any small fry who fell into the net, like Jamal. No courts, no prison. The Beards knew what they had to do, they had done it many times before. Red Beard was actually thrilled when he got to know that a girl had fallen in the trap. People were getting bored of dead male terrorists on the highways. Television channels, too. Laila would return the Beards to fame. She did.

  Laila might find some dignity in the knowledge that the Beard Squad was under severe attack from humanitarians. Some days it did look like the Beards had made a major miscalculation. Those days it seemed that the republic was not a sham. But then the Squad was in the care of Damodarbhai, and Damodarbhai was in the care of the times.

  There was a state government inquiry. That was expected. But the objective of the inquiry was not to find out how Laila and the others died but to see who would rat on the Squad. Everyone who was involved in the operation got to know. That was the idea, perhaps. The message was that there would be many inquiries and none of them might be genuine. Everyone stuck to the official story. Four deadly terrorists, one of them a female suicide bomber. Mukundan was so insignificant, the investigators did not even summon him. And the last thing he wanted to do was approach them.

  The Squad thrived. The Beards were rewarded with postings, houses and cash, so much cash that they had to hide it in metal boxes and bury them. Some did go to jail for a few days. But, eventually, everybody who killed Laila and Jamal got away.

  TEN YEARS AFTER the murder of Laila Raza, Mukundan is still a bachelor, still a beacon for women in doomed relationships. A bachelor patriot, that is what he is. Like Damodarbhai.

  THE GIRL IN the tunnel who is trying to save him fixes an oxygen mask on him. The mask is attached to a small inflated bag. What wonderful things are available in the nation these days to save a buried man. It is as though the republic believes a human life is precious.

  A great rush of pure air fills his lungs. She must have done this many times. Slithered into the tunnel, checked on him, stabbed him with fluids and filled him with air.

  He sees her crawl away like a giant lizard. Something about her makes him feel that he is going to live. The next time he is able to speak, he will ask her name. He hopes it is an easy Indian name. Or, at least, Nicole, which is easy too.

  The way she is and the way she departs with wise calculations in her head remind him of another day when he had abandoned a girl stranded in a farmhouse filled with cops.

  As her light leaves him, he feels a sudden terror. He wants to scream and beg her not to leave him.

  AKHILA IS DESPERATE for fresh air but she reminds herself that she must not crawl too fast towards the mouth of the tunnel. If she had enough air in her lungs, she would have asked what she wished to ask before he became more alert. Was he one of the men who killed the girl?

  For several hours, she nursed a man who she hoped was not a terrorist. Now that he has turned out to be a cop, she continues to hope he is not a murderer.

  Laila Raza was murdered a few weeks after Akhila’s mother died. Even though Akhila was only an adolescent then and current affairs seemed uglier than the story of Mr Mao, she closely followed the noise around Laila’s death. As all the people who were accused of killing her were acquitted, some rewarded, and Damodarbhai’s stature, in fact, soared, Akhila saw in all that the pointlessness of her mother’s indignant life.

  Why are the good such duds?

  There have been so many heroes who have fought for Laila. There are so many of them even today. They are in the courts pleading with judges who try not to laugh; they are begging for donations to fight the long legal battles; they are debating in television studios in sharp jackets; they are writing essays that are so boring they must be very deep. They are posting on Facebook, too. So many heroes. Yet, they almost always lose. In any other line of work, they would be sacked and replaced by more effective people, but in the battle against villains, the union of dud heroes has ensured for itself an indestructible job security.

  SHE THINKS SHE hears his voice. He must have removed his oxygen mask. What can be so important? She is only a few feet away from him but is unable to see his face beyond the beam. She begins to crawl back to reach him, as she cannot turn around. The drill of the approaching second tunnel stops for a few moments and she hears him clearly.

  ‘What’s your name?’ he asks. His voice is stronger than before but it is still faint.

  ‘Akhila.’

  ‘Akhila.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When I was mumbling things, did I say anything that would get me into trouble?’

  ‘I don’t know. You appear to have witnessed an abduction of two people who were eventually killed. I don’t know if you were a part of it. I don’t know if you are supposed to tell a magistrate or something about what really happened.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Mukundan, what do you want to know?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Tell me. I am the person who saved you.’

  ‘Are you a cop?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you a soldier?’

  ‘No. I am a doctor.’

  ‘Akhila.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did I tell you anything about someone recording phone conversations?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Those cops outside, do you tell them everything I say?’

  ‘I don’t have to.’

  ‘You can if you want to.’

  ‘I know but I don’t have to. Do you wish to tell me something?’

  He falls silent.

  MUKUNDAN FEELS AN irresistible urge to laugh. It must be the fresh air in his lungs, or it could be something else.

  HE BEGAN THE recordings the day he learnt about the murders. He recorded all the phone conversations and all his meetings with the Beards.

  Nobody took him seriously, nobody saw him for what he was. He began to accumulate a lot of material. He got the phone records of Bhim, which led to the phone records of Black Beard, who is often the voice and the ears of Damodarbhai. During the captivity of Laila Raza
, there were fourteen calls between them. There were calls between them just before she was shot and minutes later. Mukundan also taped his conversations with all the Beards who had opened fire. He has hundreds of hours of video and audio records.

  Over the years, the Beards began to draw him into their huddles. And he recorded everything. The Beards were taping, too, chiefly their conversations with their seniors and meetings with Black Beard. They did this as leverage to save their asses if some mentally imbalanced judge went after them. They were building evidence that would prove they were only following instructions. Mukundan hunts for this stash, which is stored in phones and even CDs, actually even floppy discs.

  People are careful about money, but not about information. That is because they have always gone in pursuit of money and not information. So they keep money in the vault and leave information on the table. If he had set out to steal money, it would have been very difficult. But it is easier to steal the real treasure of people.

  He has with him conversations and phone records that implicate Black Beard and the Beard Squad in six sets of murders involving thirteen people. He also has extensive information on the wealth of the Beards.

  And he waits. For the Beards to be taken to justice, first Damodarbhai has to fall. That is what the intellectuals do not understand.

  Over the decade since the murder of Laila, Damodarbhai has been rising, and he has risen to the level of a minor god. He cannot be destroyed until people fall out of love with him, tire of him, hate him. And one day when they abandon him and he begins to decay, and his rivals in the Sangh come to give him one final blow, only then will he lose the power to guard the Beards. To go to war with him when he is at his peak is to go to war against a sacred hologram beamed by the people.