by Paul Jordan
I grabbed my cream biscuits from my stash and walked to the cell next door. The lunatic looked pretty pathetic. He was still nude, but had a filthy old sarong thrown on him. Snot ran from his nose taking the short cut straight across his mouth rather than going around it. Tears ran from his eyes following the paths laid by the litres of previous tears. He looked up at me and seemed a little frightened. I suddenly realised that I was probably doing the wrong thing. You know what it’s like when you feed a stray dog — not that I’m comparing the lunatic to a dog — but when you feed a stray dog it decides you are now its best friend and hangs around for attention and more food. What if I gave the lunatic these biscuits and he decided to harass me for more? Ah, bugger it. Should have thought about that and asked the old man to give him the biscuits. But I was already there and the lunatic had seen the biscuits in my hand, so I placed the biscuits in his manacled hands. But the way Ugly had shackled his hands, he couldn’t bring them to his mouth, so he dropped his mouth to his hands and shoved the biscuits in, all the while keeping a watchful eye on me — I suppose just the way a stray dog might.
Another new arrival was in the sick cell next door. He had a fresh bandage around his head, arm and shoulder. In fact he looked as if he should still be in hospital receiving ongoing treatment. But this being India, he was thrown in the slammer. He looked as if he was in constant pain and the medic in me wanted to help this guy with some Panadol Forte. He looked pretty sad and sorry for himself. As well as the bandage wrapped around his head, he had burn marks over his body. That afternoon, as I strolled the yard with the politician, I asked what had happened to the injured bloke. The politician looked at me, then walked up to the injured guy, pointed and said, ‘This boy?’
Embarrassed, I replied, ‘Yes.’
The politician spoke to the man for a while and I listened to the Hindi conversation as it went back and forth. Finally the politician turned to me and, momentarily gathering his thoughts said, ‘This man is a thief. He was caught stealing and the village people beat him before calling the police.’ He related the man’s tale without accusation or emotion. ‘Oh, right,’ I said, immediately regretting any feelings of pity I had for the dirty, thieving prick and wanting to add my contribution to his injuries. I hate thieves. If you want something, work for it, but don’t steal what some other bloke has worked hard to get.
Sallie left for New Delhi today. What a mess this was that she had to go to all that effort to come and rescue me. To say that I felt like a fool would have been an understatement. I couldn’t wait to see her though, but would rather she didn’t see me like this. My dream was that she would arrive and the Magistrate would agree to release me at the same time and we would go home together. Sallie has a wealthy friend in the USA who was incarcerated in New Zealand when he was caught with a very small amount of personal-use marijuana in his pocket at the airport. He spent two days in the lock-up with members of the notorious New Zealand Mongrel Mob. He had some idea what I was going through and told Sallie he’d fly me home first class — bloody nice of him. Frankly, I’d be happy to get a third class bus home if they let me out now. But if we could leave together we could enjoy first class and maybe a day or two off in Bangkok on the way home. It was just a dream, but all I had for now.
I could feel myself developing a cold — excellent and just what I needed. Normally, when I get the first indications of a cold approaching, I start to overdose on vitamin C tablets and start drinking calcium ascorbate powder. This rapid intervention has, in 95% of cases, crippled the cold and sent it on its merry way. But I didn’t have these drugs on me and, even if I wasn’t in the big house, Bihar didn’t look like the sort of town that had a local Terry White chemist. These people weren’t big on tissues either, but I refused to lower myself to their filthy behaviour. They spat everywhere and then lay around all day on the ground in that spit — repulsive. Every morning, 580 prisoners went through a routine of clearing their throats. It’s a cultural thing that everyone seemed to do. This activity continued through to about 7.00 am when they all tried their hardest to cough up some lung tissue or spew out their stomachs. I remained in my cage while this was going on because I just couldn’t stand it. Then, when I did walk, I found myself dodging oysters everywhere. The contrast is that they are personally clean people. They washed every day and sometimes twice a day. They washed their bedding and clothes regularly and no-one smelt of body odour. But I wasn’t going to start spitting on the ground.
Another habit these guys had was to chew this pre-packaged betel nut. It came in a little foil packet and they thumbed the contents in their palm before throwing it into their mouths and chewing on it. The content turns red and they start spitting the residue into a bucket or on the ground. Talking to people who are chewing on this stuff was not an attractive process as they invariably tried to store it in one part of their mouth while attempting to string some words together. I couldn’t stand it and, on a few occasions, told Manish to go and spit. The first time he spat a great gob of chunky red shit in front of my gate. I made it very clear that I’d rather he didn’t do that. In fact, I said, ‘Are you fucking right? Spit that horrible shit over there somewhere.’
‘Sorry, okay, sorry.’
Dotted around the yard were five old-fashioned water pumps used for drinking, washing and cooking. The water from the pumps flowed into a system of drains that ran around the yard. The drains were made of concrete ‘U’ channel, were about 250 millimetres wide and were also used for pissing into. The end result was a very long urinal that stank of stale urine like an old, seldom-cleaned public toilet. But I suppose that smell was better than the general smell of shit that emanated from the very soil in the yard. The place was simply a toilet. I was living in a fucking toilet, sleeping on a floor of ancient turds.
The place was also a huge rubbish dump. There was rubbish everywhere. Again, I refused to be drawn into this bad behaviour that seemed to be a cultural thing. The people just threw rubbish on the ground where they stood. I was sure they weren’t even aware they were doing it. Before I was arrested, I drove to Biratnagar from the eastern side of Nepal with Ujwal and a few of the students. We stopped to grab a drink and some chocolate to snack on as we kept driving. As these guys finished their drinks and chocolate, it was like a continuous delivery of litter out the window. When I finished mine, Ujwal grabbed my litter and, thinking he was helping, went to throw it out the window as well. ‘No,’ I said, grabbing my rubbish, ‘I’ll find a bin later.’ But there were no bins. I had to take my rubbish to my room where there was a small bin. In the cage, I put all my rubbish into a plastic bag and the old man emptied it for me every day. This all sounded good until one day I happened to see the old man disposing of my rubbish. He found a spot in the yard, emptied my rubbish on the ground and returned the bag to my cell. Periodically, a guard would force a prisoner to sweep the compound and all the rubbish would end up in the drains causing the piss and water to overflow into the yard where people walked and sat. Oh, life was good.
The guards were generally good to me. They would come to my cell after lock-up and try to be friendly, but knew I couldn’t speak Hindi. Ugly would come to my cell during the day. He was supposed to be posted at the entrance, but had become lazy and taken to sitting on my mattress with my fan turned to face him instead of me. When Ugly was in my cell, the old man would come in and Ugly would start to order him around. It pissed me off a bit and I wanted to take charge and tell Ugly to go fuck himself, but obviously couldn’t. One day the old man brought a plastic seat into the cage for me to sit on. It was great, but short-lived when Ugly came looking for his stolen seat and I was unceremoniously told in Hindi to ‘move arsehole’. On one occasion Ugly told the old man to get him some water, so the old man picked up one of my small buckets and went to fetch the water. Ugly didn’t thank the old man when he returned with the water and gave it to the guard who took a good, long drink. The old man gave me a sideways glance and I detected a hint of a smile as we both wa
tched with some satisfaction as Ugly sculled water from my arse-wiping bucket.
I was really getting bored, so decided to walk to the prison office where Manish worked. The Chief Clerk told me to sit and sent someone to buy Sprite. We had a glass each and it tasted so good and I could feel the sugar give my energy level a slight lift. While in the office I found two old newspapers with a Sudoku puzzle in each. Sudoku gave me something to do at night, so I asked if I could take the puzzles. The Chief Clerk happily agreed. I sat there for a while and watched the activity in this very small office happen around me. It soon became apparent that there just wasn’t room for me, the Chief Clerk, Manish and Gaz, so I told them I would return to the cage. But they wouldn’t hear of it and insisted that I sit.
The Chief Clerk and the Warden were the only prison employees working in the office, all the others were prisoners working for extra privileges. Gaz worked alongside Manish with the Chief Clerk. He and Manish were arrested together for the same offence, but both declared their innocence. Gaz had some long Indian name that I couldn’t pronounce, so I shortened it to ‘Gaz’. After a day the name stuck and I heard the Chief Clerk refer to him as ‘Gaz’.
So, on orders to stay, I watched as the prisoners who had been to court during the day were processed back into the prison. I also noticed the prison guards outside as they patrolled with their old, rusted weapons. It reminded me of the time I spent in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea (PNG) working at a gold mine. It was like another life …
16.
THE LAST FRONTIER
I had been out of the army for six months and was working as a security supervisor at a gold mine in the Highlands of PNG. I hated the job and couldn’t relate to the people; I really missed the army. I was on night shift this night and doing security guard work at the sag mill. The sag mill is the place where they sent all the big rocks to be ground down to a thick paste. The thick paste was full of gold dust and the locals knew this. So there I was sitting on the awning that covered the massive generator, reading a book, with my Mossberg shotgun by my side. The awning gave me a good view over one side of the compound, but in reality it was a lazy option to sit somewhere out of the way. Next to the awning was a staircase that led to the first floor of the building. A mill worker was driving the bobcat around the yard moving dirt from one place to another and I was so bored that I was entertained by his skill on the machine. Suddenly a man ran from the doorway next to the awning. He was a PNG national and he ran down the stairs and across the yard. The mill worker stopped the bobcat and watched the man run in panic. I grabbed my Mossberg, jumped off the awning, ran down the stairs and chased the man across the yard thinking he’d stolen something.
The man stopped in the corner of the yard and pointed frantically back towards the staircase we’d both just run down. I turned around and saw two men appear in the doorway. The man in the rear had a pistol to the head of the man in front of him. I cocked my Mossberg and saw another man appear behind the two. He had a shotgun and appeared shocked that I wasn’t still on the roof of the awning. I reached for my hand-held radio and raised the alarm in the security control room where I knew I could find some reinforcements. My message was clear and understood and I had a sense of confidence that assistance was on the way. The bobcat driver was still sitting frozen in the bobcat, so I told him to get out, which he did and ran underneath the building.
Talking on the radio created some tension between the criminals and me. They were yelling at me to drop my gun. I aimed my weapon at the head of the man restraining the hostage, who I now identified as the security guard from the front gate, and knew I could hit him, but at this point in time a lot of ‘what ifs’ entered my mind. Like, what if the man pulls the trigger of his pistol as he falls and kills the hostage? What if I miss and hit the hostage? And let’s not forget that, at that point in time, I had a shotgun pointed at my head too. I decided to take cover behind a pile of rocks, but the two men and hostage kept walking towards me. Suddenly, the police were blurting out instructions on the radio which, at this time, was located in my pocket. I couldn’t grab it, to do so would mean letting go of my weapon.
The criminals became alarmed, realising that their plan had gone to shit, so they began to back up. Now it was my turn to follow. I decided the best thing to do was to contain the incident until help arrived, which would hopefully be soon.
Phil and Darren were having a break in the security control room when they heard my garbled call over the radio. Darren grabbed a Mossberg from the armoury, a 25-round belt of ammunition and ran for the vehicle. On his way to the incident, a faster vehicle passed him from the security office, which was also responding. As the response crews arrived, they were confronted by a locked gate. Meanwhile, the reserve police elements had arrived at the front gate and were directed by Darren to move down behind the fence line in an attempt to cut off the criminals’ escape route.
I followed the three towards the corner of the fence line. I knew they were trapped; there was no way out except over the fence which was covered in razor wire. As I backed them up, to my horror, I saw two more men jump the fence and another five or six running around on the other side of the fence, all with weapons. The men were climbing up onto the roof of the toilet block located along the fence line and were jumping off the roof into the compound. I decided to take some cover and see where that fucking support was.
The group of three continued pacing back and forth along the fence line looking for a way out. The other men behind the fence were trying unsuccessfully to cut into it with machetes. I decided to throw a gas grenade to break up this activity. Unfortunately, I’ve never had a good throwing arm and the grenade landed short and blew back into me, causing my eyes to water and to continue watering while I remained in this position. I started laughing at the stupidity of the situation. There were about 10 men with guns and a hostage only a short distance away and only me in their way and I had added to their arsenal by gassing myself — classic. I felt comfortable that no shots had been fired at this stage and I thought that the criminals just wanted out, so I decided to move across the yard to another covered position away from the gas. As I moved, I was pursued by a volley of shots; this changed everything. No longer was this a stand-off, it was now a gunfight. My new position was about 10 metres from the hostage and the criminal. The third man had joined two other men behind a pipe and continued to fire in my direction. They weren’t very good shots though, and their rounds were well off target.
The police were now down behind the criminal gang and were located on the other side of a creek. They were lying low in an attempt to ambush the criminals when they withdrew. I heard them tell Darren on the radio that they were in position. I wondered where the hell Darren was.
At the gate, Darren tried to squeeze through the two steel gates, but the gap wasn’t wide enough, so he directed a vehicle to nudge up against the fence and continue moving forward. Eventually the lock snapped open and the response force was in. When Darren entered the yard, he could see the hostage and criminal walking back and forth along the fence line, but couldn’t see me. At this stage the incident was contained, but we still had a jittery criminal holding a hostage with the odd round coming in. I could see a local security guard near some old drums, so I ran over to him and asked if he’d seen Darren.
‘Yes, he’s down between the drums.’
I moved to Darren and briefed him on what had happened and the situation at hand. We decided to call for the Sig Sauer 5.56 semi-automatic assault rifle to be brought up to us. If we had to take out the criminal, this weapon would be far more accurate than the Mossberg. I moved back to my position to give us a better coverage of the incident. I could see men crawling around on the other side of the fence trying to get a better shot at me, so I had to watch them as well as keep an eye on the hostage and the criminal. They were now near the toilet block and some men were jumping onto the toilet block and were escaping. They’d given up on their mate who was still caught inside with th
e hostage. I tried to warn the police that the group was on its way down towards them, but a group of locals had assembled on the other side of the creek on the high ground and was warning the criminals to go up the creek because a trap had been set. I then tried to tell the police to move up towards the toilet block, but the battery on my radio had gone flat — isn’t that always the way? So Darren passed the message.
