Baaz

by Anuja Chauhan

  A hubbub of conversation breaks out at this information. None of the pilots had anticipated that the strikes would be so widespread.

  ‘We’ve learnt that the strike was code-named Operation Chengez Khan and that its purpose was to paralyse the IAF ahead of land strikes by the Pakistani Army on Indian territory, thus leaving the Indian Army unprotected from the sky.’ His voice rises. ‘Will they succeed?’

  ‘No, sir!’ the fighters roar back.

  ‘They’re also hoping that, by striking in the west, they will be able to dilute the headway we’ve been making here in the east.’ His voice rises even louder. ‘Will that happen?’

  ‘No, sir!’

  He pauses, scanning their young faces. They look calm and focussed, he notes. No fear, no panic, no stupid animal excitement. He nods in approval.

  ‘It is imperative that we retaliate swiftly, strongly and sharply. Our engineers have been working all night, the runway will be usable in an hour from now, when four MiGs will take off to bomb Dacca’s primary air base, Tezgaon, with our S-5 missiles.’

  A ripple runs through the room. The Gnatties seem to slump a little, while the MiG squad sits up even straighter, their chests swelling perceptibly as they sneak snide looks at the ‘heroes of Boyra’. A smile of distinct smugness spreads across Dilsher Singh’s pimply face.

  How young they are, Pomfret thinks. Well, they’ll be years older before this day is done.

  ‘Your Operations Officer, Wing Commander Carvalho will brief you on your targets,’ he says and steps back.

  Sitting in the front row, his heart bursting with pride that it is to be the MiGs that strike the first blow for AFS Kalaiganga, Raka nevertheless feels a twinge of misgiving. Bomb Tezgaon airfield with the undependable S-5s? Those things float like seed puffs in the springtime.

  Old Kuch Bhi bounds forward to take over, his eyes glittering hungrily.

  ‘Gentlemen, you’ve been practising the steep-dive glide for weeks. You know what to do. Crater the hell out of the airfield and put those goddamn Sabres out of the bloody equation. Clear?’

  ‘Yes, sir!’

  He starts to pace the room, wheeling about as he reaches the wall.

  ‘You’ll have to watch out for two things – Sabres from above and ack-ack guns from below. Tezgaon will be expecting us, and they’ll have both ready. The ack-ack you’ll have to take on the chin, but we’ll give you some Gnats to provide you top cover.’

  ‘Wooo-hoooo,’ the Gnatties whoop as one.

  Carvalho’s keen gaze assesses them one by one. Then he gives a curt nod in Gana’s direction.

  ‘Gonsalves,’ he says.

  Shaanu’s face falls.

  Dilsher Singh can’t resist a tiny snicker.

  ‘And…’ the Wing Commander continues.

  The tension builds.

  Carvalho allows himself a small tight grin.

  ‘Chakkahera.’

  Shaanu’s fist shoots up into the air triumphantly.

  ‘Yes, sir!’

  ‘Calm down, Fighter,’ Carvalho growls. ‘Your role will be just to stay, scan and report.’

  Balls, thinks Shaanu privately.

  ‘Yes, sir!’

  ‘The rest of you will stay here on standby, fully fuelled and armed, to be deployed for further strikes, or to provide Close Air Support to the troops as and when the Army asks for it. All clear so far?’

  ‘Yes, sir!’

  ‘Like I said, gentlemen, expect a warm welcome. They know Tezgaon is our number one target and they’ll be waiting. Dive in steeply, ekdum…’

  ‘Baaz-ke-maaphik,’ Raka says with him, sotto voce.

  ‘Drop your bombs and don’t hang about. Go over it once, if you can’t hit it, the next bunch of pilots will. Clear?’

  ‘Sir!’

  ‘In case you’re shot down, head for the closest red-light area, nobody asks any questions there – just keep your pants on and, if you’re a Hindu, your foreskin hidden!’

  Muted, nervous laughter greets this injunction. Even Pomfret, standing at the back of the room, allows himself a nostalgic smile.

  ‘Mix with the low-life there, and find a way to contact our embassy. Understood?’

  ‘Yes, sir!’ everybody shouts back.

  Carvalho wheels around, his manic, glittering eyes jabbing into each one of them, and continues, ‘Do the maximum damage you can to their ’craft, their armoured vehicles, their radar and their runways. Civilian targets are of course totally out of bounds. Is that clear?’

  ‘Yes, sir!’

  Carvalho’s hungry gaze probes the posse of fighters.

  ‘Any other questions?’

  There are many what-ifs on their mind – mortality, injury, malfunctioning parachutes. Nobody asks them.

  ‘As the Sabres came calling at dinner time last night, I doubt any of you got fed,’ Pomfret puts in mildly. ‘So eat a decent breakfast before you leave, please.’

  ‘Sir!’

  ‘The call sign for the MiG formation is Black,’ Old Kuch Bhi decrees. ‘Javed, you’re Black one. Raka’s your wingman, Chatrath is Black three and Dilsher is Black four. Baaz, your formation’s call-sign is Thunder. You’re Thunder one and Gonsalves is Thunder two. Jai Hind!’

  • • •

  ‘Black one to ATC. Requesting permission for formation Black to take off, please.’

  ‘Permission granted, Black one,’ says the ATC.

  ‘Thunder one requesting permission for formation Thunder.’

  ‘Permission granted, Thunder one. Happy hunting, lads. Jai Hind!’

  And with a roar of jet engines, the formation is up in the sky, a spray of stubby silver bullets against the blush-pink dawn.

  ‘Not a bad way to spend a Saturday morning, eh guys?’ J-man’s chirpy voice sounds on the R/T. ‘Feast your eyes on that sunrise and think beautiful thoughts!’

  Which, of course, makes Raks think of Juhi. She had been very calm when he left, tucking Pakistani currency into his wallet, tying a black thread tightly around his wrist and lining his eyes with kajal to make him look like a pukka pathan.

  ‘You’re tall enough to be one,’ she’d said, her voice trembling just a little, her eyes suspiciously bright. ‘Such a good-looking man! Here, eat this prasad. It’s from the Kali-bari, it’ll keep you safe. And this gond-ka-laddoo from mummyji’s Satyanarayan ki pooja. And drink this Gangajal. Okay, bye now. What do you want for lunch?’

  ‘Egg curry,’ he’d replied huskily, hugging her tight. And before she could scold him for these less-than-vegetarian cravings, he had strode out of the little quarters, got onto his bike and left.

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ he says wistfully to his squadron. ‘I had plans for my Saturday. And none of them involved hanging out with you hairy buggers.’

  ‘I had plans too,’ chirrups Dilsher.

  ‘You had booked a facial, hadn’t you, Black four?’ Chatty snickers. ‘To cure the acne?’

  ‘I was going to see Goldfinger again,’ Dil says indignantly. ‘I had balcony seats.’

  ‘Aren’t you tired of it yet?’ Raka asks.

  ‘No,’ retorts Dilsher, and adds slyly, ‘I’m not tired of the Freesia ad, either.’

  Then he starts to hum.

  ‘You … are … my … theme, for a wet dream, a very lovely wet dream…’

  Nobody says anything, so after a while, he remarks with deliberate outrageousness, ‘What hot tits she has.’

  Raka sits up, a furious response ready on his lips, but he needn’t have bothered. Pat comes Shaanu’s cool response.

  ‘Talking filth to cover up for the fact that you’re shitting yellow on your first real-life mission, Black four? You ain’t fooling anybody.’

  ‘I’m not scared!’ Dilsher retorts a little too quickly.

  ‘No?’ Shaanu says interestedly. ‘Then you should be. ’Coz if the Pakis don’t break your balls, I will.’

  ‘And I,’ Gana growls ungrammatically.

  ‘And I,’ adds Raka.

 
‘Maintain R/T silence please.’ Chatty’s voice is sharp. ‘Approaching Tezgaon.’

  They cross the twisting silver ribbons that are the Meghna and Padma rivers, expertly led by J-man, who has flown in this area before. Soon, Dacca is sprawled out below them, bathed in morning sunshine like a lush-green buffet spread.

  ‘Let’s keep it short and sweet, guys,’ J-man says breezily as he starts the descent.

  ‘Just like the action on Black two’s wedding night,’ Dilsher snickers again. Everybody ignores him.

  The MiGs sink, a posse of squat steel birds, claws outthrust, eyes searching keenly for their prey. The two Gnats continue to circle above.

  ‘There it is!’ says Chatty. ‘No wait, that’s a road. What a wide road – double lanes and no traffic. So much better than ours!’

  ‘Don’t miss the imported cars. Daimler! And also Subaru, I think. Is that a Benz?’

  ‘There’s the airfield. They tried to hide it, but we see it.’

  ‘We see it!’ everybody choruses musically. ‘We see it good!’

  ‘Good morrrrning Pakistaaaaan!’

  While the others circle at a height, J-man swoops lower, approaching the airfield as if to land on it. This is what makes steep-dive gliding so hazardous. Unlike the usual technique, in which jets fly criss-cross over the targeted highway, dropping their bombs only when they are directly above it, steep-dive gliding involves flying over the entire length of the runway. The chances of your bombs hitting the target are thus maximized, as it is always below you, but so are also the chances of being hit. There’s only one path you can take, and that makes it easy for the guns on the ground to predict your position and pick you out. Now J-man, his belly completely exposed to the anti-aircraft guns on the ground, gauges how the wind is moving, mutters a silent prayer and drops the S-5s.

  Suddenly, puffs of black-and-white smoke bloom all around him. The anti-aircraft gunners have kicked in!

  Grimly, he hunkers down and continues to barrel down the length of the runway. He still has the element of surprise, they haven’t quite got him in their sights yet. Things will be tougher for Raka and the others, so he must make the most of this vital first chance.

  The S-5s drop, J-man can’t really see where, and then he rises, made buoyant by the loss of weight.

  Raka swoops down into the sea of swirling ack-ack fire to take his place…

  Circling at a higher altitude, Gana and Shaanu are clueless of what is taking place below. Things are eerily quiet up here, and they’re idling in a clear sky the colour of milk when Shaanu feels the hair at the back of his head prickle and, slewing sideways, spots a Sabre lurking at eight o’clock.

  The pilot seems intent on the MiGs below. He hasn’t spotted him or Gana. Shaanu can’t even tell if Gana’s spotted him. And he can’t warn Gana on the R/T because the Sabre may very well be on the same frequency.

  Silently, Ishaan rises higher, scanning the skies for more Sabres. They usually tend to hunt in pairs.

  Nothing.

  Below, the anti-aircraft fire has turned brutal. It is thudding into wings and fuselage, making the MiGs judder and mush madly as they dive. Not a single S-5 seems to have done any damage to the gleaming runway below.

  ‘I’m clean out!’ Chatty yells. ‘Nothing more to hit them with!’

  ‘Let’s go!’

  ‘Is anybody hit?’ J-man shouts.

  Miraculously, nobody is.

  ‘I’ve got a load to drop still.’ Dil’s voice crackles. ‘Hang on, guys.’

  He dives audaciously low, flying right over the field into the punishing ack-ack fire, and releases the S-5s about halfway down the length of the runway. The MiG squad watch, hearts in their mouths, as an improbable magic unfolds before their eyes. The erratic S-5s fall sweetly, as straight and predictably as they would have in a perfect vacuum, smack smartly into the runway and explode on impact.

  A black-lipped crater blooms right in the middle of the runway.

  Dil lets out a triumphant yell.

  ‘Yesssss!’

  ‘Fuckin’ beginner’s luck!’

  ‘Strike One for the MiGGies!’

  ‘I love you, you pimply bastard!’

  ‘Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!’

  Triumphantly, the MiGs rise up and away, breaking through the clouds to level around the circling Gnats.

  ‘Did you see that, Thunder one?’ Dilsher demands excitedly. ‘We punctured the thing, we destroyed it, we—’

  ‘Watch out, Dil!’

  Shaanu’s voice is like a whipcrack on the R/T. Even as he speaks, he fires a one-second burst at the Sabre locked onto Dil.

  Bracing for the now familiar recoil, he watches the tracers hiss through the sky…

  It nails the Sabre unerringly, but not before the Sabre releases its air-to-air Sidewinder straight at Dil’s cockpit.

  The sky curdles into a smoking ball of bucketing red heat.

  Debris flies everywhere.

  The battle moves forward, the planes zooming ahead, buffeted madly by the explosion, stone-blind in the black smoke, orange flames and swiftly hurtling clouds.

  As the smoke clears, the IAF Fighters swivel around in their harnesses to see the Sabre falling out of the sky, sunlight bouncing off its crescent moon fin flash. The struck MiG is still flying, streaming fuel, emitting thick black smoke, and from inside it, on the somehow still perfectly functioning R/T, they hear the hair-raising sound of Dil screaming in agony.

  • • •

  There are front-page pictures of the downed MiG in all the Pakistan dailies the next morning, in sweet revenge of the jubilant coverage given by the Indian media to the Battle of Boyra. The headlines, big and bold, scream all about how Pakistan will never succumb to the vile aggressors from across the border.

  Indian newspapers carry a black-edged photograph of Pilot Officer Dilsher Singh in his passing-out-parade finery, grinning the bashfully lustful grin all the ladies at Kalaiganga know so well.

  At a memorial service conducted on a misty Sunday morning at Air Force Station Kalaiganga, a grim-faced knot of airmen and officers swear they will return the favour to Pakistan, and soon.

  Most galling of all, when the engineers examine the photographs taken by the MiG cameras, they decree that Tezgaon is still operational. The crater punched by Dilsher Singh in his first and last flight has still left 5000 metres of runway clean – sufficient enough for its Sabres to continue flying out in a steady stream to dominate the eastern theatre of what is now a very official war.

  • • •

  ‘Oder modhye keu ki tomar boyfriend chhilo?’

  Not understanding any word in this sentence except one, Tinka nevertheless gets the gist of Mamuni’s shyly asked question. Even if she hadn’t understood one word, the glow in the girl’s good eye, the coy manner in which she is hiding behind the bouquet of multicoloured roses and mor-pankhi she’s brought for Tinka and the giggles of her little delegation would have been enough.

  Is one of the officers who scattered the mob the other day her boyfriend?

  Is Ishaan Faujdaar her boyfriend?

  Tinka ponders the question. She hasn’t heard from Ishaan since late Friday night, when he left her at the hospital after the air strike. He had got her back into bed, reassured the shaken nursing staff that all would be well, then turned to scan her face with grave eyes.

  ‘Sleep well.’

  ‘Where are you going now?’ Anxiety had made her voice abrupt.

  He’d shrugged, smiling, backing out of the door.

  ‘Back to base. An enemy strike is a de facto order to report for duty.’

  ‘Will … will you come see me tomorrow?’ Her voice had been a whisper, but inside her head it felt like a scream.

  ‘Tinka.’ He had stopped, his face growing serious. ‘Leave for Bombay as soon as you can. Tomorrow morning, if possible. Promise me.’

  ‘I don’t make promises to people I’ve just met!’

  His handsome jaw had set.

 
; ‘You owe me.’

  She’d thrown up her hands.

  ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ she’d blazed. ‘Besides, Bombay would be just as unsafe.’

  And then she’d pulled the white hospital sheet taut over her head, for all the world like a corpse at a funeral pyre, and spent the entire night wide awake.

  Now, three days later, she has no news of him, and Dilsher Singh is dead.

  Tinka still can’t process this information. Dil is dead, she repeats numbly to herself even as she urges piping-hot potato wedges and bottles of Coca-Cola on the visiting children. Like Jimmy. No more hungry lunging backward and forward on the dance floor for him, no more furtive glances at the bosom of his dance partner, no more matinee shows of James Bond movies. Packed into a wooden box, draped with a flag … and maybe, at the Republic Day parade next month, his weeping father or stoic mother to be handed India’s second- or third-highest medal for bravery.

  Just thinking about it sucks the strength from her muscles.

  And yet … that tiny, guilty, sustaining relief that Ishaan has been spared.

  How did he even blindside her so fast? Why does she care?

  He stands for everything she most despises, she tells herself resolutely: swaggering, cocky machismo, a crude way of looking at the world as either friend or foe, an obsession with adrenalin.

  But then her mind goes back to the way he’d stroked her arms with the palms of his hands, so gently, and made her laugh and hushed her tears away.

  And then kissed her with such thoroughness that her toes haven’t quite uncurled yet.

  Stop it.

  ‘So, will you continue with your dance practice in Meerut?’ she asks the children brightly.

  Everybody ignores this pathetic counter-question. Though they had been very subdued when they arrived at the Sarhind Club, huddled together in a worried, hesitant little knot, they have all recovered their spirits after meeting her and guzzling large amounts of fizzy Coca-Cola.

  ‘Tell na, didi!’ they demand impatiently. ‘Tomar boyfriend!’

  Tinka crosses her hands across her chest. ‘There’s nothing to tell!’ she says sternly. ‘Now, listen, just because you’re all being shifted to a new camp far away from the air strikes doesn’t mean you should stop singing and dancing and being happy, okay?’