Baaz

by Anuja Chauhan

  ‘So what do you make of the young lady’s article on your ’craft?’ the Mukti asks, his sunglasses glinting in the slanting morning sunshine.

  Maddy shrugs. ‘Fair, I suppose. She seems to have done her homework. She mentions that, overall, India has a pretty decent record as far as steering clear of civilian areas is concerned.’

  ‘She’s sweet on your friend, isn’t she?’ Macho da asks. ‘That short guy – whatsizname, Gurbaaz? Shahbaaz?’

  ‘Just Baaz.’ Maddy grins. ‘Maybe she is, I wouldn’t know. Should we really be gossiping about who’s crushing on who right now? I mean, there’s a war on, and you’re about to be flung out into the wild wild east.’

  ‘Nah, I know this area like the back of my hand.’ Macho da is all macho nonchalance.

  ‘Then you probably recognize this terrain,’ Maddy says, leaning forward and pointing. ‘There’s the fork of the Meghna and Padma rivers, and between them…’

  ‘… is my sweet city,’ the Mukti says softly. ‘Oh, I’ve been away from home too long.’

  As they begin to descend, he bounds away to the back of the Caribou, where the para-commandos are readying for their drop, doing last-minute checks on their rig and equipment, fussing over the massive crate of rum their quartermaster has packed. Maddy lowers the ungainly ’craft over the green jungle cover below, holding it as steady as he can.

  He pulls the lever to activate the rear doors, but as they start to slide open, a furious hail of anti-aircraft fire rocks the Caribou.

  It lurches and tilts forward dangerously. The para-commandoes are thrown forward, colliding right into Maddy and his navigator.

  ‘Fuck!’

  ‘Where’d that come from?’

  ‘Take her up, sir, take her up!’

  ‘Get out of my goddamn way!’ Maddy shouts. ‘I can’t work the levers. Okay, here we go…’

  Slowly, the Caribou starts to rise, and again it is rocked by an angry volley of ack-ack fire. Maddy’s good-natured, grey-haired navigator slumps over on his controls, suddenly, decisively dead.

  The mighty ’craft judders and drops sickeningly. Maddy can feel his ears pop.

  ‘Sir, she’s going down.’

  ‘We have to jump!’

  ‘Now, or we’ll never land clear of her!’

  The leader’s voice sounds like a whipcrack.

  ‘Jump, men!’

  The damaged Caribou lurches again.

  ‘You guys get out!’ Maddy shouts. ‘I’ll hold her as long as I can!’

  The paras start to drop off the plane, their commander bellowing instructions until he jumps off too, leaving Maddy and Macho da alone in the plane.

  ‘Go!’ Maddy tells Macho da.

  ‘Not without you. Put the damn thing on auto.’

  Maddy feels rough stubble against his cheek and smells warm whiskey-laced breath as he is dragged up the ramp and to the open rear doors beyond. Freezing cold air sweeps into the ’craft, reeking of the fuel that is leaking out of the fuselage. He can see the fluttering bodies of the para-commandoes falling into the flat dark-green earth below, their parachutes blooming phut phut phut like exotic mushrooms over the jungle.

  ‘Not … good,’ Maddy chokes in a small dry voice. ‘I don’t … like … heights.’

  A mighty gust of red-hot flame and oily black smoke shoots out of the doomed Caribou.

  Macho da grips Maddy harder and takes a flying leap, right out of the flaming plane.

  ‘Joyyyy Baaaaangla…!’

  • • •

  Patriotic jeweller casts solid gold medal for war hero son-in-law

  In a touching move, Mr Om Pal Gehlot, a jeweller from Jhajjar, has cast a medal out of solid gold for his soon-to-be son-in-law, a fair, handsome IAF Fighter who is far away from home and loved ones, fighting Pakistanis at India’s border with Bangladesh.

  ‘My daughter’s fiancé, Flying Officer Ishaan “Baaz” Faujdaar, led India to a mighty victory during the air battle over Boyra,’ Mr Om Pal told this reporter. ‘His picture came out in the papers, standing in front of his plane, wearing the gold chain and medal which we presented to his family as rokka. The medal was created by myself for him, out of solid gold. It has an etching of a soaring eagle on one side and the Ashoka lions on the other, along with the legend “Baaz pe Naaz hai”. Even the Param Vir Chakra – India’s highest military medal – is not made out of solid gold – but this is.’

  Replicas of the medal, engraved with the message ‘Har Baaz pe Naaz hai’ are available for sale at Gehlot and Sons, Jhajjar Main Market Sarai, Haryana.

  ‘I would request all families with serving sons to buy these for them,’ Mr Gehlot said.

  In these dangerous days, some fathers would cavil at giving their girls to our air warriors, but not Mr Gehlot. When quizzed on this, he replied, ‘I am a deeply patriotic man. I dreamt of joining our Armed Forces but couldn’t because I have flat feet. Even if my daughter is widowed, she will be the widow of a patriot.’

  He also mentioned that he will cast another Baaz-pe-Naaz-hai medal in a teardrop shape if Flying Officer Faujdaar perishes in the conflict.

  ‘I hope families buy it for the widows/children of their fallen sons,’ Mr Gehlot said.

  ‘What the fuck is this?’ Ishaan is white-faced with anger. ‘What is this crap, Sneha behenji? Who is this vulture Gehlot, and what is he talking about?’

  ‘Oh, that.’ Sneha’s voice sounds faraway. ‘Yes, what about it?’

  Shaanu strides about the sentry box, walking as far as the short phone cord will allow him. ‘What about it? He tricked me, and you knew – don’t deny it – and you let me think the chain was a gift—’

  ‘It wasn’t a gift,’ she interrupts him, her voice still listless. ‘The family came home and did a rokka. They gave us fifty thousand rupees and a brand new Bullet. Shelly has been driving it around for a month now. I told you about the girl, she’s my friend. She’s kind and pretty, and she knows English.’

  ‘Sneha behenji!’ Shaanu’s voice is raw with betrayal. ‘How could you?’

  ‘How could I what, Shaanu Bhaisaab?’ Her voice grows teary. ‘Arranged marriage is good enough for me but not good enough for you? Where was all your modern thinking when I was being married off?’

  ‘What?’ He rakes the hair back from his forehead, then takes a deep breath. ‘Sneha, are you unhappy?’

  ‘No,’ she replies wretchedly. ‘But I want to do my B.Ed., and they say I cah … cah … can’t!’

  ‘Shit.’ Shaanu slumps to sit on the pavement.

  ‘My mother-in-law says she won’t have a masterni in the house.’

  And so? Shaanu thinks to himself. You’re miserable, so you decided that I should be miserable too?

  Aloud he says. ‘I’m sorry, behenji, I let you down.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ she says. But her voice is flat.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ he demands. ‘Do you want to leave him? I’ll support you, if that’s the case! You can do a B.Ed., get a job—’

  ‘I’m perfectly happy, thank you very much.’ Her voice grows hostile. ‘And as far as your rishtaa is concerned, it’s just a rokka. Nobody has married you off yet, have they? Say no to pitaji and call it off, if you want.’ Her voice grows bitter. ‘You’re a man, you have that choice.’

  And she cuts the line.

  Ishaan stares at the phone, racked with disbelief and frustration, then slams it down with a bang.

  Damnit!

  He sits down heavily on the barrier, indifferent to the gaze of the sentries.

  She’s right, he thinks, through a haze of disappointment and pain. I can call it off. It’s a childish trick and I won’t be trapped into it.

  What hurts, though, is the deceit. He’d actually thought that bloody Chimman Singh and he were finally in a good place. That maybe the old man, the only parent he’s had since he was eight, finally had a little respect and even love for him.

  But he’d been fooling himself, clearly. The so-called gift – h
e’d torn it off his neck as soon as he saw the article – had actually been a noose round his neck.

  And Sneha had known! Had the little ones known too? Sari and Sulo and Shelly? Do any of them love him at all?

  He rakes his hands through his hair and stares down at the road with furious, unseeing eyes.

  ‘Baaz?’

  ‘What?’ Ishaan snaps, too angry to look up or modulate his voice. ‘What is it?’

  Raka shambles up, his gait very unlike his usual crisp stride. ‘Nothing.’

  Ishaan looks up and frowns.

  ‘What are you doing here? Don’t you have a sortie in half-an-hour?’

  ‘I do,’ Raka says, his voice subdued. Slowly, Ishaan takes in the fact that his chubby cheeks are sagging, his eyes look bewildered. ‘Baaz, buddy, we just got some bad news. Maddy’s plane went down. Nobody knows what happened to him.’

  • • •

  Gawky, sixteen-year-old Maddy, clasping hands for the very first time with Raka in the NDA dining hall. Bewildered when the servers asked if he was a ‘Meater or a Non-Meater’. Persuading Raka to say he was a Meater too, so he could scarf down Raka’s quota of meat as well as his own. Guffawing shirtless in his bed as Raka scrapes away at his plentiful stubble in their cracked mirror, thanking his south Indian gods that he isn’t as hairy as his friend. Getting teary-eyed when he hears the national anthem play, then swearing at his mates for laughing at him. Banging on the piano keys, looking incredibly handsome, an unlit cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, singing ‘Why why why Delilah?’

  ‘Gentlemen, we have received information that the PAF Sabres are back in the skies. The Hunters from Hashimara encountered three of them early this morning. As Tezgaon has been totalled and there is no way the PAF can fly here from West Pakistan without stopping to refuel, we can only surmise that they have carted their Sabres by road from Tezgaon to the small, disused runway of Kurmitola close by. The Mukti Bahini reports movement along the road linking Tezgaon to Kurmitola and feverish activity in Kurmitola itself. Your task today is to crater this airstrip and nip the nascent revival in the bud.’

  ‘Yes, sir!’

  Aerial shots of the runway at Kurmitola appear behind Carvalho on a slide projector screen.

  ‘Raka is leader. Chatty, you’re wingman. You will replicate the steep-glide dive pattern and bombing procedure we employed at Tezgaon. Of course, you’ll have to watch out for Sabres. A piece of good news, though – the PAF’s anti-aircraft guns are running low on ammunition so they can no longer do the sort of damage they did in the first few days of this conflict. So you’re flying safer now than you were before, lads!’

  The MiGGies nod.

  On the football field, shirts versus skins. Raka in possession, racing towards the goal, Maddy coming in out of nowhere, knocking down a defender Raka hasn’t seen. A goal, a triumphant roar, and a bloody-nosed Maddy being carried away on a stretcher, their sweaty hands clasping as he grins. ‘Nobody fucks with you except me.’

  Ten minutes later, they strap on their parachute packs and stride out to the waiting jets.

  ‘Not bad for the Pakis, eh?’ Chatty tells Raka. ‘They’re putting up a fight! I’m glad this happened – things had gotten a bit flat, na Raks?’

  But Raka is staring ahead of him blankly.

  Chatrath leans in. ‘Raks?’

  Raka looks around.

  ‘I heard about Subbiah.’ Chatrath’s voice is sympathetic. ‘Hard luck. I know you guys were course mates.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Raka voice is hollow. ‘Course mates and roommates.’

  Chatty claps him on the back. ‘They’ll find him, yaar,’ he says bracingly. ‘Before New Year’s Eve, for sure. I can’t imagine a New Year’s party without Maddy on the piano, making the rest of us look like a bunch of charmless yokels!’

  This makes Raka smile. Then he says, his voice slow and deliberate, like he’s making a solemn vow, ‘Chatty, I’m not coming back down till I’ve pulverized the last of those bastards to talcum powder.’

  Chatrath looks a little taken aback at this vehemence, then nods determinedly. ‘Me neither, brother. Let’s go.’

  They slap palms, mount their ladders and drop lightly into their leather seats. As he pulls on his fighter gloves, Raka’s notices that his palms are damp.

  ‘Happy hunting, sir!’ his airmen shout out as they stand away from the MiG.

  ‘Jai Hind,’ is his terse reply.

  Twenty minutes later, they are flying over the location where Carvalho and the other strategists in the briefing room suspected Kurmitola to be. But there is nothing below, just the usual tangle of silent greenery. The MiGs descend lower, keeping a watchful eye out for the large circular water tanki that had figured prominently in the photographs from the briefing. It is nowhere to be seen.

  Maybe they’ve camouflaged it somehow, Raka thinks as he scans the landscape below. If we could camouflage the entire Taj Mahal, what’s one measly tanki?

  He drops even lower and fires an exploratory round of fire into the wilderness below. Chatty follows suit.

  Immediately, AA fire bursts up around them in angry white puffs. It’s like they’ve stirred a hornet’s nest.

  Idiots, thinks Raka scornfully as he accelerates, zooming up and away, gaining G, burning fuel, so he can come back in his steep-glide dive. I know where the tanki is now, it’s that extra-smooth bit of roundness just there beside the gunners, covered in green-and-brown gunny bags. I can’t possibly miss it, it’s so obvious, how dumb do they think we are – shit, where is it?

  He blinks, rubbing his eyes. The ‘tanki’ has merged back with the rest of the foliage. Whoever has done the camouflaging has done a good job.

  Lemme just go by the coordinates provided, he decides. Forget about identifying the thing.

  He does as much, dropping his bombs on what he hopes is the right spot. So does Chatty. The AA guns don’t let out so much as a splutter. Maybe they’ve run out of ammo, or maybe they’ve realized they’re giving their location away.

  ‘Do you think we got it?’ Chatty asks Raka, breaking radio silence as they start to approach Kalaiganga.

  Inside his cockpit, Raka shrugs, too cheated to reply. He’d really wanted to notch up a scalp or two today, but it seems their luck is out. On top of that, the weather has just gotten weirder. Dark clouds are floating around them, and the MiG is bouncing like a madman, the springs inside Raka’s leather-upholstered seat squeaking madly with every bumpity bump.

  ‘I hope so…’ he starts to say, when some kind of sixth sense makes the hair at the back of his neck prickle.

  And then a Sabre rises out of the mass of cumulonimbus swirling around them, engines screaming, claws out, glinting a gun-metal grey that’s almost the same colour as the clouds.

  ‘Holy shit!’ Raka veers madly.

  The thing is filling his gunsight – he can take a shot, but if he hits it, the debris will explode right in his face, taking him down with it.

  Cursing dementedly, Raka starts to barrel upwards. The Sabre keeps pace with him, its heat-seeking Sidewinders trying to get a lock onto the moving MiG. Raka rolls and roils, moving constantly, trying to increase the distance between them. Chatty’s plane is nowhere to be seen.

  Utterly disoriented, with no bearings of what is horizon, earth or sky, Raka continues to climb, bouncing against the rolling clouds. Then he levels off and, manoeuvring hard, manages to position himself behind and above the Sabre, though it costs him so much fuel he’s worried his Bingo lights will come on any moment now. Miraculously, they don’t. The Sabre fills his gunsight again, and he presses the release button.

  The MiG recoils as the missile shoots out, and, in delighted disbelief, Raka watches the Sabre judder as it takes a direct hit.

  He whoops as gleefully as a chubby little boy whose Holi balloon has found a hapless target.

  ‘Take that, you bastard! That’s for Maddy – and that’s for Dil and—’

  And then the MiG lurches sickeningly and
falls out of the sky…

  • • •

  ‘Apparently he was very brave.’ Juhi’s voice is high and tight.

  ‘He downed a Sabre. Chatty told us.’

  ‘That’s…’ Ishaan voice is a savage whisper, ‘great.’

  Juhi sniffs. Her pretty face is very pale, the flyaway hair that always manages to come free of her plait fluffing up like a halo around her face.

  ‘He’ll get a medal for sure,’ she continues in the same thin, tight voice. ‘An MVC, maybe even a PVC – won’t he?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Ishaan agrees.

  She smiles brightly.

  ‘That would be so cool!’

  They are standing in the corridor of Ward No. 4 at the Military Hospital. Raka’s MiG went down very close to Kalaiganga, and he was rushed to the MH by the villagers. He has second-degree burns, two fractured ribs and severe oxygen deprivation. He also told the hospital staff, just before passing out, that there was no sensation in his arms and legs. The doctors don’t expect him to make it.

  ‘Juhi.’ Mrs Pomfret and Mrs Carvalho come hurrying down the corridor, out of breath. ‘Juhi dear, we’re so sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be,’ Juhi says with frightening poise. ‘I’m a Fighter’s wife. I know what I signed up for.’

  Bade risk waala job hai, beta! They fly such small, undependable planes, not even pressurized properly. His ears will burst, his lungs will rot, he’ll be dead before he’s thirty.

  The two older women exchange distressed looks.

  ‘Yes. Uh, beta, we’ve sent for your mother. She’ll be here by tomorrow.’

  ‘My mother!’ Juhi says blankly, like she’s forgotten she has a mother at all. Then she frowns. ‘Baaz, Raka has to shave. He says you can’t appear before your father-in-law-mother-in-law with stubble on your cheeks, it’s not respectful.’ She whirls around. ‘I have to go home and get his shaving kit.’

  ‘I’ll get it, Juhi.’ Ishaan’s voice is steady. ‘Just tell me where it is. I’ll get you everything you need.’

  ‘No!’ Juhi grabs Ishaan’s arm, her soft brown eyes blazing with sudden fire. ‘This is not the time for you to be running stupid little errands!’