123 Tomorrows

by Vaibhav Thakur

  Suraj’s over-pampered face turned pale instantly. His lips quivered for a moment before the words came out. “I... I had some business here – why, what are you trying to say?”

  “I am not trying, mister Suraj, I know exactly what ‘business’ you had here.”

  “B... BULLSHIT,” he bellowed. The family at the adjacent table stared back.

  “Shhh... keep your voice down unless you want the entire JC street to know about your escapades. And as far as the question of how much I know, you know what they say—why tell them if you can show them. So, let me just show you.”

  I pulled out a phone from my pocket. Suraj shrieked with surprise he recognized his phone that I unlocked, navigated through his photos and turned it towards him. He leaped across the table and snatched the phone from my hand.

  “Nice pics, Suraj. She is one racy bitch, though, isn’t she?” I conjured a wicked smile to match the act. “And you needn’t have jumped on the table for it. I would’ve given it to you had you asked. Of course, I have a double back-up of all these pictures, so it doesn’t matter.”

  “How much money do you want?” he seethed through clenched teeth.

  “Tch. Tch. Tch. I am not a petty blackmailer, Mister Suraj. But, I do want something from you.”

  “You bastard.”

  “Swearing won’t work, I hear that ten times a day, Mister Suraj. First, calm down. Good. We’re going to solve this like real gentlemen. I am going to give you a set of instructions and you’re going to follow them to the last letter. There won’t be any allowances for mistakes and I won’t tolerate any deviation. If you fail to comply, these pictures will be in tomorrow's newspapers. Do you understand?”

  With clenched teeth, he uttered as if chewing on each word, “I understand.”

  “Good. Now, you’ll give me your jacket, back-pack and wallet. You can keep one credit card. From here, you’ll head straight to a hotel and check in for the day. Once you are in your room you’ll open this envelope at exactly 10:00 AM. Inside, you’ll find a small piece of paper with a phone number, a SIM card and details of what to say – you will make a call to that number and say those exact words written on the paper... nothing more, nothing less.

  “Immediately after the call, you’ll break that SIM and go to bed. You will not talk to anyone; you will not step out of your room, you will not switch on the television and you’ll not try to message or contact anyone. At three o’ clock, you are off the hook. Do it properly and you’ll never hear from me again, but one wrong step and I’ll make sure that a page-three journalist gets a scoop of his lifetime.

  “And your coffee is on me,” I laid a hundred rupee note under the coffee cup and pulled the hood of Suraj’s jacket over my head. On the street, I strolled past Yusuf bhai with my head down and face covered, enjoying his worried face as I moved towards the Missions Street.

  ###

  Time: 8:45 AM

  Location: Missions Street, Bangalore

  Not too far from JC street, I strolled casually in front of the main gate of the United Missions School. Missions Street, named after the school itself, was clogged with several school buses and private vehicles. Hundreds of children in their school uniforms carrying their bags and water-bottles, some chatty and some sombre, streamed past the gates to begin another day at school.

  In the hubbub of horns and children, I dropped a small packet of candy some distance from the entrance, carefully avoiding the gaze of an old chowkidaar.

  Soon, a government car would arrive to drop off the six-year-old son of a high-level bureaucrat. The kid would spot the packet, pick it up and pop a few candies. They’d taste a little off, but the kid would forget about it soon. But as he’d go for his morning assembly he’d complain of severe stomach-ache and fall to the ground twisting in pain. The school would then call emergency services.

  And almost instantly, an ambulance would arrive. With me as the driver.

  Another domino was stacked.

  ###

  Time: 9:15 AM

  Location: Old Airport, HAL Road, Bangalore

  In the early 2000s, as the world became a hyper-connected information highway, the word ‘Bangalored’ entered the modern dictionaries signifying the global hub the city had unexpectedly become. And Old Airport situated right in the middle of the city became the gateway of an ambitious city with even more ambitious people. The engineers who built the airport in 1940s, however, could never foresee the tremendous demand in air-travel sixty years later. When the decision to shut it down came some time in 2008 in favour of “New International Airport”, it was already catering to three times its capacity.

  More than a decade later, all passenger and cargo operations had moved to the new airport and the old one was almost forgotten. Now, tall grass occupied most of the airfield and even encroached parts of runways for the lack of maintenance. The ghost of the Old Airport was left with sporadic operations from two sources – flying clubs and private jets. For its remaining few employees, the monotonous days were broken only by occasional VVIP convoys going to their private planes or the flutter of two-seater planes for hobby flying or training of new pilots.

  “Your documentation, sir,” said the elderly guard who was the sole security at the main entrance. I produced an ID card from my backpack and handed it to him.

  “Suraj Dhariwal,” he looked at me from top to bottom, straining his old, milky eyes to match the photo on the ID with my face. “I’ve heard that name somewhere. Have you been here before?”

  “Nope... I am a trainee,” I said. “Today is my first day for flying lessons.”

  “I see. But sir, you look somewhat different from your photo.”

  “Yeah, that was taken a long time ago. If that’s a problem I can call my dad... he knows the commissioner. He might get pissed for disturbing him at the factory, but if you insist…“ I offered, pulling out my mobile phone.

  “Ah, now I remember where I’ve heard that name. Are you the son of Dhariwal sahib of Dhariwal Industries?”

  “Yes, I am.” I said flatly and waved the mobile phone. “Do you still want to talk to him?”

  “Oh no... no... that is not needed at all.” He jumped. “I know him very well. He comes here frequently... there you go sir.” He handed back my ID before reverting to dreariness of his job.

  The Old Airport couldn’t have been more different from its newer counterpart. Though huge, the single-story building looked more like a dingy government office than an airport terminal; paint peeled off the walls, announcement boards were dead, and rows of bolted steel chairs had collected so much dust that it was difficult to tell their true colour.

  In one corner of the terminal, a small coffee kiosk stood as the lone last relic of the golden times and was my next dot to connect.

  ###

  9:25AM

  I chatted with the lone employee of the coffee kiosk, a middle-aged stocky man who poured a foaming filter coffee into a small Styrofoam cup.

  “How many customers do you get nowadays?” I asked, sipping my filter coffee.

  “Not many, sir,” he sighed and stared into space. “There was a time when I couldn’t get a moment’s peace in the morning,” he said, reminiscing. “Now, my only customers are the security guards and those engineers at ATC. There are no passengers per-se, sometimes there are some VVIPs, big businessmen or politicians, but they are always in a hurry and go straight to their waiting jets.”

  “Hey, don’t worry too much, things will improve – oops – I spilled it. Can I get some tissue paper?”

  “Sure sir... give me a second... I kept it right there... umm… let me get one from the storage...”

  As he turned his back, I took out a small bottle of Anxilor from my pocket and quietly slipped a few drops in the third coffee cup from the stack on his counter. As I walked away from the kiosk, I saw a small group of security guards arriving to get their coffee before beginning their shifts.

  Another domino in place.

  ###


  9:40 AM

  Several hangars were lined up on the far side of Old Airport’s airfield. The huge metal structures were large enough to house several aircrafts at once for maintenance and servicing. But now, like most of the Old Airport, many of them lay abandoned. One of the few exceptions was hangar number twelve, located on one corner of the field. It was used as storage for equipment, flying gears and all kinds of junk that the airport had ever produced. Despite being nothing more than a giant garbage bin, it wasn’t left unsupervised. Scores of high-resolution CCTV cameras kept an eye on every inch of the airport. The feed was beamed to the centralized control room 24x7, where a handful of security personnel monitored them at multiple terminals.

  At one such terminal, a security guard began his shift. It was a dull job and he hadn’t detected anything amiss for years, against unchanging images from number 12. Maybe it was for that stillness of his job that he felt quite drowsy this morning despite gulping a large cup of coffee he had bought at the kiosk. In one of the rare security lapses, he found himself slipping into a stupor, unable to keep an eye on the monitors assigned to him.

  And in that torpor, he missed a small speck on his monitor that suspiciously crawled towards the hangar. It’d be only a couple of minutes before another security guard would wake him up and they’d have a nice laugh about it. By the end of the day, he would’ve forgotten about the little incident in which one of the storage hangars was left unmonitored for a few minutes.

  I waited just outside the camera’s periphery. As the clock struck the exact second, I slipped into hangar number 12. To my right, a large section was converted into a dump with all kinds of rubbish carelessly strewn in it, and overstuffed old cartons were bursting at the seams. I opened an old steel box belonging to a defunct flying club. I found what I was looking for – the discarded squirrel suit. It was old and tattered, but it’d serve me well. I pulled it out from the rest of the pile and stuffed it in my backpack. Before my two minutes ran out, I was out of the hangar making my way towards the Flying Academy next to the airfield.

  ###

  10:00 AM

  “Pay attention, you chumps,” roared a tall man through his thick moustache. Though he looked old, he spoke with such a force that his whole body seemed to shake with every word. Even his Air Force blue uniform seemed to have inherited the stiffness of his face which seemed incapable of ever hosting a smile. None of us could understand the significance of several medals neatly pinned above his breast pocket, but they added to the aura of the man nonetheless. His intense eyes searched the twelve of us trainees, who stood at attention.

  “My name is Captain Shaw of squadron number eight of IAF,” he said and then added reluctantly, “retired.” He paused for a moment. “But you jokers will address me as ‘Captain’.”

  Some of the other trainees looked unsure if they were in the right place and shifted their weight uncomfortably from one leg to the other. A young boy next to me held his hands behind his back.

  “Does he not know that we are not military cadets?” he whispered without turning. “I just want to fly that stupid plane.”

  His eyes darted to a comically small plane that rested on its two wheels. It looked almost like a toy against the backdrop of the vast airfield. Moreover, its two rotor blades in the front seemed too worn out and flimsy to actually work.

  “Is there a problem, boy?” Captain Shaw suddenly looked in the direction of the boy who was talking to me. Captain’s stern voice threatened him so much that he found himself unable to speak and shook his head vigorously.

  “You brats think that flying a plane is a joke?” he said, angrily. “You… yes you. You think that you are entitled to fly just because your rich dads thought that they have deep enough pockets to pay for your fantasies? DO YOU?”

  My neighbor hesitated, but unable to sense the rhetoric in the question, began to answer. “Well–“

  “DARING is not something you can buy...” screamed Captain Shaw as he pointed at his chest dramatically, “but you are born with it... in here.”

  Silence.

  “Listen to me, you imbeciles. I spent 35 years in the air-force and when chumps like you were figuring out not to piss in your pants, I was flying dangerous espionage missions deep within enemy territory. During my service, I have broken my ribs twice, suffered splinter fractures in both of my legs and got a six-inch cut on my back from the rotor of a falling aircraft as I was flying through enemy fire while parachuting down in Poonch sector.” He gave a calculated pause. “SO, when I am saying something, you jokers ought to listen. Is that clear?”

  Some nervous nods followed.

  “What? Can’t you all speak?” he said with indignation. “I asked you...is that clear?”

  “YESSIR,” all of us said in unison.

  “Not ‘Sir’. Call me Captain.”

  “YES CAPTAIN.”

  Captain Shaw smiled contently after his little speech. But my attention was drawn to the large convoy of cars approaching the runway where a private jet was being fuelled. Tricolor flags fluttered on the flagpoles in front of white ambassador cars that had a red beacon flashing on top. There was no mistaking it. The chief minister was here to board Jogi Ahluwalia’s private jet. There wasn’t much time. I had to make my move. Now.

  “I don’t know, Captain.”

  “What? Which moron said that?”

  “I did sir... Captain,” I said, raising my hand. “It doesn’t look like this thing can fly.”

  “Step out you... what’s your name?”

  “My name is Suraj... Suraj Dhariwal.”

  “How old are you, mister Suraj? Sixteen?”

  “I am twenty-one... errr Captain”

  “Look into my eyes, you idiot. Do you know what every soldier at squadron 8 used to say? ‘Captain Shaw can make pigs fly like they were born for it.’”

  I pressed, “Then why don’t you prove it... sir... I mean... Captain.”

  It was necessary that I bruise his ego just by the right amount. Too much and he would throw me out; too little and he’d not go out of his way to prove himself in front of some lowly trainees. My responses were carefully crafted and were delivered with a precise inflection and tone to nudge him by just the right measure. And it worked.

  He gave me a murderous look. His hands were almost shivering with anger. His fists tightened, and his breathing turned heavy.

  “Alright, mister Suraj. As much as I am inclined to kick you out from your training on your first day, I don’t want the other candidates here to think that I am all thunder and no lightning.”

  “What does that even mean?” whispered the other boy who stood next to me.

  Some muffled giggles followed. Captain Shaw’s face turned red as he gritted his teeth.

  “I will prove it, boy. I will. And once this is over... you’ll owe me an apology before I kick you out. Alright everyone... stand back... me and mister Suraj are going for a ride.”

  Final domino was in place. Now I just needed to see them fall one by one.

  ###

  10:15 AM

  Even in the chilled cabin of Jogi Ahluwalia’s Private Jet King, State Secretary Nayyer sweated profusely. Being one of the senior-most diplomats, he always featured as a part of the small entourage the Chief Minister kept around himself. He had been in the midst of political and diplomatic circles for a long time and had seen through some testing days. However, today he was faced with his life’s most difficult decision yet.

  He couldn’t get the horrifying image of his son out of his head. He had seen him off to the school this very morning and now he was gagged and tied and going through god knows what. He knew better than to call the police when he had received the photo and a strange ransom call.

  He looked about nervously at the luxurious interior of the King. Next to the bar, the Chief Minister Reddy and Jogi Ahluwalia spoke in concerned voices, oblivious to the dilemma Nayyer faced. The only other people on board were a private air-hostess who was mixing drinks,
and four black cat commandos who stood stoutly in their niches. As the jet took off from the runway, Nayyer made up his mind. His only child was in danger and he would do anything to save his life. Even give in to the kidnapper’s bizarre demands.

  ###

  Cessna 152 was indeed a small plane. Open bodied, it could seat only two people – pilot in the front and co-pilot at the back. It couldn’t fly long distances, so it was mainly used for hobby flying. While I awkwardly tried to fit myself into its back seat, from the corner of my eye, I noticed several commandos from the Chief Miniter’s Z+ security, combing the jet for any threats. I remembered my 81st attempt when I had tried to hide in the jet and almost got killed by them. Live and Learn.

  “Don’t touch anything, boy,” Captain Shaw screamed from the pilot’s seat and pressed a few buttons on the control panel. The engine underneath roared and the whole plane shook violently. “And keep your breakfast in your stomach... otherwise I will make you clean it up afterwards.”

  Soon the plane was in the air. Captain Shaw kept the throttle at the maximum and the plane whooshed through the air at two hundred kilometres per hour. I’d hate to admit but his flying skills were almost as good as he claimed.

  I tried to look down and the cold wind hissed in my face. From hundreds of feet above, the runway looked like an isolated street on a barren patch of land. I could barely make out Jogi Ahluwalia’s jet plane that looked like a small insect, readying for take-off. That was my cue. I opened my backpack and pulled out the squirrel suit. It took me a lot of gymnastics in the crunched space of an unsteady plane flown by a mad pilot, but ultimately, I managed to slip it on.

  “Good-bye, captain... and thanks for the ride,” I said in the coms before jumping off the plane. I was tempted to pause and enjoy the bewildered look on Captain Shaw’s face. But I had a plane to catch.

  As I fell through the air, I extended my arms and the squirrel suit swelled with air arresting my fall. That did slow me vertically, but I was still moving at blinding horizontally speed. My target? The jet below me that was already in the air and steadily gaining height and speed. It was like trying to shoot a leaping deer from a speeding train. And I was the bullet.