by Mainak Dhar
I considered the blasé way in which he had said the words. ‘You knew what this was?’
‘Of course. My dissertation was on finding alternate ways of running our electrical grid if the current one went down, and I had been studying EMP and solar flares as the two major reasons that might happen.’
I stared at him. Something that we had guessed had happened, to a large extent due to serendipity and finding the pilot, was something this boy had known all along.
‘It was obvious, right?’ he said now, as if addressing someone slow on the uptake. ‘No cell phones, no cars, no TV. Some idiots kept insisting it was a power outage.’
Our conversation had attracted attention and Mrs Khatri, Anu, the General, Nitish and others were now gathered around him. Nitish, predictably enough, was the one most excited at meeting someone who seemed to be as interested in electronics as he was.
‘Mohit, you said your research was on finding alternate ways of running things. Do you have any specific ideas on how to do that?’
Now it was Nitish’s turn to get what I would come to know as Mohit’s ‘are you an idiot’ look.
‘Obviously, I do. If someone will come with me to my dorm and our labs, I can get some stuff and get to work.’
As I sat there that evening, watching everyone at work, I realized just how differently the new groups we’d welcomed in were beginning to contribute. Sood and the hundred-odd people who had come in from Nahar were pretty similar to our community—all of them had respectable, upper middle-class jobs before the Blackout, which basically meant they had few or no real skills needed in our new world. However, they knew just how close they had come to being slaughtered, and were keen to repay us for taking them in. As a result, they were making up for lack of skills with sheer enthusiasm. The younger kids were all pulling guard duties, and while none of them knew how to use a gun yet, Pandey had spotted a couple of kids with promise. In any case, even without guns, having a dozen young men and women to add to our barricades had both helped us bolster defences against looters and also gave some of us more opportunities to catch a nap at night. The older folks were helping out Rani with her farm, again providing much-needed respite to the usual work teams.
The kids from IIT were a totally different story. I’d hate to stereotype, but these were among the smartest kids in the country, and also the bottom line was that when the crisis had hit home, they had been the ones too scared to venture out and make a fight of it. So they were, if I use the term in the most positive way possible, geeks. Geeks that we sorely needed. A bunch of them had enthusiastically joined Mahadev in trying to salvage auto-rickshaws and old cars and buses. I didn’t really understand the details of how they were doing it, but they had basically written off all the expensive and modern sedans since they were too dependent on chips, but felt that some of the smaller cars could be retrofitted with parts from auto-rickshaws. So, in addition to Mahadev’s fleet of auto-rickshaws, we now had two old Marutis that were operational.
As if that were not excitement enough, Mohit had come back from IIT with cartons full of material, and had made the lobby of one of the buildings his makeshift workshop. He had promised to show us something by evening, and there were rumours of his having some sort of solar-powered gizmos which would power up all our buildings.
‘A penny for your thoughts?’
I smiled at Megha who, like me, was having a rare day where she was not running from one crisis to another.
‘We have terrorists ten kilometres from us and for all we know we could be attacked and wiped out at any minute.’
‘My, aren’t we in a positive mood today.’
I laughed with her.
‘No, what amazes me is that people aren’t focusing on that because they have things to look forward to. The cars, the rumoured solar panel, the mere fact that there are people who hold a promise for a better tomorrow. That also puts into perspective where someone like me fits in.’
‘Where is that?’
I looked at her. ‘I have no real skills to help build a better tomorrow. All I can do is help protect us today.’
‘You are way too tough on yourself,’ she said, reaching for my hand. ‘Without living to see the end of today, there’s no point what great hope lies tomorrow.’
‘What matters is that people are happier. No suicides for a day, right?’
She nodded and I hoped fervently that Mohit’s plans would deliver on even a fraction of the promise they were perceived to hold. We heard a commotion outside and headed out to see what marvels our teen wonder was going to unveil. More than a hundred people were gathered outside his workshop and he emerged, his shirt off, revealing a stick-thin torso coated with sweat.
‘Mohit, have you eaten anything at all in the last couple of days?’
He turned to me, his eyes shining with what I had by then come to take as his usual level of hyperactivity.
‘No time for food. Everyone, please watch this.’
He opened the door and people surged inside, only to perhaps be as underwhelmed as I was when I saw his masterpiece.
A tiny piece of metal hooked up with wires to some meter or instrument.
‘Folks, look at this. We can generate electricity with no reliance on the traditional grid. I started with a copper sheet and heated it over a stove.’
Then he rambled on about oxidization, something about black cupric oxide, dissolving something in salt water, connecting with leads—all of which went totally over my head—and then he turned the meter on, and the needle flickered to life.
‘Awesome.’
Such praise coming from Nitish must have meant that the kid was on to something.
‘See, we are generating fifty micro amps of current. We have basically generated our own electricity out of nothing.’
Several people clapped, someone whistled and there were many calls for celebrations. I felt truly ignorant and a bit stupid around all the techno-babble Mohit was spouting, but I had a question I did need to ask.
‘So Mohit, how many homes can this sucker light up?’
He seemed to consider it for a while and then answered. ‘Let me see, to light up one bulb, we’d need about 40,000 square meters of this.’
It took a while for that to sink in.
‘Are you shitting me? All this for this piece of crap?’
He took a step back, looking genuinely afraid. ‘Hey, this was a technology demonstrator. My dissertation wasn’t about actually lighting up houses today.’
I really wanted to grab his scrawny little neck and break it, and as I looked around I could see that was a thought which was crossing more than one mind.
Then Mohit’s eyes lit up again and he began to laugh. ‘Hey, that is really my project and I intend to make it better and more efficient, but for now I do have something for you guys.’
And with that, he motioned with his hand and the lights in the lobby came on and the fan overhead began to turn.
‘Hey, you’re going to waste the generator. We only turn it on at night, and that too for essential needs.’
Mohit smiled. ‘What generator? Anyone care to go to the roof and take a look?’
Very soon, many of us were on the roof, taking in row upon row of solar panels that Mohit had arrayed on the roof. He looked at me and winked. ‘I have many more panels that we got from a corporate sponsor for a project we were to do in a village over our holiday breaks. I think I can run four or five buildings here with the panels I have; at least, light up a few bulbs in each apartment. To be safe, though, it would be better to keep running the elevators on the generator. Also, one of my friends was working on alternate fuel ideas for her thesis. Her idea was to use biogas to power generators so we don’t depend on fossil fuel. I think she now has a practical test for her ideas.’
As we came down, there was a celebratory mood and someone talked of bringing some wine bottles to the communal dinner. I heard a loud popping noise and my hand went to the gun at my side.
Mah
adev caught the movement. ‘Just an auto-rickshaw backfiring,’ he said.
Mohit had seen me go for my gun as well. As people dispersed, he looked pensive. He then looked up at me and spoke with wisdom well beyond his years. ‘We can rig all this stuff up and experiment more, but the bottom line is that we have to stay alive long enough for any of it to matter.’
It had been a quiet day and, for a change, I was not out that night on some hare-brained mission, nor did Megha have to deal with any suicides or crises, so we decided to treat ourselves to a quiet dinner. We sat by candlelight in my apartment, eating some pasta and drinking wine.
‘When do you think the government is going to start fighting back?’
It was a good question. While the TV broadcast had electrified a lot of people and given them hope, nothing much had changed on the ground for us. One more flight had come into the airport, an unmarked C-130 like the others before it, and by night, four of them had flown off to an unknown destination. The terrorists were supplying and strengthening their position, and there had been no sign whatsoever of any sort of operation being mounted by our forces.
‘We did see all those explosions town side. Maybe there was some fighting there. Wasn’t there a big Navy base there?’
Megha nodded between bites. ‘Yes, there were a lot of Navy personnel in that area, and probably Special Forces too, given all the government buildings. I wonder why they’re not coming in to retake the airport.’
We ate in silence for a while, trying to ignore the uncomfortable possibility that there had been a fight back and it had failed. The pilot and Mahadev had both talked of gunmen in the city well before the flights began to arrive, and it was likely that those groups had been at work as the Blackout happened, attacking police and armed forces installations. Megha suddenly stopped eating and looked out of the window.
‘What’s wrong?’
She rushed to the window. ‘I hear an airplane, and it’s very close.’
I heard it too, then, a dull throbbing sound, growing louder as the airplane came closer. We were now out on the balcony and, given how dark it was all around us, we had no idea where the plane was.
‘Could it be another terrorist plane?’
The thought that they might be attacking us from the air brought a jolt of panic. If they had aircraft that could rain death on us from above, then we were sitting ducks with no means of fighting back. Suddenly, we saw a shape resolve itself in the blackness and then a small plane flew past, virtually skirting the rooftops. By now the whole neighbourhood was out, watching this unexpected visitor.
‘Aadi, if they wanted to attack, they would have done so. They wouldn’t have flown so low and so slow.’
The plane banked in the air and then came towards us again, and then just as it was a few hundred meters away from my building, it went into a steep climb and I thought I saw something fall from under its belly.
‘Are those bombs?’
I braced myself for the impact and pushed Megha to the floor, trying to cover her with my body. I looked at her, terror in her eyes. ‘Megha, if this is how it ends, know that I loved you and that you were the best thing to happen to me.’
Then I closed my eyes and waited for the bombs to fall.
Fall they did, but they were not bombs. Instead I felt something light fall on my head and float away. I looked up to see leaflets fluttering down across our society. We could hear the airplane now in the distance, making similar runs over other societies. I looked at Megha a bit sheepishly, but she just kissed me hard.
‘So it took a near-death experience to get you to say that you love me!’
We both laughed, holding each other, relieved that the danger had passed. Then we picked up the leaflets, three of which had landed on my balcony. They were A4-sized papers, and it looked like someone had handwritten the message on them and then photocopied it on an ancient machine, since some of the letters were smudged. But the words were readable, and the message they carried was electrifying.
‘Fight back with any means possible but do not lose hope or surrender. We are commencing strikes soon in the Mumbai area and need everyone to join in our fight for liberation. Fly the tricolour, and Vande Mataram.’
It was two in the morning but, after reading the leaflets, I doubt anybody had sleep on their minds. Nitish and Mohit had spent an hour hooking up some bulbs and lamps, stringing up wires from a portable generator, and of course we had several old-fashioned torches that had been set up on trees. With a lot of planting having been done, the garden was no longer a viable meeting space for such a large group of people, so we were all gathered on Central Avenue, and Anu and her team handed out cups of hot tea to everyone. All the kids wanted to be there, but I had to persuade them to stay on their guard duties.
There was a buzz of anticipation as we began. The General was, perhaps predictably, the one to start, since everyone assumed that, as an ex-serviceman, he would have the best insights on what to expect and what we might do.
‘In my reading, they will try and take out the enemy at the airport and recapture it. Otherwise, the enemy will keep resupplying from the air and strengthen their position.’
‘General, where do you reckon the enemy flights are coming from?’
He turned to the person who had asked the question and his answer was laced with the contempt and anger he felt. ‘My guess is some base in Pakistan. If the terrorists who planned this have anything to do with ISIS, as their flag at the airport suggests, they may well have got elements in the Pakistani Army or Air Force to help them, both with the nukes, and with the support they’re getting now.’
There was a lot of murmuring going on, and while it was clear a large number of people were electrified at the prospect that those who had attacked us were going to be challenged, there was a lot of nervousness at being caught in the crossfire. Suri, for one, was back to his grumbling self.
‘General, it’s good of course if the government is able to get rid of these terrorists and bring things back to normalcy, but what is this talk of fighting back? We are not soldiers.’
I had been listening in silence but now I interrupted, trying to keep my voice as even and polite as possible. ‘There must be a good reason why the government is asking us to help. Perhaps all their equipment—like our electronic stuff—is not working. We are not soldiers, but we need to defend what is ours.’
‘Defending our homes is one thing,’ Suri said, ‘but going out of our way to seek out trouble is quite another. I would propose we just sit tight and wait for the government to act.’
‘Mr Suri, I’ve always said we shouldn’t attack the airport. We don’t have the numbers, weapons or training to do that, but if the armed forces are mounting an attack and need any help, then we should be willing to contribute.’
Mr Sinha intervened, trying to defuse the situation, since it was clear that our group was divided down the middle between those who were willing to take a more active role in any action that followed and those who preferred to stay out of anything beyond defending their homes.
‘For now, all discussion is moot. We have no idea what action is planned or indeed how we can help, but we do need to decide how to respond to one request from the government.’
Suri looked at him bewildered, and Mr Sinha explained. ‘The part about flying the tricolour. I suspect it is not just an appeal to our patriotism. If air strikes are coming, they will want to know where friendlies are. There is a large flag that flies in front of the CRISIL building. We can just have it installed on top of the tallest tower here.’
Suri did not look convinced. ‘Yes, and signal to the terrorists that we are interested in defying them. Then they will surely come for us.’
Everyone started talking at once then, voicing their opinion, and I called the General aside. ‘This debate will get us nowhere. Too many people just want others to do their fighting for them, and now that the government is back in the picture, people like Suri are happy to take a spectator seat a
nd hope they solve all our problems for us. Isn’t that the bloody problem we’ve always had here—everyone moans and bitches about others not doing anything about our problems, but they don’t want to get their own hands dirty by doing things themselves.’
The General spat on the ground and took out a cigarette. ‘My boy, I suspect that, soon, it will not be a matter of choice. The war will seek us out, and then it will just be a question of whether we die like sheep or at least go down fighting like men.’
We did not have to wait long for the action to begin.
I got home at around five in the morning, after doing the rounds of every checkpoint and ensuring that our guards there were alert and that teams armed with the few automatic weapons we had were always on call, ready to be ferried to any trouble-spot in one of our stripped-down auto-rickshaws. I was tired and sleepy and collapsed onto the bed next to Megha. She snuggled up to me and I saw her smile with her eyes closed. I leaned towards her for a kiss but thoughts of anything more romantic dissipated as I fell into a dreamless sleep.
I was awakened by a familiar sound—the droning noise that had signalled the arrival of the airplane the previous night. I jumped out of bed and ran to the balcony, with Megha right behind me. We saw a light blue airplane with a white undercarriage and a single propeller on its nose come into view. The tricolour roundel of our forces was clearly visible on the tail of the airplane. It was around 06:30 in the morning and I could see people rushing to balconies and rooftops to see what was going to unfold. Soon, a second airplane joined it and the two began to circle lazily in the sky, as if planning what to do next.
‘Those don’t look like fighter planes. And propellers? Those look ancient.’
‘You’re right,’ Megha confirmed. ‘Those aren’t fighter planes. Those are Alizes. They’re anti-submarine patrol planes which haven’t been in service for a long time. They fought in the ’71 war. I guess their systems are old enough to not be affected by the Blackout. They must have got two of the mothballed airplanes back to airworthy condition.’
The two planes were now flying next to each other, and passed just above our neighbourhood. I could see red rockets slung under their wings. As they flew towards the international airport, I sent up a prayer for their success, as I’m sure hundreds of our neighbours were doing. Part of me was proud of our pilots for taking the fight to the enemy. However, another part of me, which I tried to silence, was worried that the best we could throw at the enemy were two fifty-year-old planes.