03:02

by Mainak Dhar

  ‘There are only a couple of terrorists here and there who need taking care of, but there’s a room full of them begging for mercy.’

  I turned to him. I would have thought that showing mercy and taking prisoners was something we had clearly shown we had no interest in. He shrugged. ‘Hey, I’m just the doc. Ronald said we should wait to hear your decision. They have thrown out all their weapons and are pleading to be left alive. One of them claims to be a senior officer who has a lot of intelligence to offer on their plans.’

  I had planned on a fight to the death, not long drawn-out negotiations. What Iyer said next helped make up my mind.

  ‘Some of the guys found a couple of disturbing things. Word’s still getting around but when it’s known, I doubt people will be in a merciful mood, so make up your mind.’

  My expression hardened as Iyer elaborated.

  ‘They saw a mass grave on the far side of the runway. It’s barely filled in, and there seem to be hundreds of corpses piled up there. Probably passengers who were stranded here and anyone else who came here looking for safety when the lights were turned on. They also found a dozen women, all in pretty bad shape. They aren’t talking much, but it looks like they were kept as slaves for use by the terrorists.’

  I forgot my wounds as I walked towards the terminal gate where the enemy fighters were holed up in a bathroom. Close to a dozen of our fighters were standing in front of it, among them Shwetabh and a bloodied but alive Pandey. Iyer pointed to a corner where I could see a group of women, all looking gaunt and weak, most with visible bruises on their faces and bodies. I recognized a couple of the expats from our neighbourhood, people I had perhaps seen at Starbucks with their families. A voice called out from behind the bathroom door.

  ‘Please let us live. I can get you lots of files and information.’

  Ignoring that voice, I headed to the group of women and knelt beside the nearest one, a woman in her forties. She looked up at me. I took out my pistol and held it out to her. She simply nodded and took it. I motioned to the others around me and they held out their pistols and all but one or two women took them. Then I strode to the bathroom door, balanced back on my heel and kicked it in. The men inside shouted and one of them came forward, hands joined in supplication, his shoulder-length hair lying in disarray around his face.

  ‘I’m the officer. I can help you.’

  I grabbed his hair, pulled him out and stepped back as he looked up and began screaming as the women approached him and his men. I walked away from the scene, leaving the sounds of gunshots and screams behind me as I went up to join Ronald in the control centre.

  Some of our fighters were pulling the enemy dead to a corner where the bodies were being piled up, and I could see several of our own among the fallen. Ronald pointed to the console in front of him.

  ‘They brought along a full communication suite, and it looks like they were using it to communicate with their cells all around the country. I have their records, and they have at least two hundred cells that were in radio contact with them. If they choose to keep fighting, this war is still far from over.’

  I sat down at the console.

  ‘When I transmit, will everyone be able to hear?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve put it on an open frequency, so everyone who’s tuning in using a shortwave radio will be able to hear, and on this handheld set I’ve set it to the frequency the government radio transmission comes on. Our folks back in Powai, the government and anyone else tuning into that frequency will hear what you say.’

  I pushed the transmit button and began speaking.

  ‘The Azad Hind Fauj has liberated Mumbai airport from the enemy. The enemy head, their so-called Caliph, is believed among the dead, as are hundreds of their fighters. If you are one of our enemies, know that you will meet the same fate.’

  As I looked out towards Powai, I could see firecrackers streak up into the sky and explode, creating vibrant patterns in the air. I knew Anu and others had taken hold of all the stock of firecrackers they had found in the shops nearby and had planned to use them to create what she called the biggest Diwali celebration we had ever seen when we won the airport. The firecrackers kept exploding and I could hear cheers from our people at the airport as I concluded my transmission.

  ‘And, for our countrymen, join us in waging this war. Don’t wait for others to do your fighting for you. Make a start today, on the day we always celebrated the victory of good over evil.

  ‘Happy Diwali, everyone.’

  EPILOGUE

  The week after the battle for the airport went by in a blur. The euphoria that came with the victory was tempered by the horrible losses we had suffered. All told, we lost twenty-five in the battle, including five killed in the RPG strikes on Gurpreet and Pandey’s vehicles. It was no consolation that we counted more than two hundred enemy bodies at the airport, including more than forty who had been buried near the runway, having been killed in the earlier TOW strikes on the tarmac. We had no time to celebrate, either. Given the size of the airport terminals, it was inevitable that some enemy fighters had slipped out and all week we kept getting sightings in nearby areas. We managed to hunt down three of them, but many others almost definitely managed to slip away into the city.

  However, one welcome change was that we no longer spent nights anticipating an attack. Our checkpoints were still manned all night, but the sheer quantum of weapons we captured at the airport, including four intact Humvees, two of them with TOW launchers and a stock of more than two dozen TOW missiles, seven heavy machine guns, many dozens of assault rifles and pistols, and over a dozen RPG launchers, and of course hundreds of bulletproof vests and thousands of rounds of ammunition, meant that it would take nothing short of a small army with heavy armour or air power to threaten us.

  Another change was that the entire community began training to fight. Part of it was necessity—the loss of so many of our trained fighters in the days leading up to and in the airport battle meant that we needed replacements—but it was also because something had changed in all of us. We had almost everybody other than the very young showing up for weapons training every day. The unarmed combat classes I held daily with Ronald as a co-trainer drew even the kids. Before the Blackout, we were executives, teachers, businessmen or homemakers; over the last month, we had come to redefine our roles—some of us were fighters, others handled supplies, yet others medical care. Now we were all warriors who doubled up to do other things to help our community. Including the women. I created a battalion named after Anagha, comprising all our women fighters. Among the first volunteers were the women we rescued at the airport.

  Five days after the battle, a group of looters was reported to be operating near Vikhroli, terrorising the people still holed up in their homes there. I led a small convoy out and, in a battle that lasted less than ten minutes, we annihilated them. Crazed men with cleavers and swords do not last long against a fifty-calibre machine gun.

  Word spread and other settlements began reaching out to us, asking for weapons, asking for protection. I told them to stop being beggars and learn the lesson we had learned.

  If you don’t step up to fight for yourself and your own, don’t expect others to do so for you.

  We did offer training, and had Mohit, Nitish and their teams help restore generators to working condition. As a gesture of goodwill, we gave each community a small batch of pistols. That would be enough for them to deal with looters. We also gave each settlement that reached out to us a radio set to stay in touch with us.

  For anything more serious that the occasional gang of looters, all they had to do was call the Azad Hind Fauj.

  By the beginning of the second week after the battle, we finally heard back from Delhi, and we were glad we had acted when we did. It seemed the Prime Minister’s bunker location had been compromised and had come under attack from terror cells and rogue elements of the Pakistani military that had crossed the border. The Prime Minister had to be evacuated under fire to another
secure location, and air assets that could have supported us in Mumbai had to be diverted to contain this new threat.

  By then, more than a dozen settlements, ranging from a single apartment building to clusters of several housing societies, had joined with us in what was fast becoming a loose confederation. With no sign of any sort of government stepping in, we had to decide how to govern ourselves. I thought back to what the General had said about dictatorship and I refused to govern all those societies. They had to learn to settle their own neighbourhood disputes and figure out their water and food supplies. The only area where we stepped in was to help provide security.

  By the third week, we learned that hit-and-run attacks had started across the city. The terrorists who had melted away at the airport had presumably regrouped with their cells and supporters in the city and were now trying to hit back. From being the insurgents, we had become the establishment.

  Reinforcements finally did arrive in the form of a train filled with two hundred Army soldiers, but they quickly made their way to south Mumbai, leaving us to manage the areas that were effectively under our control. To be honest, they took a look at our armour and weapons and decided we were probably better armed than they were.

  By the fourth week, the government had begun video broadcasts on TV, with the Prime Minister speaking every day with an update on the situation, followed by the Army Chief talking about the status of the war. The numbers we heard were staggering. An estimated two million people had died in India in the first two weeks from looting, disease and terror attacks, and many parts of the country had been ravaged by riots. The final death count was far from tallied, but I had heard estimates that over fifty million people could die in the year ahead as hunger and disease took their toll among communities where no help had reached. That made us even more conscious of just how precious our freedom and continued survival was, and made our resolve to protect them at any cost even fiercer.

  By that time we had begun talking about how to secure the areas under our de facto control. Were we the government? What authority did we have to take decisions? The Prime Minister simplified that for us by announcing that, till further notice, the country was under Martial Law under him. All armed forces and police units that were able to regroup were to work with his office. Then he mentioned the Azad Hind Fauj as being the unit that was being given command of security and law and order in Mumbai. He said something that I will never forget. He talked about how, in the past, when we he had gained our freedom, politicians had been put in charge of managing our affairs, and all we had got were people divided by religion, race, language and whatever else helped the politicians secure their power. Perhaps it was time for the insurgents, the revolutionaries, to manage affairs for a while.

  It has now been close to two months since the Blackout. I am standing here in our balcony with Megha. The city outside is still largely black, but there are many more lights on now, as more and more communities have started finding ways of powering up their lights, and do so without fear of attracting looters. Many of us have got our kitchens operational again with coal and wood-fired stoves, but almost every night we meet at Central Avenue for our communal meals. The events after the Blackout have bound us together and those meals together are a sign of that bond.

  Ronald and his MARCOS now live with us and spearhead our security forces, and we are widening the radius of the area which we have sanitized of looters and terrorist elements every week.

  We won the battle for the airport, but the war is still far from over. Ambushes are reported every day, and there are rumours of a new Caliph being appointed. But we have the weight of numbers and firepower now, and it is a matter of time before they are crushed.

  There are signs of hope all around us. The school has reopened and kids have started going to classes in the morning, though it is a sign of the changed times that their core extra-curricular activity is weapons and unarmed combat training. We have reopened the hospital and Megha works there again with Guenther, Marie, Iyer and other volunteers.

  My job, if you can call it that, continues to be what it had been. I have no official title, no salary, no stock options, but I have never felt as passionately about my work as I do today. I never did find out what happened to Dhruv, but I remember his words clearly. There are things more important in life than numbers on a spreadsheet or the numbers in a bank account. The last few months have taught me that. I still wake up screaming once in a while, reminded of the horrors I have seen, and those I have committed. Those are the moments I am most grateful for having Megha with me, to remind me that my life is more than a sum total of those horrors.

  Delhi is still racked by attacks, with terror cells much more active than in Mumbai, and I have no news of what happened to Baba. Once our situation stabilizes further here, I do plan to go there on one of the weekly flights between Delhi and Mumbai that have been started to ferry supplies and weapons. The Azad Hind Fauj might be able to help there, and hopefully I will find out what happened to my father. I owe him that much.

  I hold Megha close and feel her stomach. It is still too early to feel the little life that we now know is growing within her. Our baby will grow up in a world very different from the one we grew up in, but at least we’ll know that we made it better than it threatened to be, than it had become for those first few days after the Blackout.

  It was in those days that I learned that even if your whole world is painted black, you can start to light it up again. All it needs is for each of us to realize that we should stop waiting for someone else to provide the spark; that the spark lies within each of us.