by Anmol Batra
But then, one fine day, Zaffar manages to escape Tihar Jail.
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Chapter 2
5 Envelops
21st December 2012 8:30 AM | Connaught Place, New Delhi
It’s another cold day in New Delhi. The ladies coach of the Delhi metro, the pride of the capital, is full of women dressed up casually on Friday. The train is running underground towards Connaught place. A few are busy fiddling with their faces, holding an array of vanity tools; with others on their cell phones. A gang of teenage girls are standing near the adjoining metro carriage, making duck faces for their selfies. Amidst the entire female crowd, stands one young lady in her late 20s, near the exit, making a to-do list on a small notepad.
Swati has a bright face with neatly straightened hair and highlighted black eyes, wearing a formal black dress; as an employee she has always been dedicated to her job of Sales Manager and the foggy morning had not altered her priorities.
“The next Station is Rajiv Chowk. Doors will open on the right. Please mind the gap.” The sound echoes in the coach, shattering her focus from the to-do list. She winds-up her spiral notepad and zips it inside her hand-bag.
With a shrieking sound, the crowded metro stops at the underground platform and the departing metro passengers tussle with the on-boarding crowd like two rugby teams. Swati avoids the scrum and steps out of the train at the end.
“Walking on the metro track or defacing metro property is a punishable offence.” The announcement plays in the back ground, barely catching Swati’s attention. She takes long running strides instead of the escalator to exit the underground Rajiv Chowk Station.
On her way, she stops to buy herself a newspaper from a 10 year-old kid sitting in the white pillared corridor of Block B.
“Namaste Didi!” The young lad greets Swati with a broad grin and hands over a copy of the Economic Times to her.
Swati pulls out 2 coins along with an apple and hands it over to the dark-faced kid.
“Eat it before lunch.” She tells him in a commanding voice.
8 years in the insurance business & Swati has been consistent in her job. She has been a pushy boss with a not-so-cool temperament. She was often isolated from her peers. However, most of her colleagues still approached her when they needed help. In light of her hot-headed behaviour, she maintained a softness for everyone;. ready to help when they needed it.
21st December 2012 8:55 AM | Connaught Place, New Delhi
Swati slams her handbag on her office table and presses the ESC key to wake up her desktop computer, which is in sleep mode. To her surprise, she finds a stack of A4-sized envelopes right beneath her handbag, which she had initially ignored.
She carefully pulls out the stack. Each envelope is thick enough to hold just one sheet of paper. It’s not surprising for Swati to receive such envelopes, but these were different. Five envelopes with no postage stamp or sender’s address. All they had was her name, “Swati Sharma”, with a date & time written on each.
“Swati Sharma”
“21st December 2012, 12:30 PM”
She stands up and looks around; the hall spread out in all directions, with low-height cubicles arranged in a grid. From her seat she could observe no movement except for the dangling banner hangings hooked from the roof of the corridor, which are struggling against the breeze of the air conditioning unit.
Curious, Swati examines the stack of envelopes and finds a footnote on the bottom of each.
“Please open this envelope at the time mentioned below your name.”
The line sounded like an order to her, which she had never liked. So, without a second thought, she tears the first envelope and pulls out the page inside it, a thick drawing sheet scratched in the middle with pencil; a hand-written line in the centre of the sheet.
“I requested that you open the envelope at 12:30 PM. Envelopes not opened on time will lose their contents. The time right now is 09:00:25 AM”
Astounded, Swati checks her wrist watch and exhales sharply; her wristwatch ticks round to 9:00:25, accurate to the very second. White with fear, Swati fiddles through the envelope and checks the next one.
“Swati Sharma”
“21st December 2012, 8:30 PM”
Perplexed, Swati puts all the envelopes in her purse. She starts telling herself that she is part of a joke, and being framed by her colleagues. Minutes later, more of her team mates step into the office. Swati buries all expressions of anger and anxiety deep within herself, and pretends to every colleague that it is a regular morning.
But the envelopes continue to play on her mind. How come the time mentioned on the paper exactly matched the time on her wristwatch? As if someone already knew when she would open the envelope right to the second. She finally decides to obey the writer, and anxiously puts various reminders in her cell-phone against each of the time stated on the four envelopes.
Two hours pass. Swati steps into the office cafeteria to grab a soothing cup of coffee, a restaurant-like hall with square tables arranged in a grid parallel to the sidewall. She walks closer to the red and black coffee machine mounted with a glass container holding coffee beans, and gently slides a paper cup under the nozzle.
She selects ‘Cappuccino’ on the coffee machine and the red machine makes a motorised sound as it fountains out different contents one after the other into the paper cup. She grabs the steaming cup and takes a careful sip.
The sidewall of the cafeteria is punctuated by tall windows covered with blinds. The diffused light from the blind gathers Swati’s attention and after a little thought, an idea strikes. She grabs a seat near the curtained window and swiftly pulls up the covering blind. The morning fog has now disappeared and the lukewarm sunlight shines on her pale face. She takes the next envelope and tries to place it in front of the light, in an attempt to gaze through it to the next part of the mystery.
Before she can see through the envelope though, a submissive voice enters her head. “Swati, Ma’am.”
Swati twitches upon hearing her name and briskly slides all four envelopes back into her purse.
“Ohh!! Hi Arjun, how are you?”
Swati zip-locks her purse while looking back at Arjun, a junior insurance agent in her office.
“I heard about your sister. Any news about her?” asks Swati in a concerned tone, while suppressing her own anxiety.
In a feeble voice, Arjun replies. “The police are still investigating but haven’t found any clues yet.”
“Anyway, just to remind you, we have a weekly sales meet in 10 minutes,” he says.
Swati gets up from her chair and both walk towards the exit. While briskly walking, she gulps down the entire of the remaining coffee in just one go and dumps the empty cup into a dustbin near the exit door.
Hours pass by. Meetings and work keep her mind occupied. Though curious, she prefers to ignore the envelopes throughout the day.
Its 8 PM. The grumpy sound of desk phones and printers has now been replaced with the barely audible whistling of the air conditioner. Everyone has gone from the office but Swati has stayed back. Her swift hands dance over her laptop track-pad as she flits between different excel sheets on the keyboard.
Somehow, she has found the empty office a better place to work than her empty home, ever since she lost her dog. The bottom right corner of the Windows task bar spins its clock to 8:00 PM and her mind again hops back to the envelopes she received in the morning.
Thirty minutes to the next envelope. She stands up to look around the empty office and finds Ravi still sitting in his cubicle. His eyes capture Swati’s movement. He elevates his chin a bit and as his eyes lock with hers, he smiles. Swati looks suspiciously at him. Not convinced by his friendly expression, she follows her gut instinct. To avoid being pranked by her colleagues once more, Swati grabs her bag and starts heading towards the exit in a rush.
‘Wait, let me ask the security guard if he can recall who left the envelopes on my table this morning,’ Swati tells hersel
f. She is still quietly convinced that it is a lousy prank by her peers. She asks the watchman in a casual tone.
“Ravi, Rupali, Gurpreet or Vasudha. Did anyone come early in the morning?”
With an anxious voice, the watchman replies. “No Ma’am. Nobody came before you in the morning”
“And Rajiv?”
With a smile, the watchman flips the entry register and puts it in front of Swati, who is now even more curious to know who sent those envelopes.
She continues to scroll through the sign-in entries and her anxiety continues to increase. She ends up concluding that no one in the past month has come before her.
21st December 2012 8:29 AM | Connaught Place, New Delhi
Swati stands in the ladies compartment of the metro and continues to fiddle with her watch, counting every second to when she can open the next envelope. With her wristwatch facing her face and the letter in her one hand, she starts counting.
5.. 4… 3… 2.. 1..
8:30 PM - with a single tear, she rips the edge of the envelope and takes out the page inside.
“Good to see you opening this at exactly 8:30 PM. And I am glad you didn’t even need an alarm to remind you of this envelope. It’s my pleasure to present you with my creativity. Please flip the page and turn yourself around.”
Surprised, she flips the page to find a pencil sketch of people standing inside a metro. She peers closely to look at the details. A lady with her new born clamped to her chest, an Asian girl listening to music, a teenage boy with long sideburns reading a book. As she continues to look at the details of the pencil curves, her eye catches the attention of a tattooed bearded guy in the sketch. It’s like she’s looking at the artist.
“Wait a minute, I have seen this guy,” contemplates Swati.
With a blink she recalls the message written on the back. – “Turn yourself around.”
As she follows the instructions, her eyes fall upon a tall bearded guy, with a tattooed snake kissing his neck, crawling out of his round-necked shirt as if he has stepped out of the sketch itself.
Swati starts to shiver and her ears turn red. In shock, she collapses on the metro floor and to her horror, the same bearded guy walks into the ladies compartment to pick her up.
An aged man with a trolley bag, a teenage girl in a fur jacket, wearing ear-muffs and resting against a pillar, the view, the sketch, both of them are exactly the same.
In a caring voice, the handsome European guy with his dark brown hair picks her up by the shoulders and tries to pull the envelope out of her hand.
Swati comes to her senses. She clutches the envelope and shouts back at him, “You have been following me for a while, haven't you?”
With surprise and fear, the guy pulls himself back and raises both his hands. In a passive voice, which is almost inaudible against the noise of the metro, he replies: “No No No No…Soy de España.” He presses on, “I.I.I..mean I from Spain..in India for the first time. ”
Swati pulls out a laced handkerchief from her pocket and dabs her elbow. Though she had never spoken Spanish, the fellow’s tone confirmed it all. His worried face convinced her of his genuineness.
The Spanish man gasps and with his hands still raised, he steps out of the swarm of women who are scrawling around him in suspicion.
“Cheap!!” – A girl in the carriage yells at him.
Swati could empathise with him. In a clear loud voice, she calls out to him:
“Sorry….” – she smiles and after a pause she loudly says – “Thanks for your help!”
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Chapter 3
The Milk Man
21st December 2012 8:30 PM | Pakistani Border, Firozpur
Somewhere on the outskirts of Punjab, a highway without a central reservation is enshrouded in mild fog. A young man in his early 20s, with a finely-trimmed beard and haircut is driving a pick-up truck. The truck is loaded with a huge steel trunk which fills the open cargo chamber at the back from handles to sides. He is wrapped in a blanket and driving fiercely with his eyes wide open. He occasionally blinks when a vehicle coming in the other direction, floods his eyes with light.
Under the tall eucalyptus trees along side of the road stands Maninder Singh Benipal, a white bearded man with bushy eyes. Huge milk containers are parked next to him. He puts his hand out into the road and signals passing vehicles for a lift. After a few minutes of fruitless effort, a commercial vehicle stops along his side.
“Where do you need to go?” asks the man in the pick-up truck speaking over the noise of the engine.
“Just to the end of this road - Shahid Bhagat Singh Memorial Park. I need to deliver milk,” replies Maninder, pointing in the direction of the beaming truck light. The truck driver asks him to hop in.
“Many thanks to you” says Sardar Benipal, folding his arms. He quickly picks up both milk containers and carries them to the rear of the truck. Mr Benipal steps down from the truck, swings his containers round and places them at the back. After placing the last container, he notices a shrieking sound as his containers rub against the steel trunk.
A second later, he steps down from the back of carriage, and the sound grabs his attention. He quickly turns around and peeps inside the carriage.
Amidst the darkness, light from a passing car shines on the steel trunk, giving a slight glimpse of the carriage contents to Maninder. A new steel-grey carton, almost the size of a bed, is tied from the side bars and stacked against the rear end of the truck storage. Yet another knocking sound from the container convinces him that something is alive in the trunk, but he is unsure about what kind of animal it is.
His mind is gripped with apprehension, but he decides to board the truck anyway.
Five minutes pass. The truck steadily moves down the state highway. Maninder occasionally looks at the shadowy, expressionless face of the young lad as it is lit up by the passing vehicles.
“What’s your name son?” asks the elderly man, in an attempt to break the ice.
“Zaffar,” replies the young fellow, without looking at him.
There is a minute of silence as the elderly man expects him to return the question, but Zaffar remains quiet.
“And what do you do for your living?” probes Maninder running his hand through his long beard.
“I am into trade,” replies Zaffar.
“What kind of trade?”
“I carry things from there to here.”
A tense look grips the elderly man, as he doubts that he can get away with asking about the contents of the steel trunk he is carrying at the back But a second thought enters his mind, and he decides to continue with the conversation in a different way.
“Are you a vegetarian?” questions Maninder politely, with a smile on his face.
“No. I am not,” replies the young lad.
“Eggs, beef, pork, fish, chicken… everything?” asks the middle age man.
“Yes, I eat anything living,” replies the Zaffar in a provoked tone, giving a sideways look to the elderly man.
Mr Benipal could now sense the bitterness in Zaffar’s responses, but deep inside, his fatherly instinct motivated him to counsel the young lad, as he seemed to have strayed from the path of ethics. He takes a deep breath and spends the next few minutes drafting a monologue.
“I was a non-vegetarian too and then I married Sunita, 30 Years back. She was a Pandit then and had a strong belief about living and letting others live. She accepted Sikhism with open arms and enthusiasm. I liked her dedication and beliefs as well and as a gesture of sacrifice and love, I became a vegetarian,” he explained.
Next, he pats his fat belly, massaging his abdomen with his hand, and continues. “Look, I am still healthy and fine. I can walk over 10 km carrying 20 litres of milk without any feeling of fatigue. And I...” he stops mid-sentence, noticing that the young lad is not interested in his conversation.
He presses on with his curiosity for 15 minutes, but the contents of the steel trunk continue to bother him. Clo
ser to his feet lies an unused dartboard covered in light dust. The board grabs his attention.
You import or export sports equipment?” asks Mr Benipal, curiously.
“No!” comes the reply.
“Then what do you carry from there to here?” asks Maninder in a low voice.
“Precious consumables.” replies Zaffar after a slight pause.
Not convinced by his answer, Maninder was now assured that something was not right with Zaffar. But curiosity gripped him far more strongly than fear. He probes him again.
“What precious consumables?” asks Maninder, putting his right hand on his Kirpan, but his voice is overshadowed by a loud voice from a military jeep.
“STOP THE CAR!” shouts an army officer from the jeep running parallel to the pickup truck.
Zaffar gently steers the pickup truck to the left and parks it on a muddy patch along the road.
The army jeep overtakes the pickup truck, parks itself in front and two turbaned soldiers get out of the vehicle. One stands alongside of the jeep with a machine gun in hand, and the other steps closer to the window of the truck. He questions Zaffar in a loud voice. “What are you carrying in the back?”
“Milk containers.” replies Zaffar with a fearless face, looking straight into his eyes.
With a torch in the hand, the army officer walks to the back of the pickup truck and flashes the light in the carriage – the flashlight picks out two old milk containers dented in multiple places..
“All right, move!” Shouts the army man, patting the side of carriage with his hand.
Zaffar steadily drives away the truck but Mr. Benipal is now even more nervous than ever. His heart beats faster than before. He is now confident that Zaffar is smuggling cows.