by Kota Neelima
The silence in the room subtly changed to incredulity at Munshi’s criticism of his most famous staffer, his protégé.
‘As a result of her behaviour, I have been accused of making a deal with Sikander and even hiding his whereabouts.’ Munshi took a deep breath, as if to control himself. It didn’t help. ‘Usually, I enjoy this sort of thing, but it is getting to be too much. I don’t care where Sikander is! I don’t care if we never find him! I want Sikander off the front page and out of my life! Is that clear?’
It was urgently clear to everyone.
‘Now, I have had enough with the clues, Mira.’ He turned to her, and his voice softened a fraction. ‘I understand that your gift is not precise, but I also happen to know how powerful it is. And I’m not the only one. Most of this city has been at the receiving end of your accurate analyses for years. So, it’s a little unusual and difficult to believe that your powers have suddenly failed you.’
Mira silently heard him.
‘I have no doubt about your loyalty to his newspaper,’ Munshi said sincerely. ‘That’s something I have always liked about you, and is also the reason why this city admires you. Even though you could have, you have never used your powers to derive benefit for yourself or against anyone. You have always employed them for this newspaper and its reportage.’
‘You are a true knower,’ he concluded and added apologetically, ‘and I’m sure you already know my decision.’
Mira nodded. ‘You want me off the story.’
Everyone stared at Mira, astonished, then glanced at Munshi questioningly.
‘Wonderful!’ He smiled sadly. ‘So, given your powers, it appears that the only reason we have not been able to find Sikander is because we don’t want to. It appears that we have been lying to the readers. We need to hold someone responsible for this lapse to appear neutral again. We need to be able to say that once you are gone, we shall deal with the tapes, and Sikander, in a more professional way.’
Salat glanced at her, worried, but Mira just listened to Munshi.
‘I am a great believer in thin lines, Mira. You should too, and I’ll tell you why.’ He explained paternally, ‘They appear exactly at a time you are about to take a difficult and important decision. Today, the thin line is between you and the newspaper. That’s why you need to go.’
Mira agreed quietly, but everyone could see Munshi was unhappy with the decision.
‘You see, Mira,’ he spoke again, his small eyes earnest, ‘the readers have to believe in us like an audience believes in a magician. Journalists isolate truth from the thin air of a newsroom with the help of a few facts; we need to show the people that our hands are clean. The strings should never be seen in a good newspaper, like in a good puppet show.’
‘I understand, sir,’ she assured him.
Munshi thanked her, then glanced at Bhaskar inquiringly. ‘What time is your wake up alarm?’
Startled, Bhaskar said he would play the tape and reached for his computer.
Mira sat back in her chair and lowered her eyes to her notebook. She wasn’t surprised by Munshi’s decision. There would be no need to trace Sikander if no further tapes were published. That’s what she expected Munshi to announce next, that he was dropping the story. Considering her non-cooperation, this was the only other way the tapes could have been blocked — by getting Munshi’s cooperation instead. Nalan’s warning in the morning made sense. This was not about the tapes anymore because there would be no more tapes. Mira had intended to seek Munshi’s intervention to get police help formally to prevent further attacks against her. That wasn’t possible anymore. She ceased to worry about it when Sikander’s friendly voice filled the room.
It is 15 January and the time is 2 p.m. I am in the chambers assigned to me when I was recently made a deputy parliamentary secretary for PP. In a few moments, I have an appointment with a weapons dealer known only as the General and his local counterpart, Pran Gupta. I will refer to a deal that was behind the government decision to use drones against rebels in parts of the country.
There were noises of a chair being adjusted and papers shuffled, as Sikander arranged the recording equipment in his office. Then the phone rang.
Sikander answered, ‘Yes Suresh?’ There were faint words heard on the phone line. ‘Please send them in,’ he said.
There was silence again until the door opened.
‘Good afternoon, Mr Bansi,’ said someone with a foreign accent. ‘So kind of you to see us at such short notice.’
Sikander wished them and invited them to sit. He offered them coffee, then they chatted a bit about Delhi winter.
‘I always tell my friends,’ the General remarked, ‘you can’t prepare for India. It’s a land of infinite surprises, like its weather. I am happy to find Delhi freezing. I find this very pleasant.’
‘I’m glad you do, General,’ Sikander said formally.
Pran explained, ‘The General loves this nation, and this nation loves him back. Do you remember the case of the night vision goggles for the Army, Mr Bansi?’
‘I do,’ Sikander replied. ‘The Army discovered that the night vision equipment didn’t work at night. So, they were just regular goggles that cost the country a fortune.’
‘Then why did the Army place a new contract for more of the same goggles?’ Pran asked significantly.
‘The goggles started working?’ Sikander guessed.
‘No, that’s the point!’ Pran said. ‘They don’t have to work, when the General is involved in a deal.’
‘Nice to know that,’ Sikander said, sounding impressed. ‘Then, perhaps, you can help me with the problem I wanted to discuss with you. This is a well-publicized case, and I’m sure you have heard of it. The government is stuck in a matter and, well, I want to work out a solution that is beneficial to everyone.’
They assured him their support.
Sikander thanked them and continued, ‘As you must be aware, the country faces violence and terrorism in over 150 districts. Millions of lives are affected, and development is hampered. The state wanted to take action, smoke out the rebels from these areas. This plan was called Operation Green Horn and had included the use of drones, which we would have procured and loaded with other equipment. It was worth billions in contracts. Then the politics began,’ he sighed helplessly. ‘Should we attack our own citizens? Won’t the drone strikes kill the good along with the bad? And similar such rubbish! So, the plan was shelved.’
‘Yes, I know this story. It’s a pity really!’ The General said, ‘So you want to revive the operation?’
‘The rebel influence is spreading,’ Sikander said gravely, ‘and if nothing is done to stop them, the movement will threaten the nation at large. I see no option but to revive Green Horn.’
‘Oh. I understand now,’ the General said appreciatively. ‘You want to do this in national interest.’
‘Naturally.’
The General chuckled. ‘There would be no weapons industry without the concept of national interest.’
Sikander hesitated. ‘Also, my re-election is due in a year, and I’ve got to procure the funds soon.’
‘Of course,’ said the General, understanding. ‘Can you tell us who were opposing the deal?’
‘The usual, predictable people! The pro-rebel activists and a bunch of politicians from the Opposition who wanted incentives to keep quiet. That was a bit unfair, considering we in the PP government have already paid our allies in the ruling coalition.’
‘Yes, but this is a democracy, not a dictatorship. You have to bribe everyone.’
‘I realize that now.’
‘So you want us to smooth the way for the deal in Parliament and also find a way of selling it to the people.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Fine,’ he agreed. ‘Give me a week, I will do my research here and get back to you with a proposal.’
‘Thank you,’ said Sikander, as if relieved. ‘I have heard you are very good at this sort of thing.’
&nbs
p; ‘Well, I won’t promise you anything yet,’ the General was candid. ‘But by the time I’m done the drones will appear to be the only way to deal with the rebels.’ He chuckled. ‘There may even be a public demand asking for their expedient deployment to contain the problem!’
There was laughter.
‘I wish it were not a moral problem,’ Sikander said with regret. ‘How can we defend drone attacks by the government against its own citizens? It’s unpatriotic, unethical and inhuman.’
‘So is all force, my friend,’ the General reasoned. ‘The difference is who has the right to use force. The state has the legitimacy, and the voters elected the government to take difficult decisions on their behalf. Use of force is one such decision.’
‘That may be true in theory, but in practice, it’s about killing people of my own country.’ Sikander maintained, ‘It’s treason.’
‘Agreed, but no nation wants to be cowed down by violence unleashed by rebels. There wouldn’t be many nations left if that were to happen.’
‘Perhaps, there shouldn’t be.’
‘We are experimenting with that notion in other parts of the world,’ the General revealed. ‘We discovered that it makes no difference to us whether it’s one nation or three states. Every state will have its rebels, and both sides will buy weapons from us.’
‘I see. When you say “we”, you mean your company?’
The General and Pran were surprised.
‘I had no idea you were doing this for the first time, Mr Bansi,’ Pran said kindly. ‘It’s not a company or even a group of companies. These are weapons lobbies that cut across nations and ideologies of all kinds. If you want to kill for reasons of justice or protest, religion or nation, vision or politics, we can get you the bullet.’
Sikander inquired in disbelief, ‘Is there never any opposition to your methods?’
‘Of course there is. And there is a price list to deal with the degrees of opposition,’ Pran said. ‘But there has never been any real challenge to the weapons industry.’
‘Except for one,’ the General pointed out. ‘Democracy.’
Pran conceded that. ‘If you can’t sell the idea to the people, it cannot be done. And that’s where we come in.’
The General seemed experienced with these aspects of public scrutiny. ‘The beauty of defence purchases, my friend, is that no one can be found guilty.’
‘Please don’t talk about guilt, General,’ Sikander pleaded. ‘We are all very nervous about defence deals in this country.’
‘And for good reason,’ he agreed, sympathetic.
‘We address our anxiety by appointing the most honest and usually inefficient men as defence ministers; men who won’t buy even a garden tool without a global tender.’
‘I noticed,’ the General said, then added, ‘But hopefully, not everyone will be that honest.’
‘Hopefully, General,’ Sikander said politely, ‘they will be.’
‘That remains to be seen,’ he answered. ‘Meanwhile, it helps us to talk about corruption in India, the many hands that need to be greased all the way to the top. That makes it easy for us back home to negotiate for larger margins of profit.’
‘How do you manage to sell us anything?’
‘By lowering the quality, of course!’ The General explained, ‘We don’t mind because you are the only guys who still want our obsolete weapons. We want to earn whatever we can for them and recover our investments.’
‘So that’s why the goggles don’t work.’
‘They do,’ the General corrected him. ‘They just don’t work at night.’
Sikander chuckled. ‘Well, I hope the drones will fly!’
‘Yes, let’s hope so. Then again, to the people on the ground it would make no difference if the drones fly or crash,’ the General observed. ‘They will be dead anyway.’
They scheduled the next meeting in a week’s time and, after noting down private phone numbers not listed on visiting cards, they stood up to leave. The door was opened, farewells were exchanged and the door shut. The tape ended in a few seconds.
There was silence for a while as everyone waited for the clue at the end of the tape. Then Sikander’s voice once again lightly filled the conference room:
‘This is the clue for Mira: You are wrong, you have options. Surrender to desire is acquisition, to power is fleeting, to religion is escape, to knowledge is incomplete. Surrender to truth because there can be no one truth. Surrender to faith, because it can be unfounded. Be a fugitive from fate forever and surrender to that which sets you free.’
No one spoke immediately. Everyone was aware that Munshi had already heard the tape and that meant he already had an opinion.
‘It’s a good tape,’ Munshi said, ‘but there is a problem. Can anyone tell me what it is?’
Mira once again glanced up from her notebook. ‘Nalan Malik. He vowed not to let us publish any more tapes.’
That was the truth, but it was also too much truth.
‘Apart from that,’ Munshi patiently asked, ‘is there any other problem?’’
There was silence.
‘I thought you should have seen it right away, Ashok,’ Munshi was surprised. ‘This tape cannot be confirmed.’
‘Why not, sir?’ Dubey was confused. ‘We can try and get the two weapon dealers on record and also get their associates. They seem to have operated in Delhi, so it can’t be very difficult to contact them.’
‘That’s not enough.’ Munshi turned to Bhaskar. ‘What do you think?’
Bhaskar said, ‘The time, date and location of every tape are given and, as Mira once demonstrated, Sikander left clues in the recordings that could be cross-checked. For instance, in the present tape, this meeting of Sikander Bansi must be still in the books of the PP office where it took place. We will get a copy of the page, and, if possible, a comment from Sikander’s secretary who showed the men into the office.’
‘I see,’ Munshi said thoughtfully. ‘I just felt that we may not be able to defend ourselves on a tricky issue like this. What do you feel, Salat? You are the one, after all, defending us on live television.’
‘It’s well known, sir,’ Salat answered, ‘that the government is looking to revive its strategy to deal with the rebels in the troubled districts of the country. This conversation is the missing link and reveals the real motives of the government. I think it is invaluable information. We have gathered much appreciation for the tapes published until now. We have shown courage and character.’
‘Courage,’ Munshi repeated meditatively, ‘and character. People usually use those words to describe someone posthumously.’
‘I didn’t mean that . . .’ Salat hurriedly clarified.
‘I know you didn’t,’ Munshi reassured him. ‘You meant it as a compliment. The truth is that the tapes have made us proud,’ he glanced around the table. ‘But do we have the right to feel proud? Not really. These tapes were not recorded by us. They didn’t even come to us because of our “courage” or “character”.’ He paused, then said decisively, ‘Let us do something that makes us proud, friends. Let us find our own stories and report our own investigations. Let us no longer publish these tapes.’
Everyone stared at him, stunned.
Munshi glanced at Mira. ‘You knew I was about to say that, Mira, but it’s not due to pressure from Nalan Malik. I wouldn’t have published that tape against him if I could be pressured.’
She knew that wasn’t true, that was not how he thought. Munshi had published the tape against Nalan because he liked to defy, and he wouldn’t publish any more tapes because he had to survive.
‘What if we find a way to publish this tape?’ she asked him.
‘What way?’ he inquired. ‘This is evidence. You can’t tamper with it.’
Everyone turned to Mira.
‘What if we exclude the names mentioned on the tapes?’
Dubey glanced at Bhaskar. They both knew about Munshi’s close links with the weapons industry, which
had funded his bid for a nominated seat in Parliament four years ago.
Munshi answered her carefully. ‘Naturally, I have no problem with the names, Mira. I’m just against this entire idea.’
‘Or, we could even exclude specific defence deals and publish the rest of the transcript,’ Mira suggested, persistent. ‘It would still remain a very important story.’
Lina leaned forward keenly to hear Munshi’s response. She remembered the newspaper had repeatedly favoured purchase of various defence equipment.
Munshi smiled tolerantly. ‘That’s not necessary. I have no problem with the defence deals either.’
‘Or, perhaps, we should edit the transcript,’ Mira pointed out, ‘and cut out the parts that criticize drone strikes.’
Salat glanced at her appreciatively. The newspaper was known for its support of action against rebels.
Munshi’s smile was turning cold. ‘No problem with that either.’
Mira stayed silent. There was nothing left to say. She didn’t want to remind him that he had asked her to assess his chances for the Parliament nomination. She knew who had backed him at that time.
There was now a questioning silence in the room.
Mira glanced around. ‘We have all had reservations about the tapes at some point. With all due respect, it shouldn’t be different because it’s you, sir.’
Everyone turned to Munshi, waiting.
Munshi’s small eyes were glinting angrily. ‘But it is different, isn’t it?’
Dubey cleared his throat. ‘The tape is already with news channels. And it may go to some other newspaper if we don’t publish it.’
‘Yes, but first it will go into my dustbin!’ Munshi informed him.
Lina protested. ‘We will be blamed for not publishing the tape because it goes against the weapons industry.’
‘Then that will give you a chance to deny it,’ he said, generously.
Salat frowned and said, ‘The readers will question the newspaper’s decision.’