THE MYSTIC: PART I - THE SEEKER (Part 1 - THE SEEKER)

by Arindam Bhattacharjee

  Knowing this Raghav felt that it was all the more necessary for him to understand what happened in the last ten years from the political point of view. He went into a regimental process to build up memory maps based on timelines, imaging of the situation and memorizing the events. Raghav’s ardour for unearthing the history was contagious and soon most of his fellow comrades joined him in unearthing the history themselves.

  He would sometimes give them the memory maps and the timeline events, photographs and then ask them to build up the story as per their knowledge to see if it conformed with that of his imagination; but he would not talk to the comrades on any other topic. He kept most of his communications through writings.

  Meanwhile Christina had hooked up with her team to come up with plans to send drones over the regions provided by her think tank but the biggest problem she faced was to take leave from the office to finish off her work. Nevertheless Christina’s article was printed in the journal and to her amazement it was written under the name of Sagarika. Christina ridiculed Sagarika’s move by thinking whether such lucid cover stories actually influenced people to buy the trashy magazine. She found this as an opportunity to have a conversation with Sagarika about getting her previous project back.

  She found working in page 3 journalism irksome because of the monotony of the work. However, she asked why her name was not there in the news article Sagarika said,

  “Stop jiggling and wiggling around, such levity is improper in an office. If you have any grievances get ready to leave. Are we not paying for your stay over here?”

  On being asked to leave, Christina’s face was so livid with rage that it looked she might have an attack of apoplexy. It was very clear that the fellowship was paying her and not Sagarika; she had broken a very big journalism ethics. It was also very clear that Sagarika was of the view that if she declared a moratorium on the projects, these might get delayed as she was a foreigner. Christina mulled

  ‘I might actually lose interest and keep on writing her essays. Leaving this place might mean loss of visa.’

  She knew that she had to get out of the hook as soon as possible to focus on the work she had. Christina thought that if she accused the editor for trying to mulct the newspaper by following nepotism in the institution and engaging the company resources to interview her family members, she might push a point through, but she knew Sagarika was too stupid to be insulted.

  Christina tried something which she was sure Sagarika would not be able to counter. She said,

  “Well in US in any fellowship program, there is a quarterly and half yearly review process where one has to present the findings to the parent institution. In my case it will be Harvard.”

  “So I will need to go there pretty soon to show how much progress I have made and I am pretty sure I have not done enough. So I will request you to let me finish my research.”

  As Christina had anticipated Sagarika became speechless on a topic she did not understand. With much hesitation Sagarika gave Christina the needed freedom to complete her work. While doing so she was moved to the filthiest part of the hall near the men’s toilet. Christina did not mind of the smell as she was now away from the watchful eyes of Sagarika, but this gave rise to another problem she had not estimated.

  Instead of getting peace she was stuck in the most unproductive part of the office where people would spend the whole day gossiping. Christina hated her colleagues for their odious habit of complaining about the daily chores of life. Most of her colleagues tried to look busy and thought she was going through a bad time in India. They tried to help her overcome the languor into which they thought she had fallen, by inviting her to cultural and family events. Christina had no other option but to follow them.

  She many times tried to explain her study and topic to her friends but they thought it was perfunctory and advised her to get married and have kids. Many of them would try to pull her into office politics – something she was least interested in. Planning a covert agenda to track down Raghav was the only thing that preyed on her mind. However, this company was many times better than that of Sagarika.

  Many could not understand why she was working so hard and some came up with the theory that because her boss disliked her, she looked at her work with a jaundiced eye. This sense of sympathy Christina liked as it would prevent her colleagues from going against Sagarika’s plans. Many of her colleagues asked Christina to be in the good books of Sagarika if she wanted to grow in the organization. They told her that working on independent research in India, did not mean that the top management would not play politics and allow her to work independently.

  From all this Christina came to the conclusion that most of her colleagues did not even understand the meaning of freedom expected in a fellowship programme. She had to live with these disturbances while progressing with her research on Raghav. The drones were in place to be sent to figure out the location of Raghav in the regions specified by the think tank.

  4.4: The Search for Raghav

  Christina realized that she was in love with Raghav for all he had done. She had become a big fan of the blogs which were written in colloquial fashion adding appeal to the readers. Christina planned to make a new move to the destinations the think tank had provided her with. She took leave of absence without informing Sagarika about the plans and joined her team in Ranchi in Jharkhand State.

  Ranchi was on the lists but she very soon realized she needed more intelligence input to get to know anything about Raghav. She came up with the new plan of using the drones in the possible remote locations where Raghav possibly could be. Her theory was that Raghav would be too scared to show himself up in any urban location. The most probable option from the list was Mayurbhanj; it had been mentioned in some of his blogs.

  Christina and her team moved from her base in Ranchi for scouting the regions around Mayurbhanj. She trekked on foot and thought that such locations would be ideal for someone to hide from the government. Christina kept two of her men on the location to engage the drones in reconnaissance activity on the region. She was constrained by the funding and hoped that Raghav would be sighted soon in the region.

  After setting up the two bases she flew back to the office in a hurry to avoid more suspicions being raised by Sagarika. The new friends she made in the office helped her to cover her tracks. The excuse given was that Christina had gone to a friend’s wedding in Ranchi. As long as she did the work assigned to her, Sagarika was very happy. For a week the drones moved over the different hamlets near Mayurbhanj area hunting for any signs of Raghav.

  Christina was very upset with the results, but on the very last day the drone picked up a bald guy coming out of a hut from a distant hamlet. Christina knew that this individual must be Raghav, the same monk she had seen in the mall in Kolkata. She also saw a lot of other individuals in the huts nearby dressed in urban attire and knew that Raghav was up to something in the region. Christina asked her men to tag Raghav and follow his moves in the village. She wanted complete audio and video feedback about what Raghav was going about. Christina knew that very soon she would be going on another leave of absence.

  Raghav stayed in this reclusive stage in the tent for a long time since he came back to habitation. It was now many days that many of his comrades had seen him. Most of them were shocked to see the state in which they found their old friend; the scars had magnified the effect. He seemed to have aged many years within this span of time. After coming out he still did not speak to anyone but complained of depression only to Debashish. His depression had a harmful effect on his body and he started losing weight; it left him acutely emaciated.

  Debashish put him through a regular dose of anti-depression medicines to get him out of his groove. It was spring when Raghav had moved out of the Manipur facility but now it was already September and the whole region was flooded. It seemed that Nature was in tune with Raghav’s grief. Anger brewed within Raghav. The coma had released a vindictive streak in him against the people who had do
ne him this harm. He lusted for revenge and justice., but first he wanted to explain to his comrades what he had learnt from his quest of understanding the past.

  4.5: The Role of Fundamentalists in Changing the Social Fabric of the Country

  Christina was very happy to finally have Raghav locked in her radar. She asked her team to deploy the minibots the size of bees to be the eyes and ears on Raghav. She wanted to know everything that Raghav was planning now. Christina worked late at nights to look at the videos sent by the ground team She would come late to and spend most time talking to the new friends she had made in the office. However, Christina faced difficulties in explaining to the team back in the states; eventually they agreed to Christina’s operation.

  The initial few days were boring and confusing as Raghav was going through bouts of mood swings inside the hut. He would seldom sit and talk about anything or anyone. Thanks to the medication administered by Debashish Raghav was sleeping most of the time inside the hut. Christina thought that it was a failed mission and there was very little that she was going to gather from and about Raghav.

  But after the third day of operation everything changed. Raghav woke up and went for a small jog near the hut. He still had problems moving his legs but struggled through the morning. Christina who was woken up early by the team also hooked up to the live feed of the events. Christina hoped that Raghav was up to something that day and Raghav did not disappoint her.

  Raghav after his jog took a quick bath by the well. He then brought the charpoy out of the hut and then rushed to the other tent where for days he had created a map out of memory; he brought it out. That morning Raghav wanted to share in brief the conclusions he had drawn from studying the papers. Debashish and other comrades joined Raghav beside the charpoy. They were going to hear the old hot shot businessman who had been in exile for last ten years.

  Raghav started saying,

  “I went through the exhaustive list of papers that you guys had given to me and tried to deduce what really had happened in the last ten years in India.”

  “As you know most of the reports were incomprehensive, so it was very difficult to separate the truth from lies. But I did make some deductions from these reports that I think must have happened in the country in the decade.”

  Everyone was eager to hear what Raghav had to offer from his research. They knew that Raghav has written many peer reviewed research articles and there was no doubt that Raghav would come forward with the best possible analysis of the data.

  Raghav continued,

  “Last ten years we saw something which had been predicted by many thinkers of that time. So we need to go back to the history of how it all started. The opening of the market in 1990 led to a new free market economy in this country. India was still gradually emerging from socialist setups and waking up gradually to the world through IT solutions.”

  “But maintaining the balance between the socialist setups in which most political thinkers grew up with and the expectations of the western world was becoming very difficult. This led to many scams and lots of noises in society. Then the world went through the bad market crash in 2008 and had difficulty recovering.”

  “Numerous world renowned economists came up with their plans to change the scenario and many theories were floated at that time. Some of the theories were based on the social indicator matrix while others toed the US model where 2% of the people were going to control over 95% of the wealth. So these models became the working style of few parties that were in the opposition.”

  “Now, some of the fundamentalist parties like the US model. Here the elite class was that of the the Brahmins and few came from the trading class. Historically the Brahmins had controlled the minds of Indians and in the new economic reforms regime they wanted to control all the inflow of money. This led to the tussle between the two major political parties. Riding on anti-incumbency wave and then following the tactics Brahmins had mastered over the years, the fundamentalists came into power in the country.”

  Debashish asked,

  “So what are these tactics?”

  Raghav replied,

  “It’s the same tactics used over thousands of years. They would say something is bad and harmful. They will repeat the lie so many times that people would later get confused as to what was the true and what was false. So the real drama started after they came to power and that is something interesting to know.”

  Christina did not go to office that day as she did not want to miss a single word that Raghav was speaking.

  Raghav continued,

  “Then surfaced their evil tactics. First through government sponsored organizations, the religious fundamentalists found out an amazing way to mobilize people to serve their purpose.”

  Debashish asked,

  “Now why would they want to do so?”

  Raghav replied,

  “In the resource -constrained world they made a change in which the higher class Hindus were moved to resource rich areas and the lower class were sent to areas with constraints. Through this process they basically destroyed the social fabric of the villages.”

  “This led to an era of distrust and violence between these two factions of the society. In villages the lower caste people now got mired in the cycle of poverty and disease as they struggled for survival.”

  Raghav looked at the comrades engrossed in listening to him and continued,

  “In the urban region the story however was different as the Western media covered this part of the country. But something happened over there which the Western media failed. There were a series of riots in different regions of countries targeting the Muslims. In this whole process they converted entire blocs into ghettos where Muslims huddled together. Even Muslim dominated regions were not spared.”

  Christina was listening to something which her think tanks had been publishing since a long time; the conversation was getting exciting. Raghav went through his memory maps and explained how riots were organized in different regions of the country especially in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh.

  Raghav said,

  “But there was something interesting with the way they tackled the tribals and the Naxals.”

  Christina knew that Naxal movement had totally come to a halt but she had no idea how the Government of India achieved this feat.

  Raghav continued,

  “Well, while dealing with the tribal issue the fundamentalists undertook a new approach. Special cadres were deputed to raise the bogey of being converted into Christianity by missionaries.”

  “The task of these cadres was to teach the stories of Ram to these tribes who lacked codified religion and to absorb them into the Hindu fold. This was a major movement sponsored by the Government of India.”

  “It gave them access to key information in the Naxal affected areas. In this manner they brought down the Maoist movement in the country.”

  Raghav continued,

  “Well I must say that the Maoist movement should have evolved but that is a different story.”

  Raghav went on to show in his memory maps the incidents that happened in Chhattisgarh and other regions of India where these experiments were conducted. He continued,

  “These experiments and riots were conducted like military exercises. They were masters in managing the fear and violence in the community. The way they ravaged different regions were sometimes indescribable.”

  “In many occasions they used magnesium flares and napalm bombs to wipe out the victims along with their identity. The military precision of such operations and the way the data was hidden was a remarkable achievement of the government.”

  Christina could not believe what she was hearing. She could not help but laugh at Sagarika’s statement a day back when she refused to acknowledge the fact that the fundamentalists can perform any ignoble deed. Listening to the stories from Raghav Christina came to revise her views – perhaps they have actually committed these heinous crimes Raghav had de
scribed. Suddenly Raghav felt uneasy sitting and said,

  “I don’t feel good now after telling you the story. I will tell you the part of Naxalite movement tomorrow. I want to go back to rest now as I woke up very early.”

  Raghav went back to the hut and Christina realized that she should now try to make to the office as the show was over. Christina never divulged to her company all that she had heard from Raghav even though she wanted to confront Sagarika who always harped on the values of Indian culture. She realized that everything that Raghav had written in his blogs were accurate - and right to the end he had retained a grip on his thoughts although he was left in a vegetative state in a government facility; most of his friends had no clue of what happened in the country during that period.

  Christina reached her office late and went and sat quietly at the corner desk. Suddenly a guy came to her desk to ask why she was late. She recognized him as a trusted lieutenant of Sagarika; he bullied other employees, especially women in the office. She thought Sagarika actually had a team of non-performers whom she used for protection. Despite her irritation Christina did not want to confront Sagarika and replied