That was how he survived in the suburbs of Kolkata and probably in Orissa. Raghav understood that he needed to do something with the new memory he had recovered of the last ten years. He could not just carry the chart everywhere. He needed to memorize all that he had created in the charts. That was the only way he could make a sound judgment. Every morning Raghav would wake up and sit by the ocean memorizing every event in the chart. He continued with this process for more than two weeks going through all the timelines. He let his imagination flow along the possible reasons as to how the events happened. None of the comrades disturbed him while he was memorizing the past.
Christina received the information from the think tank that Guruji might be involved in the kidnapping of the team. Christina thought of interviewing Guruji as a means to understanding his psyche. She wanted to know if Guruji nursed harmful plans towards the team; this is what she had heard from Raghav. This would mean that these individuals might also be tortured or taken to the facility in Manipur.
Guruji promptly accepted Christina for a short 15 minutes interview but later amid all fanfare the interview was reduced to less than five minutes. During the entire interview all that Christina could get were the blessings from Guruji for her work but he refused to answer any questions with a smile. Only thing Christina could make out of the interview was that he was a wicked perverted person. She became worried for her colleagues.
5.3: Preparing for the Attack
Sitting on the beach Raghav saw the tide come and go and he could not help but think, why was it him? He did not fit in any of the political equations he had worked out. The only theory he came up was that as he was working for the poor and the politicians could have reasoned that his attempts at eradication of poverty might affect their populist policies in the region.
Memorizing the last ten years did not give him sufficient answers of what might have happened in the past. He desperately wished to know and was willing to go for an all out offensive against the facility in Manipur to figure out what was exactly happening in that location. He went to Debashish and said,
“Prepare your comrades for an all out assault on the Manipur facility.”
Debashish replied,
“But we don’t have the equipments and I guess the people over here are not motivated enough to plan such an assault.”
Raghav replied,
“You take care of the equipments. I guess you can arrange for few AK-47s and grenades to take up this operation. We are not going to need much as I don’t think the area we are going to attack is a high security zone. As for motivation leave that to me. The Manipur facility is where they kept me captive. I know well that region.”
“It’s great! Revenge is best served cold. I know – I know you can motivate the comrades. I will arrange for the arms and ammunitions.”
Raghav thought for some time and then said,
“But we will need more men for this mission”.
“I will ask Ganguly to arrange for more supporters.”
Debasish paused for few seconds and then added,
“Thank God you are back. We all have been waiting to do something for the last ten years. We are – one and all – tired of hiding.”
Raghav did not reply. He kept on looking at the waves.
Raghav had taken on the responsibility of motivating the comrades to go for an all out assault against very sophisticated state machinery. It was every Maoist’s dream but Raghav had never imagined himself to be in the shoes of a rebel. The first and most important task before him was to give a new orientation to his fellow comrades to prepare themselves to give their lives for a cause.
His previous task had been to acquaint the comrades with the history but now he had to instill in them the feeling of vengeance for a cause. A soldier who believes in what he is fighting for is the one who is hard to defeat. He did not have to try hard to justify their stand as they were already full of hatred against the government.. What Raghav wanted to do was to impress with the vision of a utopian state that could be achieved with their sacrifice.
This was a time tested formulae used by many leaders in the past in different socialist movements. Raghav started with his tales of returning back to India with the feeling of bringing about change to the system and shared the reminiscence of his experience while dealing with the babus. He regaled his audience with the tales of his adventures of how he bypassed the bureaucracy to get his work done. He would speak of how corrupt many officials were while dealing with them and how this resulted in the problems of Maoism in the country.
For many it was difficult to imagine the altruistic Raghav was now motivating them to become rebels - hungry for blood. Since a long time everyone expected Raghav to come up with something new but a plan for massacre was never in their wildest imaginations. Ganguly thought that so far he had been deceived by Raghav's veneer of sophistication and surely many others had failed to recognize the wounded tiger that was hiding within Raghav, hungry for revenge.
From Raghav’s discourses it became very clear to Ganguly that Raghav portrayed himself as a zealot and thought that such behavior would help him get the trust needed to carry on such a difficult operation. Ganguly however thought that Raghav's plan to go to the Manipur facility to find about his wife was a very selfish motive but he did not speak against it, as he knew that Raghav had a reputation of executing any task efficiently. Raghav was the only hope that could strike deep into the hearts of bureaucracy.
Raghav took the decision of carrying out an all out assault on the Manipur facility with a strength of a hundred comrades. The task of organizing the men was given to Ganguly and Debashish as they still had some connections with old cadres who had gone into hiding. Raghav also wanted remote sensing imagery from international satellites of the region of the forest near the facility.
He started planning out the best route that could be taken to reach to the facility, drawing information from his own escape plan. While building up the attack plan on the secret facility Raghav was excited more because of finding the truth behind the facility than the fear of confronting an enemy who had become excessively potent over the years. He never gave it a thought then none of the comrades had any basic military training.
Raghav knew that his situation was the nadir of his life and all he could do was to go ahead. He was well conversant with the type of terrain that the region had to offer and was confident that a large force would have an overwhelming effect on the enemy.
5.4: The Recruitment
Christina was bothered about the team who had been captured by the intelligence agencies. Her think tank had informed her about the torture they were undergoing in the facility in New Delhi. Her mind was primarily focused on the turn of events and so she continued in a lackadaisical with her job – like a page 3 journalist. As days passed, Christina started getting worried about her team. Should she do something about them?
The think tank had assured her that they were looking into the matter but it seemed the Indian government was very adamant on not releasing them till they had squeezed more information from them. Christina tried to show her protest by introducing sarcasm into her writings mostly pointing towards some religious beliefs. One article that failed to skip past Sagarika was on the ban on inter-gotra marriages in India with hefty fines imposed on families. The fundamentalist leader Gupta immediately called up Sagarika and argued that Christina's writing would have a pernicious effect on the newspaper’s circulation in India.
The ban on inter--Gotra marriages was a topic which Sagarika, who hailed from South India, did not much understand; she never supported it. She felt that Christina was right about what she had written in the article and was naive to the sensitivities of the Indian culture. She appreciated that one of the outstanding features of the articles was the perspicuity of the author and the research the author had conducted on the evils of such laws in the in the cowbelt regions of India.
She knew that confronting Christina on such a topic would again hit
her reputation. Why rake it up since Christina had been behaving so nicely for some time? But since Gupta had asked her to keep a check on Christina's writings Sagarika felt she had to do something about the freedom Christina enjoyed in expressing herself.
Sagarika called Christina to her cabin to make her understand the expectations of the organization from her. Sagarika wanted to know all the pertinent details that Christina had come to know from her field trips but she also knew that Christina would not easily supply the information. The only option left to her was to pinpoint her free thinking ideas and make her follow the standards the newspaper expected from her. Sagarika said,
“Everybody in this office is appreciating your writing style but it seems that your essays, for the main part, polemics around the ruling party policies.”
“I don’t know if you hate the religious people of India or don’t respect our culture, but exercising such freedom sometimes becomes dangerous for women in this country.”
All Christina had seen was Sagarika doing was taking her guests for luncheons and trips around the city. She thought that Sagarika did not even spend a single minute on journalism or writing. How could she understand the meaning of freedom of expression? Sagarika continued,
“We live in a world where we are bound by some rules to survive. If we break those rules then we get into trouble. In your case this research is dangerous as people have started asking questions about your motives in India.”
“Some even believe that you are working for a Christian organization of US trying to spread your religion in India.”
Hearing this Christina was furious; she wanted resign on the spot but had enough sense to keep herself in check. Sagarika continued,
“We have decided that for some time you should work at the desk and not go out to the field.”
“This is good for the organization as your last article has invited a lot of controversy. This I am saying for your own benefit.”
With her team already cornered Christina accepted the offer of her boss.
She only wondered what Raghav was up to now. Had he been caught by the agencies or was he still free, planning something new? Christina had a lot of work in hand analyzing what Raghav had already provided her with to understand the implications. But one thing she appreciated today about Sagarika. She was not being cocky and showed genuine concern for Christina.
Sagarika continued,
“There were also some concerns raised lately about your interview with Guruji a few days back. It seems presumptuous for one so relatively new to the field to go and interview such leading spiritual gurus, and instead of asking for his blessings you just went and asked disturbing questions!”
“You could have at least dressed nicely as many have commented on the prim attire of the white lady taking the interview of a guru in saffron clothes. Many have also wanted you to leave as in this article you had profaned the sanctity of the religious ashrams.”
Christina replied,
“But all I wrote was the truth. I did not know that writing the truth would spell danger for the daily. From next time I will be careful about what I wear and write in public.”
On the other side, Ganguly and Debashis went back to the mainland to contact some old comrades who had either gone into hiding or retired. Despite the dangerous nature of the undertaking, the dauntless comrades volunteered for the assignment. Though they were advanced in years their spirit was alive. Most of them were fed up from the authoritative regimes and wanted to do something.
For continuing with the operations they also brought with them their young children and nephews to join in the movement. The movement had to be kept secret and any involvement of outside agencies would have caused unnecessary confusions. Some of these old comrades had also been given basic military training in different Maoist camps during their youth.
As requested Debashish and Ganguly scouted all known locations of hideouts to get together 120 old and young comrades. To prevent detection, they were sent in small numbers through different shipping trawlers to the island in Andaman Sea where Raghav’s men had build up a temporary facility to give basic military training to the comrades. The old comrades helped design the course for the training and for two months all the new recruits were taught the basics as well as advanced lessons in weapon handling and survival in forests.
Raghav also provided them with books linked to the Maoist struggles in the past and inspired them with his speeches to motivate them. The plan was to enter the facility via Myanmar and then after the attack escape through the same Myanmar route. Debashish was given the task of making the arrangements.
5.5: Gaining Control of the Military Facility
Christina was grounded and so she had ample time to go through the recorded talks of Raghav and try to find the true meaning. It seemed Raghav had an inner urge to take up the movement against the state. With the backbone of the movement crushed, Christina wondered how Raghav would be able to coordinate the movement with the lack of motivation to drive them to fight. This was uppermost in the mind of Raghav.
The one thing Christina kept on wondering was – if ten years of your life were taken away from you in the peak of your career, would you have any fight left to make a comeback? Why was Raghav going after the past if he did not mean revenge? If so, she could not imagine how an inventive researcher and businessman could ever concoct a weapon of destruction? With her team under arrest, it was very difficult of Christina to know what Raghav was up to, but in her heart she wanted Raghav to be at peace and not go after these politicians.
Christina was given the task of mentoring the team in the office to teach them journalism. She used all the tricks at her command to stir up the enthusiasm of her team; they had been dispirited by the bullying attitude of the people in the management. Christina found this task rather interesting as it helped channelize her anger against the system in a more productive way.
Till now Christina was seen to be busy covering her work which that did not understand; in general the office staff considered her to be absent minded, distrait, aloof and rather antisocial. But now they liked the way she was educating them on the ethics of journalism. The main point Christina focused on was the fact that the purpose of writing was to edify and not merely entertain the readers.
She made her team write on various topics and explained to them how their writing could be more amusing. Her colleagues enjoyed what they were learning as she was sharing her experience while she had been working in different countries of the world. Christina spoke to them about how the computer age had made people forget to write in the good old classical style where each word captured the reader's emotions.
Sagarika on the other hand was getting jealous of the increasing popularity of Christina in the office but now she was too ashamed to call her to her room and haul her up on some pretext or the other.
In the meantime Raghav and his men had taken up their positions in the forests of Manipur. After the old comrades had undergone two month of training under Raghav, he felt that the new recruits were in a position to take on the might of the Indian army stationed at the facility. Raghav was circumspect about movement of military personnel around the camp and so he chose a difficult route to move through the forest. He also gathered the latest intelligence regarding troop positions from the satellites.
Raghav chose to cross the forest at night to avoid any aerial surveillance. The route that Raghav chose was covered with swamps. The murky depths of the swamps were so dark that one could not distinguish the vines and branches from the snakes. It took them several hours to cross the forest to reach within visual distance of the military facility.
Of late the army had built up trenches around the camp and filled it up with knee deep water. One of the senior comrades suggested that the trenches might have anti personnel mines and was built to keep out visitors. Raghav and his men made an artificial bridge over the trenches to cross without risking setting off the mines. It was necessary that they maintain comp
lete secrecy till they reached the vicinity of the medical facility; the element of surprise was to be their strategic tool.
As daylight broke Raghav and his comrades had surrounded the medical facility from all sides. Raghav has given instructions to the team to start the assault at the first break of light. He had also given instructions of not sparing the life of anyone inside. With the first break of light the radio silence was broken and Raghav spoke on the radio, “ATTACK! ATTACK! ATTACK!”.
Within seconds the comrades in unison attacked the facility like swarms of bees. All the soldiers standing outside the facility were killed. The older comrades rushed towards the command center to prevent any SOS message being sent out from the facility. Raghav stayed in his position witnessing the bloodshed from a safe distance and feeling nothing - not even anger or pity for the dead soldiers. All he wanted to know was the truth; what went on inside the facility?
The security was low in order to make the facility look unimportant. Under special instructions from Guruji the military was removed from the location and the facility was manned by men from the Central Industrial Security Force. They were not trained to work in a jungle type of environment and were also not trained to tackle Maoist attacks. It was very evident that their skills were inept for the scale of attack Raghav and his men had mounted. Most of the men from CISF were still sleeping and were butchered in their bunkers by the comrades.
THE MYSTIC: PART I - THE SEEKER (Part 1 - THE SEEKER) Page 14