KALYUG

by R. SREERAM

  ‘You don’t mind, do you? I mean, I don’t want to influence you and if you think . . . I mean, a conflict of interest or something . . .’

  ‘Go ahead,’ I said, regretting the next phrase almost as soon as I said it. ‘I don’t really care either way.’

  That brought a rise out of her. ‘The whole reason I’m sitting here about to tell you things I was sworn to keep secret is because I do not want to damage the memory of one of

  the finest, most honourable men I knew. If you don’t care enough –’

  I held up a hand, heading off the lecture I’d already heard the previous afternoon. ‘My apologies. But I don’t see what the big deal is – he was a great man, sure, but he was also driven to frustration by the system he was in. He broke down. Gave up. He’s dead and I don’t think he cares about his memory anymore.’

  ‘It’s not about him alone, dammit!’ she said, her eyes blazing. ‘There is an entire Army that wants to know why he died, officers who need a reason, an inspiration, for their existence, to know that there is an India that cares enough to be worth protecting.’

  Abruptly, she stopped and took a moment to compose herself. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, getting up. ‘I should not have imposed.’

  ‘Look . . . for what it’s worth, I’m sorry too. For real.’ Before I could stop myself, I grabbed her hand. Then dropping it just as abruptly, I said, ‘It’s not about Qureshi . . . it’s . . . you know what I’ve gone through. I’m sick and tired –’

  ‘Stop with the self-pity,’ she retorted. ‘It was two years ago. Get over it!’

  I was taken aback by the ferocity behind her words. Her eyes immediately softened.

  ‘We’ve all had setbacks,’ she said gently. ‘But a wise man once told me it’s not about how hard you are hit, it’s about how soon you get back up. You’ve been on the mat for two years now – don’t you think it’s time you took back everything that you lost?’

  17th September, 2012. INSAF HQ. New Delhi.

  ‘We have a situation,’ Jagannath was told as soon as he walked into the control centre. ‘Two of Powerhouse’s top executives have been shot dead in the last hour or so. Gang-style executions. We were unable to capture the hit-squads alive.’

  ‘Shit,’ said Jagannath, taking the report extended to him. The contents included pictures of the victims in situ, as well as eyewitness accounts from the INSAF agents assigned to cover them. ‘How could we fail twice?’

  ‘Both hits happened in Mumbai,’ replied his subordinate. ‘We lost two of our own men in the shootout that followed, and took down five of theirs, but we weren’t able to capture anyone alive. The only guy who survived the fire-fight ate a cyanide capsule before we could get to him.’

  ‘Powerhouse? Do we know who these teams are?’

  ‘We got lucky with a couple of them, one from each location,’ said the subordinate, handing over two dossiers. ‘They are part of the underworld there. What’s strange is they belong to opposite camps.’

  ‘Opposite camps?’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘Then it’s a message from Powerhouse,’ said Nelson Katara as soon as Jagannath informed him. ‘They are letting us know that they have influence over the local gangs.’

  ‘Then it’s a good thing we shifted Leela out of Mumbai,’ Jagannath said. ‘What about the others? What about Gyandeep?’

  ‘Keep Gyandeep out in the open, as planned. When enough time has passed that they believe it, we will send out the message that Leela has turned and Gyandeep is about to turn, and Powerhouse will have no other option but to make a play on him. We’ll move in and clean up.’

  ‘Sir,’ interrupted the subordinate. Jagannath excused himself from the call. ‘We’ve just had a Powerhouse executive walk into the Enforcement Directorate in New Delhi and ask for protection in exchange for turning over everything he has on Powerhouse.’

  ‘Genuine?’

  ‘Seems to be, sir. Apparently there was an attempt on his life this morning, and then he heard of his colleagues being shot to death.’

  Bingo! thought Jagannath. Powerhouse’s pre-emptive strike had backfired beautifully, landing them a prize catch. It wasn’t that INSAF could not have arrested every senior employee, but the byzantine structure of Infinity/Powerhouse had been difficult to unravel and identify the key players. Now, thanks to their quarry panicking, the top echelon would probably turn approvers themselves.

  ‘Send a team over to the ED office and pick him up,’ Jagannath said, exulting a little. ‘Put him up at the safe-house near the airport for now. We will ship him out of Delhi at first light tomorrow.’

  17th September, 2012. New Delhi.

  Richa told me everything she knew.

  Exactly six months and two days earlier, seventeen soldiers had left on an Army expedition to the higher altitudes of the Himalayas, ostensibly a routine mission but in reality scouting for militants waiting to sneak through as the snow started to melt. They should have been protected by the new ViFite camouflage suits that had been issued to them, but had succumbed to the cold when the fabric started to rip at the very temperature it was supposed to be cleared for.

  The investigation, initially a low-key affair, came to Qureshi’s attention when the investigating officer wrote to the major-general directly and sent him a copy of the report along with the allegation that his immediate superiors were pressurizing him to change his findings.

  Things came to a head when Qureshi decided to bring it out in the open and ban ViFite. The investigator disappeared, the defence secretary Qureshi had spoken to was transferred and Qureshi himself was targeted from both within and without.

  Matters came to a head once Raghav approached Qureshi, playing the part of a middleman because he wanted to protect the major-general and transfer the burden of the investigation to INSAF.

  Richa’s identification of a possible link between the major-general and the murder of his wife during the attack on Fortune Mall brought her into the picture and earned her the attention of those who wanted to kill the story. Raghav saved her from being arrested on trumped-up charges and then used INSAF to get the charges dropped altogether, although it did still cost Richa her job with NDNN.

  Richa continued to follow up on the questionable procurement and disbursement practices within the Army, her investigation helped along by the major-general’s knowledge of key personnel and INSAF’s backing, but she had never been allowed to go public.

  Despite losing his wife – and perhaps even believing that her death had been the aim behind the terrorist attack on the mall – Qureshi had used the entire might of his rank and experience in unearthing the conspiracy up, down and sideward. The names that dropped into the file were plenty and startling, including fellow officers Qureshi had always believed to be honourable, and bureaucrats and political appointees feathering their own nest by betraying their country. The fight became a crusade for Qureshi.

  ‘Every time we spoke this last month,’ Richa said towards the end, ‘his sense of outrage was getting palpably stronger. It was no longer just about the soldiers who would pay the price for bad equipment – it was also about how badly our defence was being compromised. Forget Pakistan, even Bangladesh would be able to cause us serious harm in a few years, he would say. By then, like a cancer, the bad equipment we were buying would render our border forces completely vulnerable.’

  It was a doomsday prophecy from a man not known for such hyperbole. And, therefore, all the more frightening.

  ‘He used to say this was a much bigger war than any he had ever fought in. And that this was the one he could not afford to lose.’

  The hotel telephone rang at that precise moment. I answered it to find Jagannath at the other end.

  ‘I hope you are not running back to Chennai today,’ he said after a perfunctory greeting. I told him I had decided to stick around, at least for a little while longer.

  ‘Good, because there is someone who wants to meet you. I took the liberty of agreeing on your be
half. I’m sending a car around to pick you up; the driver will call from the front desk once he gets there.’

  ‘Whom am I meeting?’

  ‘The chief justice of India. She will meet you in her chambers at the Supreme Court in exactly half an hour; she wants to see if you’ve understood your role as the amicus curiae.’

  17th September, 2012. Mumbai.

  As usual, Gyandeep Sharma left his residence in Bandra West and took the Bandra-Worli Sea Link to his office on Worli Seaface Road at exactly twenty to nine. His heavily-armoured sedan moved sedately, almost ponderously through the narrow streets, before emerging onto the Western Express Highway and climbing up the Sea Link.

  Behind him, expertly tailing him, were three contingents from INSAF. Three different vehicles that kept shifting their positions so he would never spot a pattern. The men inside were armed, but had instructions not to show themselves unless attacked – their role was clearly defined and limited to tracking Gyandeep and, in the event of an attack on their quarry, to switch their focus to the attackers and track them instead. If it was deemed safe, they would be allowed to apprehend the attackers at a later stage.

  Midway along the Sea Link, Gyandeep instructed his driver to stop the car. Doing this on the Sea Link is forbidden by law, but the driver complied without hesitation, used as he was to the power that the Infinity label commanded amongst the local cops. It was an unusual request, certainly, but it was not his place to question his employer.

  Gyandeep exited the car after it rolled to a stop, forcing the lead tail to overtake his vehicle – they could not stop without calling attention to themselves. As he stood near the railing, watching the sea frothing a few hundred feet under him, the second tail too passed him without slowing down, confident that there was only one way off the Sea Link.

  The third car slowed down, the enterprising agent in it taking out her camera and pretending to shoot the scene off the bridge. It took them more time to pass the car, but Gyandeep had still not turned around by the time they crossed him.

  Please don’t jump, the agent prayed silently. She was aware of his continued existence as bait for someone up the chain, and would have a tough time explaining how their subject was allowed to commit suicide when he had three crews watching him.

  She heaved a sigh of relief when he eventually turned around and returned to his car. The hazard lights were switched off finally and the sedan rejoined the high-speed lane, catching up and crossing the third tail, then the second and following closely behind the lead tail which was slowly easing out of the high-speed lane.

  Phew, thought the agent. Damn bastard nearly gave me a heart attack.

  So intent were they on Gyandeep’s car that they did not notice the fifth vehicle in the convoy, an SUV that was tailing those tailing Gyandeep. Like the INSAF agents, the passengers of the SUV too had been instructed only to observe and not to act.

  Their chance would come.

  17th September, 2012. Singapore.

  ‘We have contact,’ said the protégé to the chief. ‘The decoy has been picked up and is in transit, presumably to the same safe-house as Leela.’

  ‘Presume nothing,’ replied the chief. It had been worth the two men Powerhouse had expended, not to mention the crew members from the underworld, to be able to locate the safe-house.

  ‘Get two more decoys,’ he told his protégé. ‘Let’s not take a chance that one will be sufficient.’

  ‘As you wish,’ said the other before he left the room.

  Alone once again, the chief thought about the pieces he was moving across the board. It was stimulating, in a way, to have an opponent as canny as him, and it was extremely satisfying to be able to outwit such an adversary.

  In a few hours, his man – the one who had walked into the Enforcement Directorate and had been picked up – would confirm his location if Leela was also placed there. The chief was not worried about putting together an attack crew in the capital, for there was a cell already in place and armed to the teeth, just waiting for his signal.

  In a few hours, Powerhouse would strike back. And his opponents would feel that hit.

  17

  17th September, 2012. New Delhi.

  As we walked into the Supreme Court, I couldn’t stop myself from remembering the last time I had been to a courtroom, defending myself against a charge of libel brought on by a couple of members of Parliament I had obliquely referenced in my book. If the experience had been memorable, it wasn’t for the right reasons – like everything else, it was a quarter from which my hopes for relief were found wanting. Richa led the way, quick to spot the signs or ask for directions, eager and excited to see what was next. I followed behind and my enthusiasm was . . . let’s just say there were a few chores waiting for me back home and I couldn’t wait to get back to them.

  ‘It says only Balmurli Selvam on the appointment sheet,’ said the security guard at the fifteenth gate we were stopped at. ‘You’ll have to stay here, madam.’

  It took another two minutes of walking – or to be more precise, scurrying – to reach the doors of the chamber of the chief justice of India, and in that time, my thoughts alternated between Richa and why such a senior jurist would want to see me. There was even a part of me that expected to be stripped of the amicus curiae role, and looked forward to it. Someone had to have better sense than to allow this charade to continue.

  It was symbolic of how my stock had risen, I thought, as I saw Justice Mary Chandra Barua waiting for me. Widely regarded as an able and impartial judge, with a long history on both sides of the bench, her rise had been chronicled in detail by most of the major news outlets at the time of her elevation to the CJI’s post. I remember thinking at the time that hers was, by far, the least controversial of this government’s appointments, a view shared, it seemed, by a majority.

  As soon as she ushered me in, she closed the door behind us. Typical of what you’d expect from a lawyer’s office or a judge’s chamber, every single shelf was stacked with thick volumes of hard-bound law books, some maroon, some green, most bluish-black. She led me to a chair across the table from her own before sitting down herself.

  ‘Mr Selvam,’ she said, shutting the file on her table. ‘Thank you for agreeing to see me.’

  ‘It’s my pleasure,’ I replied, wondering how to address her. Your Honour? Judge? Justice Baruah? My lady?

  ‘Yesterday’s announcement was quite a shock, wasn’t it?’

  Which one? I almost asked. GK getting the post he’s always coveted, or sticking me with the amicus curiae? Either one, shock was an understatement.

  Instead, I figured I might as well fish in troubled waters. ‘So are you going to declare this Emergency unconstitutional?’

  Her expression answered my question before her words did. ‘There are . . . aspects I need to consider.’

  ‘In other words, no.’

  ‘It’s not really that simple, Mr Selvam.’

  ‘As the custodian of our Constitution, I was really hoping you wouldn’t say that.’

  ‘Letter of the Constitution,’ she said, ‘yes. The Emergency should have been at the behest of the prime minister, who must have convinced his own Cabinet before bringing it to the president.’

  ‘There you go,’ I said. That taste of victory lasted barely a moment, for I immediately realized that I was talking to the chief justice of the country and needed to be more respectful and less, well, me. ‘I mean, you would be within your authority, wouldn’t you?’

  She smiled at me. ‘You aren’t a supporter of this government, are you?’

  ‘Not really. No.’

  ‘Surprising,’ she said, continuing to smile. ‘And yet, here you are. A friend of the court, and perhaps with friends in the government after all.’

  Yeah, right.

  ‘I’ll be very honest with you, Ma’am . . . Your Honour. When I woke up yesterday, my world was very, very different. I did not expect to witness a coup. I did not expect to be a first-hand witness to a
coup. And most importantly, if anyone had asked me before putting me in the middle of all this, I would have said Thanks but no thanks, and stayed in Chennai and watched all this on television and not missed any of it.’

  ‘Circumstances?’ she asked after a pause.

  ‘Circumstances,’ I agreed. ‘I’m sure that’s not the first time you’ve heard that one.’ I grinned at her.

  ‘You seem more cheerful than the others, though,’ she replied.

  I shrugged my shoulders. ‘I’m in, though I’d rather be out. You are my last hope. If you were to deem me unfit to be the amicus curiae, I think I might be able to convince Jagannath to let me go back to my life.’

  ‘Ah . . . so he’s the one who brought you in. I was wondering about that. Given your history with GK, it was unlikely you would have been his first choice.’

  Seeing the surprise on my face, she explained. ‘That debate you had with GK about two-three years back? Classic. A lot of people were rooting for you when you gave it right back to him. You stood for a lot of things then, Mr Selvam. I hope you realize that.’

  Fat lot of good that, I thought bitterly. I shrugged, not really wanting to get into it.

  ‘In any case, I’m glad you have found your way back. You should get back to writing. You’re good at it.’

  ‘And you should order GK’s arrest and restore the earlier government. But it’s not really that simple, is it?’ I retorted before I could stop myself.

  Not surprisingly – and in fact, rather disappointingly – I was treated to the same spiel that Jagannath and Raghav had spun. The current state of our government, the petty politicking, the national penchant for making issues out of non-issues even as your basic roti-kapda-makaan needs were ignored, etc., etc. If it had been anyone else, I might have interrupted. As it was, I let her have her say before asking her why she did not quit, then, as at least a token attempt to fulfilling her constitutional obligations.

  ‘My constitutional obligation is to ensure that the fundamental principles enshrined in the Constitution are upheld – the rights that protect you, me, the aam aadmi. Your right to life and dignity. Your right to defend yourself. Your right to express yourself. You must have seen for yourself that the internet has been taken offline today – that’s this government starting to put a clamp on your freedom to express yourself.’