by R. SREERAM
I closed my eyes but the scene wouldn’t go away. Major-General Iqbal Qureshi and INSAF. Dr Faustus and the Devil.
I don’t know when my brain first made the leap, but there was no going back once it had. The logic was indisputable. Perhaps it was the ease with which Nelson and Jagannath had replaced GK with Karamchand Patil that led me to realize that GK himself could have been the second choice after someone else. That someone else could only have been the major-general, until he had martyred himself.
Gyandeep Sharma had, to the very end, maintained that neither he nor his minions had met the major-general on the day of his death. He had had no reason to lie; in fact, from what I had seen of that man, if he had indeed pushed Qureshi to his death, he would have been only too proud to admit it.
That left only INSAF as the other candidate for the eight o’clock assignation. Other than Powerhouse, they were the only ones who could have tempted the major-general with anything worth his while.
Who, then, from within INSAF would have dared to corrupt him? It had to be Nelson or Jagannath – or even, as unlikely as it seemed given how closely they must have gotten to know each other, Raghav. If I had to bet, though, I would put my money on Jagannath rather than on Nelson.
Because Nelson did not have that audacity. From everything that I had heard about the major-general, an attempt to corrupt him – for that was what the offer, in its most naked sense, was – required both guts and amorality. In spite of everything, I had the feeling Nelson was too . . . respectable, too careful to let his sleeves be sullied. Jagannath, on the other hand, would have walked in and blithely offered the presidency, and not even flinched when the major-general threw him back out on his ear. Nelson would have let him.
After his visitor left, Major-General Iqbal Qureshi sat down on his favourite chair. He kept staring with unseeing eyes at the spot where his visitor had sat, the words playing back in his mind over and over again. And he knew even more, plans that didn’t need to be spelt out for him. Kalyug was unstoppable, his visitor had told him. He could not dispute it. One way or another, with him or with someone else, Kalyug would come to fruition. Everything else was in place.
Why walk away? That thought came unbidden, surprising him, shocking him. If it was inevitable, then why should he refuse? Did he not believe that he himself could be the president that India needed? Could he not accept INSAF’s offer, and yet remain true to his principles?
No! screamed another part of him. He had spent his entire life living for one idea of India. Good or bad within, he had protected it from every danger from without. That was who he was. Not a thief who stole the crown.
But the power. The chance to do the right thing. The right things. Many right things. How many times had he railed against the idiocies of his elected masters, how many times had he told his wife he would have done it differently, he could have done it better . . . how many times had he disagreed with those in power even as it killed him to obey them?
It was in his grasp. It was his for the taking. His legacy could be the biggest gift to his Motherland.
If he could only find enough courage to betray her. To betray the one thing that defined her, the one thing he had sworn to defend. Her Constitution.
All he had to do was say Yes. And the nation would be handed to him on a platter. His for the taking.
Temptation.
I finished writing, in my head, that scene as I imagined it. The words had formed themselves with an intensity that came from a certainty that it must have happened this way. Jagannath had said that we needed to find the truth, that we owed him that much. And we did, didn’t we? A man who could have had that power and had turned it down instead, choosing to sacrifice himself rather than his principles. A man who had stood up for what he believed in. But what do I do when that truth led me right back to the man who had been instrumental in tasking me with it?
What could I do now? What I knew would not suffice for a court of law – you need evidence, not gut feel. That ruled out the media too, for the story would be quashed too easily the moment it whispered of INSAF’s involvement. I was sure of that. Besides, why would they bother? Qureshi was already a forgotten story, relegated to an occasional mention in the light of GK’s assassination and the more recent shenanigans of popular celebrities.
Who else? An avenger, perhaps? Someone with the might to take on the two heads of INSAF?
I knew only one who would care enough. Major Nawaz Qureshi. His father’s son, Raghav had said. But I paused. Did I have the right to point the major in that direction? Did I know enough to condemn those two men, and perhaps even the major himself? Was there a chance I could be wrong?
And even as I finished asking myself those questions, I was suddenly ashamed because I knew what I would eventually do.
Nothing.
I would excuse myself with the rationalization that I had no evidence. I would repay Major-General Iqbal Qureshi’s sacrifice with my silence. I had paid the price for speaking out once in a democracy I had believed in; I wasn’t prepared to do it again in a dictatorship that I no longer had the energy to disbelieve.
This was Kalyug, but I am no Kalki. I don’t need the hassle.