by Ranjit Lal
‘Zara?’ Gaurav stopped dead in his tracks as she stumbled up to him in the last stages of exhaustion.
‘Gaurav?’ It was a barely audible, incredulous squeak. She collapsed against him, utter disbelief in her eyes.
He could only hold her, all thought suspended.
‘Oh, god, I’m dead and dreaming! What is this horrible place? Are you for real or is this some horrible hallucination? Are you dead too?’ She beat her fists against him and wept.
Shroom opened one astonished eye. She’d been dreaming, drifting in and out of sleep, and now came wide awake. ‘Hello,’ she said switching on her torch, ‘excuse me, please! Who are you hugging and kissing?’
‘Who’s that?’ Zara drew back, startled. ‘Gaurav, is this really you or am I dreaming – and have you got a child on your back? I just don’t know what’s happening any more!’ She was weeping.
‘Shroom, can you slip down for a second? Hey, take it easy on that leg.’ He set her down gently against a rock and flashed his torch at Zara, who was still clinging on to him, closed his mouth and took a deep breath. Go with the flow, he thought.
‘Shroom, meet Zara; Zara, meet Special Agent Shroom.’ He wiped the rain from his face. ‘Now can you tell me what the hell you are doing tramping down this forest path in the dark in this weather – or have I gone completely nuts?’
‘He’s Special Agent Taklu,’ Shroom interrupted. ‘I’m his partner. He’s come here to kill someone but he won’t say whom. You must be his girlfriend – he showed me drawings of you. I’d know your hair anywhere. I wish I had hair like that. You must have fun brushing out the tangles.’
‘I came to find you,’ Zara told Gaurav. She shook her head as if trying to wake herself up. ‘Not like this, in the middle of this godforsaken forest. I asked your father and came here. The taxi got held up because of landslides and we only reached Anandpur around five-thirty. They thought I was crazy, wanting to walk to Emerald Eden in this weather. I lost my way and fell into a stream which nearly swept me away, but my knapsack got wedged between some rocks and saved me…’ She looked around helplessly. ‘I’m still lost… But what are you doing here – or am I just jet-lagged out of my mind?’ She was on the verge of breaking down again.
‘It’s a long story, but come on. We have to get her to shelter. She’s been very ill and mustn’t get wet.’
‘Mustn’t get wet? But she’s soaked and bleeding!’
‘Listen, there’s a cavern-like place nearby. We can go there. You’ll have to help me. It’s a little way back from here.’
‘I’m not sure what’s happening here but I have clothes,’ Zara said simply. ‘Thank god my backpack is waterproof.’
Together they hoisted Shroom up the steep mountain path to the cavern where the owls’ nest was supposed to be. ‘Bloody hell, there are supposed to be ferocious owls here,’ Gaurav said. ‘Too bad; they’ll have to find shelter elsewhere.’
They squeezed inside and he put Shroom down again, settling her as comfortably as he could, with her back resting against the cavern wall. It was such a relief to be out of the bone-chilling wind and the driving rain. Here it seemed dry, though he could hear the sound of water plinking somewhere from further within. He flashed his torch around warily. ‘No sign of any birds.’
Zara put Shroom’s torch down on the ground, unzipped her knapsack and pulled out clothes. Shroom had wrapped her arms around herself and started shivering.
‘I’m cold, Taklu,’ she said, her teeth chattering.
‘Face the wall, Gaurav, and stay like that until I tell you,’ Zara ordered, and then turned to Shroom. ‘Come on, darling, take those clothes off before I drop off myself.’
She peeled off the little girl’s dungarees and shirt and rubbed her down vigorously with a towel. ‘There, you’re nice and dry now. But so cold! Here, put these on quickly.’ Zara had simply stuffed all the woollens she had carried to America into her knapsack when she heard that Gaurav had gone to the Himalayas. She wrapped Shroom in layers: woollen slacks and vest, turtleneck jumper and a fleece, until the little girl protested.
‘That’s enough, I’m boiling now!’ Her head wound had mercifully stopped bleeding. ‘He’s good!’ Shroom remarked sleepily. ‘He’s my partner; he saved my life. I was going to fall and he caught me and pulled me up with his bare hands!’
‘You just lie there and rest. We’ll get help as soon as this rain stops. Okay, Gaurav, you can turn around now.’
He turned slowly. Zara was mechanically sorting the clothes. In the reflected glow of the torch, water droplets sparkled in her curls like a thousand pearls and her cheeks glowed. But she was exhausted, and smiled tiredly at him. ‘Is this for real?’ she asked. ‘I still can’t believe any of it!’
A few moments later, there was a scrabbling sound from where Shroom lay propped against the cavern wall. ‘Hey, what’s this?’ she said and flashed her torch at something lying against the wall. There followed the sound of a zipper and more scrabbling noises.
‘What’s that?’
‘Special Agent Taklu, there’s someone’s knapsack here, a blue one marked Skyline Airways.’
‘What?’
‘There are some mobile phones inside and other electronic stuff – no, they’re more like TV remotes, actually.’
She was right. He frowned and shrugged. ‘Maybe Anantram and Dr Sham left them here. Maybe it’s their owl recording equipment. Better not to fiddle with them.’
‘Doesn’t look like it,’ Shroom snorted.
‘Never mind. Let them be. They’ll collect the bag whenever they want to.’
‘Oh, okay, if you insist.’ She flashed her torch around. ‘No owls here either.’ She turned back and rummaged in the knapsack again for a bit: some more scrabbling sounds, followed by a couple of sharp clicks and the sound of the zip being pulled. Then from the interior of the cavern came the sound of small stones ricocheting.
‘What’s that?’
‘Nothing, Special Agent,’ she said. ‘I was just chucking a few stones to make sure there are no wild animals in the cave, like the leopard.’
‘Thanks. How’s your ankle?’
‘It hurts, but I’ll survive…’ She yawned and lay down, her back resting against the wall, and her chin dropped to her chest. He looked at her guiltily. Zara pulled out a shawl and covered her gently. Then she turned to him.
‘She’s fallen asleep,’ she whispered. ‘And I’m exhausted too.’ A tremor ran through her.
‘You’re shivering,’ he said. ‘She might sleep for a while. She’s recovering from cancer.’
‘What? But who is she? Is she the little girl your dad told me about? And what are you doing here in the first place?’
He looked at her dully. ‘I was going to kill her this evening…’ he said softly.
‘Gaurav, am I hearing you right or is everything crazy or am I asleep? What are you talking about?’
‘The prime minister is her great-uncle. So in revenge for what they did to Rani… The cop shot her deliberately, and no one listened to me – well, Raveena and Monica did, but…’
‘Raveena and Monica?’ That perked her up a bit. ‘Who are they?’
‘The two girls I teased you about in Lodi Gardens. They’re here too – they’re her teachers.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s complicated. I thought it was the only way to teach the bastards a lesson. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t betray her. I couldn’t let her die thinking I had done this to her. I just couldn’t. It wouldn’t be fair to her – like it wasn’t fair to Rani.’ He was rambling.
‘You idiot!’ She had taken him in her arms and was kissing his face frantically. ‘You complete idiot!’
‘Sometimes I think I went crazy with hatred. But look at her – you know, she never admits defeat. She just doesn’t. She was hanging onto me, dangling over a sheer drop and saying she wasn’t scared!’
‘She calls you Taklu?’
‘Yes.’
‘And what’s her name? You called h
er Shroom…’
‘As in mushroom. She thinks her head looks like a mushroom. Her real name is Rukmini.’
‘Hmm, Taklu and Shroom.’ She sighed and leaned against his chest. ‘And I like you, Taklu, very much, but I’m very tired just now. I think I’ll just wake up and find myself back in Bombay.’
‘Are you cold – hey, you’re shivering. You’d better change too. Do you have more dry clothes?’
‘Yup, there should be some, but I’m still very jet-lagged.’ She told him her story. ‘So you see, I had to come. But I am very sleepy now.’
‘Zara? Zara? Hey, wake up!’
Her tired face had flopped down on his chest and she was fast asleep. He buried his face in her soaking hair and breathed her scent in deeply. Her windcheater and T-shirt were completely drenched, a surefire recipe for pneumonia. He propped her up gently beside Shroom and rummaged through her knapsack, pulling out clothes. And then he changed her. Goodness, how many woollen clothes she had packed, but thank god for that! He stuffed the wet clothes into her knapsack. With Shroom propped on one side of him and Zara on the other, he sat and waited for the rain to stop. Gently, he began drying out her hair with the towel she had used for Shroom.
Outside, in the pitch dark, the rain thundered down. Now it was Gaurav who started shivering as the cold took over him.
At around six that evening, the phone had rung at the forest rest-house, giving a jolt to both Raveena and Monica.
‘My god, it works! But who the hell could it be?’ Raveena looked at the black bakelite phone as though it would bite.
‘Just get it.’
‘Hello? Oh, hi, Kanika… I can barely hear you. What? Yeah, sure, no problem! Bye!’ She put the receiver down. ‘That was Kanika. She wants us to check on Gaurav. She said they will probably not be able to get back tonight – there have been landslides.’
‘Come on, maybe we can call him over for dinner or something.’
It was raining thinly by the time they reached the estate and Gaurav, of course, was long gone. ‘God, there’s not a soul around here!’ Monica looked around.
‘He must have gone for a walk.’
‘We could leave a note.’
They did, propping it up on the reception desk. When they were halfway back, the heavens opened up.
‘Oh, shit – we’ve had it.’
‘Dr Sham’s and Anantram’s house is just here. Let’s wait there.’
‘Okay. It’ll be better than getting soaked, I suppose.’
They walked up to the verandah and knocked. The cottage was dark, its windows shut and the curtains drawn. The rain gusted into the verandah.
‘Just our luck! They’re not home. Where the hell are they roaming about in this weather?’
‘Hey, Monica, did you hear that? There’s a door banging. My god, this rain is bloody freezing!’
They ran to the back of the cottage. The door leading to the kitchen swung open, then slammed back and forth.
‘Come on, let’s go in. Hello? Anyone home?’
They pushed open the door and entered the kitchen, and then went into the main living area. As always, it was neat and tidy: books and documents on the shelves, recording equipment stacked neatly. But on the floor there was a large piece of blueprint, like a newspaper, unfolding and flapping noisily as the gusts of wind blew through the banging door. Along with it, nearby, the shattered remains of the vase that had been placed on it and toppled in the wind. Raveena picked up the print and stared at it.
‘What is it?’ Monica asked, switching on a light and shaking out her hair.
‘Looks like a map of some sort.’
They flattened it out on the dining table and peered at it.
‘It looks like a map of the area. Look, that’s Vijaya’s house, that’s the estate… and that’s the track.’
They squinted at the map as the lights flickered ominously. ‘Mona, what’s that written near that wall – marked with those dashes and Xs in red? Nesting sites?’
‘Explosives here…’ Monica read slowly, peering at the map. ‘Something’s not right.’
‘There’s another one of those Xs here, at the mouth of the gorge, where that big rock is – see, it’s even marked.’
The sisters looked at each other. ‘Let’s check out those knapsacks,’ Raveena said softly. ‘There might be some explanation, but… I don’t like this.’
The bags were locked, heavy and clunky. Raveena, suddenly past caring about how they would explain all this, took a knife from the kitchen and ripped through the nylon.
‘Oh, my god!’ She stared in horror at the pistol she had pulled out.
Monica grabbed her hand. ‘Come on, Rave. We’ve got to go back home. I just hope the bloody phone’s still working. Don’t touch anything else in that knapsack – it might just blow up. We were right: those two are not birders, or security people – they’re going to blow up the big house.’
They splashed through the downpour and tripped up the slope to the rest-house. By some miracle the phone was still working. It was well past seven now and pitch-black.
The PM’s security detail was getting more and more agitated about the weather. The water in the stream rushing by the front gate of the house was rising by the minute. In a little while it would be surging over the bridge, making it impossible to cross. Water was also seeping through the embankment wall that kept the stream on its course to the waterfall. Some of the NSG commandos had heard the dull whump, followed by the rumble of rocks tumbling down, and had duly reported it. ‘A rock fall,’ Vijaya had said. But then, like Gaurav, she too soon noticed something odd. The roar of the waterfall, which should have deepened to a thunderous note by now, had lessened. And then the phone rang.
‘Yes? Monica? What? Are you and Raveena all right? Okay, both of you stay put. Lock your doors. Those men are dangerous. We’ll be in touch. You said Gaurav was not at the estate? Okay, thanks, dear.’ She hung up and hollered: ‘Rukmini!’
The ‘Do Not Disturb At Any Cost’ sign was still outside Shroom’s door. Inside, there was no sign of the little girl. Gudiya and Savita simply nodded and were on their way. They knew where she had gone.
The head of the security detail came up. ‘Madam, the helicopter pilot says it’s impossible to take off in this weather; they’re lashing down the machine lest it topple. But we have to get him out – the water is rising dangerously. Does it always happen like this? Is there any other route?’
‘No. But there’s another problem.’ Quickly she told him about the girls’ findings at the ‘researchers’ cottage. He just stared at her, appalled, and then nodded. ‘We can take care of them – they’ll be as hampered by the weather as we are, no matter what they’re planning.’
Vijaya frowned and shook her head slowly. ‘Something is not right – the waterfall usually sounds much louder after this sort of rain.’
‘What do you mean, madam?’ The man had barked a number of instructions into his walkie-talkie and now stared at her.
She went on, ‘I mean, with this kind of rain, there should be more water pouring over the cliff, making a deeper noise. But it’s not; in fact, it’s, it’s…’ She was whispering now as she thought about what Monica had told her: a map with markings on it, with the ‘explosives’ notation along the embankment wall and gorge. ‘It’s as if the gorge has been blocked.’ She went pale. ‘I think they’ve blocked the waterfall. Probably at the gorge. And they’re going to breach the wall with explosives when the water backs up enough. There’ll be a flash flood here… If the gorge is blocked, you’ll have to blow it open again.’ Rapidly she gave him directions. ‘But find Rukmini first – please find her.’
He nodded. ‘Yes, ma’am. Three men will remain here. I’m taking the others up.’
‘What?’ the PM said when he heard. ‘Rukmini’s gone out in this weather?’
‘Probably to meet that friend of hers.’
‘I told her he could meet me tomorrow. I thought she’d ring him up.’
> ‘You don’t know Rukmini. She must have imagined she was on some top-secret mission.’ She looked at him and his personal security officers with distaste: ‘You and your cloak-and-dagger shenanigans!’
With the two girls fast asleep on either side of him, Gaurav waited for the rain to subside, fighting off the tremors that wracked his body from time to time. He heard a sharp explosive crack and then the unmistakable crash of a tree falling – lightning had struck a tree, he thought; thank god they were safe in the cave. Actually, he could set out himself right now and get help, leaving Zara to look after Shroom. He couldn’t get any wetter, or colder, for that matter. He was just about to shake Zara awake and tell her, when he heard voices, followed by footsteps and saw the beam of a torch flickering at the entrance. His heart leapt.
Dr Sham followed by Anantram, clad in heavy-duty olive-green raincoats and capes, entered and stopped – stunned. Gaurav flashed his light over them. ‘Hi, sorry, we didn’t want to disturb your owls but Shroom’s been hurt. I brought her here for shelter. The stream’s running too high.’
Dr Sham took a deep breath. Anantram walked over and picked up the knapsack lying in the corner near Shroom. He opened it, flashed his torch inside and nodded. ‘It’s okay,’ he muttered.