The Third Squad

by V. Sanjay Kumar

  As they walk the dark alleyway Tiwari falters. They stand briefly below the sign. Ustad knows better than to press on.

  Tiwari is down to a whisper. “I don’t trust myself today,” he says.

  Please don’t whimper, thinks Ustad.

  “Will I regret this?” wonders Tiwari aloud.

  “Perhaps,” replies Ustad. “But you might regret turning away too.”

  They stumble up the stairs.

  Giselle wears a floral gown. Her makeup is layered and the edges show. There is no drama. She leads Tiwari away. It will be a night of pain for her but she doesn’t yet know it.

  Tiwari finds a side of himself that wears her down. She goads him on initially in a practiced manner but then Tiwari takes over. He learns the meaning of the words zabardasti and manmaani as he forces himself on her again and again till her cries are genuine. He cannot stop. He has her in his control and he revels in that feeling of power, her audible pain heightening his pleasure.

  When Ustad leads him away Tiwari is very quiet. They walk down the stairs in silence.

  “What happened?” he finally asks him.

  Tiwari grins. “She refused to tell me her name. I kept asking her and she refused.”

  “I see.”

  “I asked her to say my name,” says Tiwari. “And she did, again and again. Tiwari, Tiwari, Tiwari.” He imitates her and it sounds awful. His grin gives way to a look of wonder as he examines his fingers, his hands, and the rest of his expanse. “She kept saying my name, miyan,” he repeats, hearing it in his head. He flexes his fingers and hands, then does a full stretch with his arms. “Randibaazi, miyan! Randibaazi!” he shouts.

  Ustad worries at his tone. “Why do you need to know her name?”

  Tiwari shrugs. He wants to remember her by her name. His first conquest.

  Later, when they are in a cab, Ustad’s phone rings. His face darkens as he speaks. He suggests a good doctor. He then turns to look at his fat customer. Why, why did he have to hurt her so badly that she needed medical attention? Who is this man sitting beside him?

  “Why are you in this business, my friend?” asks Tiwari, noticing his expression. “Just for the money, or for the kicks?”

  Tiwari is blissfully unaware of the dark thoughts churning in Ustad’s head. Ustad is no psychologist but he has seen enough men and the things they are capable of. Very rarely is he surprised anymore. He knows one thing for sure: there is no end to violence, just as there are no limits to pain and pleasure. His customers are capable of inflicting madness on others and themselves. This Tiwari looks harmless on the surface, but he needs violence because it gives him a voice.

  Department of Counterintelligence

  Parthasarathy had a visitor, an underling who was thought to be deaf and dumb. He stood before him and said nothing. It was common knowledge that counterintelligence sent such emissaries who were mannered in the tradition of yore, a sinister tradition where the invite was delivered as a wordless missive. Please come. You know where.

  He walked with him to a jeep outside with an 888 license plate. They traversed a short distance, and next to a famous bhelpuri joint they climbed a staircase that led to a single unmarked door. The door opened to a small square room, lit like a cave and whose walls bore the mark of its occupant, Mishra. It was a personal office. In the sarkari world this was an aberration.

  On the wall were photographs of Mishra’s family, some clippings from newspapers bearing his likeness, and some quotations from people whom he presumably respected. There were portraits of leaders like Gandhi and Nehru that seemed left behind from the previous occupant. Mishra’s taste had rubbed off on every inch of that office. The furniture seemed to have come from his residence and there was good-quality leather and polished teak wood. A faint smell of tobacco lingered in the room despite the daily scrubbing.

  Yet the place was a mess. Papers and files fought with books and magazines for floor space. Staff had learned not to touch a thing. There would be hell to pay if even one piece of paper was out of place.

  Mishra removed his reading glasses and placed them on the table. Once Partha sat down he swept the papers away, and they fluttered to the ground. Partha watched the show in silence.

  Mishra was to the point; he had dragged himself out of another meeting for this. “I need to get back quickly so I’ll be succinct. Your ass is on the line. One of your sharpshooter teams has a maverick at its helm, about whom I am hearing strange rumors. The other team is headed by an unscrupulous businessman who has been spotted visiting whorehouses and has seriously injured a woman. We are beginning to look like a bunch of squabbling chutiyas. Ranvir Pratap and Tiwari are fighting with each other like your post is somebody’s goddamn inheritance. Mr. Parthasarathy, you’re getting paid a salary for this?”

  It was a loaded opening. True to form Partha shook his head with ambivalence.

  “You did nothing,” added Mishra. “You should have intervened. Why didn’t you?”

  “I had my reasons,” replied Partha.

  “You mean allowing all this to happen—”

  “Was perhaps the best course of action,” completed Partha.

  Mishra sat back and cupped his mouth while he lit a cigarette. He wore a slight frown because from the corner of his eye he could glimpse a folder containing his chest X-rays. A small shadow had shown up. If we let this grow, the doctor had said, it will eat up your lung. Mishra had learned a lesson at the clinic, that doing nothing could be life-threatening.

  “Sir, shall we go through the material on the Third Squad together?” asked Partha. “I’d like to talk you through it.”

  “Be brief.”

  “Some years ago, when Ranvir was put in command of the Third Squad, he was tasked with assembling a team. He went about it in his own way. The normal course was to contact HR and admin and put in a recruitment request. They would assemble candidates from various internal resources, since there was no shortage of officers who wished to get into the encounter squads. But Ranvir started with a document that laid out a different set of qualities he was seeking in his personnel. It was a selection manual that he prepared himself.”

  “I remember it well enough,” said Mishra.

  “Talk about going against the grain. Ranvir Pratap turned conventional hit-squad recruiting on its head. He waltzed to the other extreme. Look at his team: two of them had weak legs, most were sensitive to bright lights, one was clumsy beyond belief and couldn’t shoot, they were all poor communicators, and none of them knew the slightest thing about teamwork.”

  “All very fascinating, but it’s history,” said the chief. “Do you have anything concrete for me?”

  “I had three of them tested by a psychologist,” Partha replied quickly. “Munna, Kumaran, and Tapas took the test.”

  “Test for what?”

  “Autism. Asperger’s, actually.”

  “I see. And?” He eyed the other papers that Partha was carrying.

  Partha nodded and handed over a note from Evam.

  The chief read quietly. His face remained expressionless, but the fact that his cigarette died in the ashtray was a clear sign of his attention. “Interesting,” he finally said. “What do you make of it?”

  “Sir, what medicine does not need is literature. Unfortunately, that is what Asperger’s has in spades. And it’s easy to understand why.”

  “Why?”

  “Firstly, they say it is not a disease. They describe it as a condition, a predisposition. Then they tell you there is no cure. The diagnosis comes from administering tests that are basically long lists of behavioral questions. Failing this test places you in a category. Imagine being told, We are happy to inform you that you finally belong—but to a group of outcasts who make us very uncomfortable.”

  “Quite a story, Parthasarathy,” Mishra said with amusement. “You know, this reminds me of an experience with my daughter. She had what we thought was a bad squint. Turned out to be a lazy eye. One eye was lazier than the other. The
doctor had no cure. I called it a case of idiopathy.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning the doctor was an idiot and the patient was pathetic.”

  Partha did not know how to react; he looked down at his shoes.

  “Where is this written test that you administered?” Mishra inquired.

  Partha pulled out a bunch of other papers and handed them to Mishra.

  The chief flipped through a yes-or-no exam. The questions seemed innocuous, which disappointed him a little. He read the first question aloud: “Do you expect other people to know your thoughts, experiences, and opinions without you having to tell them?” He continued to read on silently until he reached question 48. “Do you tend to procrastinate? Procrastinate—is that what we’re doing?” This seemed to cause the chief a measure of grief. “Mr. Parthasarathy, are you telling me that based on this behavioral test, these simple observations, we can declare someone mentally fit or unfit? These questions make me nervous—even I could fail this test.”

  “All the best tests look simple when you take them,” said Partha. “If the tests make you self-conscious, they won’t work.”

  “Why can’t they construct a test for normal people to take? After all, how do people know if they are normal in the first place? Let us say such a test existed—do you think Ranvir, Evam, or Tiwari would pass it?”

  Partha chuckled, pleased that his name wasn’t included with the other three.

  “If a person is intelligent enough to finish this test, I wouldn’t worry too much,” said the chief. “But it’s hard to take all this seriously.”

  “We have to, sir,” said Partha. “On record, I mean.”

  The men fell silent until Mishra changed the subject: “Could you tell me more about Rana? I respect him, and so do many of my colleagues, but I haven’t been able to get a clear sense of him.”

  Partha felt the need to unburden about this man who worked for him, who was so good in so many ways and yet refused to ever toe a line. “Where do I begin?” he mused.

  Some tea and biscuits arrived and the chief poured the tea himself. He was glad he didn’t have to add milk or sugar—milk clouded good taste and sugar drowned it. Partha took this first sip tentatively, anticipating the hot brew. It was a light blend that had been steeped to perfection. He let out a deep sigh and the chief acknowledged the approval by looking less severe.

  Partha broke the reverie and spoke in a confiding tone. “Rana has his own way of doing things. Right from the beginning of his career he followed a different method. He gets things done. He has an acute sense of right and wrong, and he is impatient with the slowness of the justice system. Ranvir always says: I wear many hats and all of them fit. He is the policeman, the prosecution, the judge, the executioner, and the priest.”

  “Parthasarathy, are you worried?”

  “Worried? About what?”

  “About Rana and Tiwari.”

  “Why do you ask that?”

  “I’m guessing here.”

  “I suspect something bigger is brewing between them,” confessed Partha. “I wanted to back Rana, but honestly, Karan and his colleagues scare me. They are so ruthless and their boss is headstrong and righteous. They are like vigilantes. And times have changed because the media will come down hard if they feel the police force is administering summary justice. So I am trapped between two troublesome options.”

  “Parthasarathy, place these tests on record. Make it look like we suspected something about the Third Squad and commissioned these tests—and that now, sure enough, our suspicions have been confirmed. And please protect Rana from this. I don’t want anything on record that says he knew this from the beginning. I will in the meanwhile destroy the other material.” The chief suggested administering the test on Karan as well.

  Partha agreed to do so immediately. Ranvir had taken a month’s medical leave but was still in Mumbai and accessible. Then Partha realized he should be going. They shook hands a little awkwardly.

  “Thanks for your time,” said Partha, not knowing his own fate at the end of the meeting.

  “My pleasure.” Mishra sounded less cold. “May I take the liberty of quoting something personal?” He didn’t wait for Partha to respond. “It goes like this: Maybe some men aren’t meant to be tamed. Maybe they just need to run free till they find someone just as wild to run with them.”

  Partha understood that the chief was backing Ranvir to the hilt, which wasn’t surprising since both were IPS officers. He wondered where Mishra got this quote from. Could it be a book like The Art of War? “May I ask your source?” he asked.

  “I do not read profound books,” said Mishra, smiling for the first time. “But I do watch Sex and the City.”

  The Test

  After the test, which took me more than an hour, I emerged into the sunshine. I was wearing dark glasses, feeling like an aviator from a squadron that flew birds through clouds. I shielded my eyes. The test was not agreeable and it had left me feeling queasy. I felt as if a probe had been lodged inside me somewhere.

  It seemed that the Ranvir Sena was in the crosshairs, and Ranvir and the three of us had been lined against a wall. And since Ranvir was on leave and I was reporting to Parthasarathy for a month, I felt exposed.

  I headed home, taking the long route by foot. The hair on my neck stood against my collar, my insides were churning, and the queasy feeling would not go away even after I arrived home and set my eyes on my Nandini.

  “I have a headache,” I told her. “They hired a psychologist to give me a test.”

  I had a coffee but it wouldn’t stop my yawning. Nandini gave me my prescription pills, which some idiot doctor said I needed to keep me calm. I popped them into my mouth in front of Nandini’s watchful eye, then went to the washroom and spat them out.

  “Don’t you go into your room this early,” scolded the wife. “Talk to me first. I’ve been waiting for you.”

  I needed my room right then. I needed to sit at my desk. I needed to read something that could distract me.

  “What’s the psychologist’s name? Do you have his address?” asked Nandini.

  Should I let her into my childhood, that one last place that was mine? It didn’t matter; she searched my shirt pockets and found his card. Evam Bhaskar. In my presence she called him, pretending to be a mother with a special child. “Can I come now?” she asked. When he said yes, she got up abruptly and left me alone there.

  * * *

  Evam arrives just as Nandini does and escorts her into his ward. They enter the facility in silence. There are the usual number of children and some mothers there. They greet Evam with warmth and for a few minutes he is occupied with them. Nandini watches, fascinated. She discerns a difference in the kids; it’s not too hard to make out. They smile readily and some of the mothers look at her and smile too. When she smiles back they are by her side. They need to touch her . . . and they do. They need to talk . . . and they do. The questions begin.

  “Where is your child? Bring your child next time.”

  “First visit? You should come here. This isn’t like the other places.”

  Nandini takes a wrench to places locked up inside her. There are moments she will remember, moments she will never forget. A couple of hours go by. As evening shadows form Evam takes her aside. And he talks to her because he needs to, and then he cannot stop. Not all that he says adds up but it fits in with that day and that moment.

  “Empty your mind of the words that people gave you, the clichés and the pretense. Spend time in places like these and you will never go to a place of worship again. What gods will you seek after these children have knocked on your doors? You go home and find questions that ransack your mind. There are everyday dreams you have seen that have been left behind.”

  She lets him continue on and says nothing.

  “We do not have the grace to deal with difference. People go mad because the differences are minor, and yet they are unforgiving. That is all that occupies them. I can hear the
m yearn. Be like me, child. You are mine. Talk like me. And when they don’t, they shout at me. Show me the fault line, doctor, they tell me. And set it right.”

  * * *

  Fittingly, Karan had foggy dreams that night as a blanket of smog hung over the city like a slow-building cloud seeking form.

  Evam sat in his office and wondered what would happen to Karan now that the tests had been handed over to Parthasarathy. Life had come full circle. The young boys that he had nurtured had grown into fine young men, they had found tough jobs, and they had done well. But things were turning against them. This need to continue to test them and perhaps brand them as “different” was disturbing. What could he do to help them?

  Mumbai transforms people into characters, thought Evam, reflecting upon the colorful crew who had surrounded him the past few years. Tiwari the mind setter, Ranvir the vigilante, and the slew of associates both living and dead. Each of them was custom-made; they had no creed written against their name. Among them was Karan with one foot in each camp: a neurotypical on the one hand or an Aspie if you wished to brand him as such.

  Evam decided to write a letter to Parthasarathy defending Karan against those who would seek to label him. As an academic, Partha needed some convincing that among all these people who comprised his force, Ranvir’s team wasn’t the one that was really strange.

  * * *

  Karan’s chart resembled a rock amid a circle, as if it were a meteorite heading to earth. The scoring was marked below:

  Your Aspie score: 123 of 200

  Your neurotypical (nonautistic) score: 94 of 200

  You seem to have both Aspie and neurotypical traits.

  “Can anyone take this test?” asked Mishra, the CI chief, lighting a cigarette and then looking at it distastefully.

  Parthasarathy nodded. “It’s readily available online. This is intentional because many Aspies don’t even know they have the condition.”

  “Then I suppose even I could be one,” said the chief, stubbing out the cigarette and coughing. “The questions are deceptively easy.”