by Sachin Garg
Ouch. That hurt. It hurt so much that if Navya’s life was not on the line, I would have definitely left that moment itself, instead of waiting till the morning. But I was desperate. And I needed what I was asking for. So with all the power that I could muster, I laughed it off.
‘It’s not something you laugh about Samar.’
‘Look at it this way Roy. What if you get caught? You are kicked out of this company internship? So what? Look at me, I am faking my internship any way. You can also fake your internship if you get kicked out, no?’
‘Shut the fuck up now Samar!’ Roy said, now seriously angry. ‘Pseudoephedrine is a restricted substance. If we get caught with pseudo on us, we don’t just get fired from our internship. We get fucking thrown into a jail with a non-bailable warrant. And that is not something I am up for!’
I could see that the argument was over there. There was no way Roy would help us on this when his reaction was like this. And with enough awkwardness in the room to break some glasses, we switched off the light, and made some futile attempts to fall asleep.
After a while, I noticed that Roy, who had slept right next to me, was not there. He was sitting on the table, with a piece of paper in front of him, as he scribbled fervently on it. I rubbed my eyes and got up on my feet. I went to the washroom and splashed some water on my face after brushing my teeth.
Vandana was still deep asleep. I went and sat in the chair in front of Roy. And threw a cursory glance at what he was scribbling.
As I leaned in, Roy looked at me in all seriousness, ‘This is a rough sketch of this company campus,’ he said. And then it struck me. Something had crossed his mind during the night and he had changed his mind. He was in!
‘This is the main gate where you entered. And this, over here, is where we are sitting right now. The company campus has three major parts. First is the office area, where everybody sits. Second is the laboratory area, where all the tests and experiments take place. And the third, and the one we need to focus on, is the storage area where all chemicals, restricted and otherwise, are stored.’
‘So here is the plan,’ he continued. ‘Every day, I take a coffee break at three in the afternoon. Today, instead of having coffee, I will see you here, at this point exactly,’ he said and marked a dot on the company layout. ‘From here, we will move in this direction because fewer people hangout in this area. And then, bypassing the main reception, we will cross over to the restricted chemicals storage room, here.’
I was listening in all seriousness. Because of Roy’s mischievous nature, people often forgot that he had a sharp mind. And I was reminded of it after several years.
‘The government has laid out security measures which need to be taken while storing restricted chemicals. But I don’t think any Indian company cares to follow those guidelines. Tanroxy normally employs some untrained guards and I have a feeling that section will be no different.’ ‘But still, we would need some sort of authorization to enter the restricted area, no?’
‘Yes, we would. But we are lucky in that respect. In my internship, we are using a restricted substance too. So I will get written permission from my guide to let us to that part of the storage.’
Once again, the feeling that God is with us, and that he wants us to succeed at this crazy task took me over and I found new morale to do it. It was the sixth of July, with four days to go for the party. Time was slipping by. We would have to get our hands on Psuedo today itself and head back to Delhi the same evening.
Roy was leaving for work. But there was only one question hanging in my head. I had to ask him this.
‘Roy?’ I said.
‘Yes?’
‘But why? Why are you risking so much for us?’
Roy looked at me. Initially shocked, he then smiled. ‘Brother, I have given you enough pain. I will consider this as a part of my redemption. But maybe, it will alleviate some pain I am feeling for whatever happened last year,’ he said and closed the door behind him, as he left for work, leaving Vandana and me alone in his room.
‘He is a good guy,’ Vandana said as soon as he was out of earshot.
We looked around a bit through the afternoon. And by the time it was three, an instant adrenalin rush took over and we met Roy, exactly where we had decided to meet.
‘Here, wear this,’ he said, as he handed over a badge to me. I wore it around my neck.
‘Who is Avinash Kumar?’ I asked, reading the name on the badge.
‘He is my project mate. With this badge on you, the guards will get even more casual about you.’
Definitely, he understood the seriousness of this now. And his attention to detail was phenomenal. He showed me an official looking piece of paper.
‘What is this?’ I asked.
‘This is our ticket to enter any section of storage area,’ he said. I supposed it meant it was the request letter for some restricted chemical.
We followed the root he had explained to me. And our first stoppage came when we crossed over to the storage area. Roy had planned for this. We showed the request letter for a chemical and our badges and they let us in. Now the next step was to look for pseudoephedrine. The chemicals were arranged alphabetically and thankfully, it didn’t take us very long to locate the alphabet P.
I stopped close to the entrance of the section and let Roy go ahead, so that I can keep a check if someone was coming. As Roy went in, I looked around hoping no one would come. I kept one eye at the entrance, and the other in the direction where Roy had gone, hoping he would come soon.
But Roy didn’t. Instead, a big moustached man appeared on the wrong side of me.
‘Hey hi! Can I help you? What chemical you’re looking for?’
‘Not really. I am just looking for some Phosphorus. I’ll just pick some and go.’
‘Oh great. What lab are you from?’
Now this was tricky. I didn’t know what lab Roy was from. What was worse was that I didn’t know the names of any lab in this company.
‘I am from Chemical Analysis,’ I blurted the first name that came to my mind.
‘Which scientist?’
‘Dr Mehrotra,’ I said, confidently, even though I was hearing the name Dr Mehrotra for the first time myself.
‘Oh okay, tell him Debashish said hi,’ he replied, smiled and left.
I took a sigh of relief and looked in Roy’s direction once again. He was still nowhere in sight. I decided to walk in, where he was. I looked around, and spotted Roy standing in front of a rack.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Check this out,’ Roy said with a huge grin on his face.
I went and saw the white coloured powder in the bags that were kept in front of Roy. I wanted to excitedly punch the air; this was the first step of success in this crazy pursuit. But we still had to get out of here, which was the difficult part.
Roy picked a packet and motioned me to leave. But I didn’t move. I picked another bag and gave it to Roy. And picked two more bags for myself.
‘Dude! Really now? Four fucking bags?!’
‘Yeah, I’d need them.’’
‘Are you planning to get half the city high on Meth?’
‘No. It would be a hit and trial method, Roy. I am pretty sure I won’t be able to make it work in one go. I am accounting for wastages too.’
‘But you are increasing the risk four times by doing that!’
‘It’s either four bags or none at all. And anyway, one bag or four, what is the difference?’
‘The difference is that if they lose one bag, they blame the care taker. But if four bags go missing, they will be after our lives. They might even report a burglary or something.’
Roy succumbed after some fight, especially in the arena we were standing in. He was too nervous to argue any more. We picked the four bags and rushed out of the storage area faster than I thought was possible.
Vandana was waiting for us in the car. We weren’t spending any second more than we had to in that company campus w
ith the pseudoephedrine on us. I hugged Roy back. That was an important hug. With that hug, I felt all the negativity between us gone forever. We were back to being the Samar-Roy duo that we were known to be.
Vandana and I were on the road once again, waiting for our next adventure, which wasn’t very far. I checked my watch. It was five already. By the time we would reach home, we would have only enough energy to cook dinner and doze off. The sixth day out of the ninth was also over. From here onwards, the only part left was the actual cooking of these ingredients. And come to think of it, the toughest part had just begun.
Vandana seemed different ever since she had told me her story. She seemed very detached from everything around her. It was as if she had been pretending until then and having come out of the veil freed her of all such strings.
Another thing that did was it made me feel too small. I felt my worries were too inconsequential. Whatever I worried about made me feel immature. It definitely changed my whole perspective of life.
By the time we reached, it was dinner time but we didn’t have the energy to even sit at a restaurant and wait for the food to be served. We decided to go back to the flat, and just doze off.
I said goodnight to Vandana and then went to my room, changed into my night clothes and turned the light off. Just then, I heard a knock on the door. Vandana walked in. There was something different about her today. It was as if she was finally letting her insecurities come out. It was as if her loneliness was surfacing and becoming an issue for her.
She held my hand and accompanied me to the bed. She hugged me as we slept off, like a mother protecting her child from all the evil there is. I felt warmth which can melt the strongest of metals.
I Didn’t Have All Day
My eyes fell on the phone. The green LED on the top meant I had a missed call. There were four and it was Aradhya’s, the girl from the publishing house. It couldn’t have been good news.
‘Hello?’ she said, when I called her back. ‘Samar, where are you? I called you so many times like an hour back!’ ‘I was sleeping. What happened?’
‘Well, I have news. And hope you are in Delhi.’
‘Why? What happened?’
‘I got a call from one of my friends telling me that the party is now tomorrow evening, eighth of July instead of ninth. It’s in a house in Civil Lines. Ronnie called me this morning. He would have never cared to call me to tell me that there’s a change in dates but it seems he really needs some Meth in this party. Do you understand what that means?’
‘What?’
‘That you cannot mess this up now.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I told him that you have good stock and you won’t disappoint.’
‘Don’t worry. Everything is under control,’ I lied, with my body almost getting numb from fear.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, yes.’
‘I’ll see you tomorrow night then.’
‘Bye.’
My head started whirling when I hung up.
On one side, there was Vandana, whose cancer was deteriorating every day. On the other side, there was Navya, who was sprinting towards moral and physical decay. On one side, I had a broad timeline as to how much time Vandana had. On the other side, Navya was one wrong step away from being lost forever.
But I had made my choice. Navya was living in way too dangerous a world. She would have to be saved first. And then, I will leave no stone unturned to save Vandana. Every passing minute was a reminder that I didn’t have all day. I needed to be quick.
‘So what is the plan now?’ Vandana asked me.
It was ten in the morning. We had all the ingredients with us, in the flat itself. And yet, there was such a long way to go, with so little time. Weeks of planning had boiled down to this. For days I had been thinking Meth, how to cook it, where to get the material from, where to get the equipment, what if something went wrong, etc. But this was the big morning.
I went for a quick shower and when I came out, Vandana was not on the bed. She must have gone to her room, I thought. I slipped into a neat T-shirt and went to Vandana’s room.
‘So how do we go about it,’ Vandana said, when I entered her room.
‘Well, I wanted to do a few experiments before getting down to the real process. I wanted to know how a few chemicals work. But there seems to be no time. So we will basically divide the process into two parts.’
‘And what are those?’
‘We will carry out the process as a test first. We will take just a small quantity, and do it at a low scale in the first go, so that if it goes wrong, we wouldn’t have wasted any raw materials. And then, when the little quantity comes out right, we will go all-in in the next round and cook all we can.’
‘And considering we have two days, how many try runs can we take before making the final thing?’
‘Just one.’
By eleven thirty, we were outside the Chemistry Lab, which was going to be the place where we would do it. I knew that our lab had everything that we needed. What I didn’t know was that how were we going to go in and be there for two days.
There was an assistant who took care of the labs during vacations. Some professors were supposed to carry out their research projects in the labs during the vacations. But they seldom used to turn up and the lab assistants were left idle with two long months of coming and opening these labs with almost no visitors.
I was a bit worried that the lab may not be open because the assistants weren’t accountable to anyone during the vacations. But it was.
‘So can we just walk into this lab?’ Vandana asked me. ‘Well, we will have to think of a pretext,’ I said, more to myself.
‘So what is the profile of this lab assistant?’
‘Well, she must be in her early twenties too. She is fair and but not sophisticated, probably stays in Shahbad Dairy, a local village. Nobody cares much about her here, but I feel she must be respected back in her village, with a government job and all,’ I said.
I knew what was to follow. Vandana had a naughty smile on her face. I knew that in a few minutes, I would be throwing some random pickup line at her.
‘You are going to make me go and say something corny to her, aren’t you?’
‘I am so tempted to make you do that but that would be risky. I have a much safer idea, which will have a much better chance of working.’
There was an audible and genuine sigh of relief from my mouth.
We waited outside for a while. Vandana wanted to have a good sight of her before we walked in.
A few minutes later, the Lab Assistant walked out. I could see from Vandana’s reaction that she had been waiting to get an eyeful of her. The assistant was wearing glasses and had visibly knitted brows that day; bad mood. Vandana was observing her closely.
‘Well, it seems I made a good decision. This one would have been hard to charm for you,’ she softly murmured. Even though I agreed, I took a teeny bit of offense as well.
‘I mean she doesn’t seem very open to mingling with anyone. We would have to handle her my way.’
‘And you can tell all that by just looking at her from this distance?’ I asked.
‘Years of experience,’ Vandana smiled.
The lab’s door was open, with just the lab assistant Ashima present.
‘Hello ma’am,’ I said to her, with a nod of my head.
‘Hello,’ she replied in a suspicious voice, relishing the little joys of power her position gave her.
‘Ashima ma’am, this is Vandana ma’am. She has just joined as the Head of Department for Chemistry Department. I was just telling her how well versed you are with everything in this lab.’
‘Head of Department? What happened to Khanna sir?’ Ashima asked.
‘Oh, he has moved to some other college,’ I replied.
‘Oh okay,’ she said. And began a guided boring tour for her new super boss. I was just hoping she doesn’t throw any questions at Vandana, because she kn
ew as much about Chemistry as I knew about French. But it seemed to be shaping alright.
And once the tour was done, Vandana looked at me. ‘Very impressive laboratory you have here. Ashima seems quite experienced as well. As for the complex and challenging experiment I told you Samar, I shall sit here as you get down to it.’
Vandana took the professors chair, as I looked at Ashima from the corner of my eye to see how she was taking it. Thankfully, she didn’t suspect any foul play. She bought every word of what we had said. Vandana in her suit looked like a professor and she learnt to talk like one too. Ashima went into her small cabin, as I wondered what she did there sitting alone, in the pigeon box. Meanwhile, I went out to my car and brought all the stuff that we were carrying. It took me three rounds to carry enough stuff for one test experiment. I wondered what would happen if the test went alright and we had to do the final thing.
Finally, after a week of rigorous effort, it was time for action. I began at about one in the afternoon. I had four hours until five o’clock when the lab would officially close down. I took the powdered pseudoephedrine and mixed it with red phosphorus and hydriodic acid. I meticulously filtered out red phosphorus, and neutralized the remaining acid. And then I drained liquid Meth carefully.
It may or may not seem like a bunch of easy steps as I list them out here, but in reality, each step was a headache. Measurements had to be perfect. I had to make sure foreign particles did not into the ingredients, both, which were being cooked and the ones which were kept on a side. I had to set up complex apparatus to carry out the whole thing. I was fast getting mentally exhausted. And the time deadline did not help either.
Just when I was passing Hydrogen Chloride gas into liquid Meth, Ashima came to us from her cabin. I had been in deep concentration all day and had lost absolute track of time. Only when she disturbed me I realized that it was evening already.
‘It’s time to close the lab Samar, I’m sorry,’ Ashima said. I looked at Vandana, who was half dozing all this while, and she was as clueless as I was. I realized I couldn’t leave this for her.