Miss Laila, Armed and Dangerous

by Manu Joseph

  That is what the other passengers, especially in the front rows of the economy class, are surely thinking. Some murmurs grow. There is talk about how empty the business section is. Vaid has a fair idea what is about to occur. The passengers will play their hand wrong. They will do it the activist way.

  The seat-belt sign goes off, the crew gets busy with the food trays. The infant has not stopped wailing. The curtain separating the classes is drawn but through the gaps Vaid follows the beginnings of a revolt.

  One of the men flanking the mother, the balding man on the aisle seat, makes the predictable request to a stewardess. He asks her to transfer the mother and the infant to the business class. It is not a bad move but the man is unable to avoid the moralizing tone. ‘This should have been obvious to the crew,’ he says. The hostess says she would consider the request but she does nothing. Soon, as the cries of the baby escalate, the man makes a more forceful request. He is joined by a few other passengers, including the mother, of course.

  They admonish the crew, thereby claiming a high moral position. But there was a reason why the crew had not upgraded the woman in the first place. There is a reason why things are the way they are and the reason is often very good.

  Insulted by a moral reprimand, the airline crew now resists by showing a higher moral cause – they claim that there is regulation against late upgrades, and that there are other women with infants in the economy class who may demand to become refugees in the business class when their infants begin to cry. The crew does not mention a more practical reason, which is that the old man in the business section is a patriarch of the Sangh and he may not like it if his island of peace is treated as a daycare.

  When activism is surprised by excellent reasons against its moral cause, it feels compelled to defame the reasons. So the passengers begin to accuse the crew of inventing spurious reasons. The activists thus shift from a moral cause to a wrong premise. Everything that they would do from this point will be a waste of time. Some middle-aged men may receive general appreciation for exhibiting their low-stakes goodness, but the mother will continue to travel in great misery. The story of the nation.

  There is a simpler way to upgrade the woman.

  He wonders what Miss Iyer would think of the moral passengers of the flight. Would she view their protest as activism or as an act of decency? She would probably see activism. The passengers who demand that the mother be upgraded have self-interest, a latent contempt for the unattainable business class, and so badly want to shame the system that casts them as lesser citizens that they exploit the misery of a circumstantial underclass – the mother with an infant-in-arms. The primary intent of the moralizing passengers is not the welfare of the mother.

  A patriarch and a modern young woman are natural foes, yet Miss Iyer and he see something in the goodness syndicate that most people cannot. They can see a feudal system where the strong use the weak to attack the stronger.

  In the film Longest Hunger Strike on Earth, Miss Iyer goes to meet Sharmila, a woman who has refused to have food or water for the past fifteen years in protest against a law that gives the Indian armed forces extraordinary powers to violate human rights. She has also refused to comb her hair or look at herself in a mirror. The government has not intervened in these sacrifices. She is almost a free woman. The only thing the government ensures is that it feeds her through a tube that passes through her nose and reaches her stomach.

  The film opens with Sharmila studying her fingers as though waiting for the interview to begin. Her face is in a perpetual grimace. A tube emerges from beneath her shawl and runs into her nose. There is the sound of a door opening. Sharmila looks up, and she looks shocked. Then an uncertain smile comes to her face.

  When Miss Iyer enters the frame, it is evident why Sharmila was so surprised. Miss Iyer has inserted a tube into her own nose. ‘This is horrible,’ she says.

  ‘Are you making fun of me?’

  ‘It’s horrible, Sharmila, to live with a tube up your nose.’

  ‘There are worse things in this world.’

  ‘Why is the government trying to feed you when you keep telling the courts you don’t wish to die?’

  ‘They don’t believe me.’

  ‘They must know that if you really wanted to die, you would have died by now. You’re not that type. You wish to live.’

  ‘I love life. That’s all I tell the Indian government. I love life.’

  ‘Why are you going through this?’ Miss Iyer says, tugging gently at Sharmila’s nasal tube.

  ‘For my people,’ Sharmila says.

  ‘That’s what the activists around you have trained you to say. They have employed you, Sharmila, as a saint with a tube up her nose. Sainthood is a form of employment, you know that, right?’

  ‘Are you really a journalist?’

  ‘You’re in love. There is a man who loves you, Sharmila. You keep all his letters in a box and you read them. You want to live like a person, not a saint.’

  ‘I think you must leave.’

  ‘Are you stuck with this “iron lady” act? Are you stuck, Sharmila? There is no shame in giving up. You know that. There is no shame.’

  There is the sound of a door opening and the exclamation of a man. In a moment, a dozen people rush in and they evict Miss Iyer and the cameraperson, who is unseen. ‘Don’t touch my tube, guys,’ Miss Iyer says on her way out. ‘It’s my breakfast.’

  THE INFANT IS more furious than ever. The patriarch can see through the slit of the curtain that the mother is on the verge of tears. She should consider crying. The modern age of compassion requires the victim to first surrender pride, only then can justice be done. But what may help her more in this situation is the arrival of an obnoxious man.

  The obnoxious man, in reality, should be a caricature of an obnoxious man. His objective is to transfer the woman and the infant to comfort. To that end it is important that he appears despicable. He would scream at the all-female crew, he would tell them that the mother and the infant are a nuisance, and he would demand that he be transferred to the vacant business class. He would set in motion the first principles of a fable. He would gift the all-female crew a familiar oppressor – a man who reminds them of other oppressors from their private lives. He would hand them an opportunity to vanquish a villain. As a result, out of self-interest, they would perform a moral act. To spite him they would upgrade the miserable mother instead of him. The passengers would cheer. The true hero would be disgraced, but he would have achieved his end. Bureaucrats and cops do exactly this every day in the great republic. The most effective activists are people who are never known as activists, just as the deadliest anarchists are never known as anarchists.

  The patriarch rises and walks into the economy class. From the far end of the plane, a stewardess comes marching towards him with a confused smile. He goes up to the mother in the front row and takes the infant from her. Before she fully realizes what is going on, the infant is in his arms. The baby is stunned into silence and is perhaps further persuaded to shut up by the vapours of aromatic oils on his old body. He carries away the infant to the business class. The mother follows. The cabin erupts.

  Can you hear this, Akhila, the applause of fools?

  31

  Around 8 p.m.

  THIS TIME, CRAWLING into the tunnel feels like a journey into the womb of a giant selfish mother. There is even a helpless life lodged inside, if Akhila may milk the poor metaphor dry. This has occurred to her only now because sentimental poetry never comes easily to her, as though it fears her rational insults.

  Her arms ache and her powerful core is collapsing, but she wants to do this as long as she can. She wants to crawl on her belly to the man, check his pulse, feed him saline and tell him that he is going to be alright. There is meaning in this. Before this day, she has never been crucial to anyone. Ma taught her, though she didn’t mean to, that exceptional altruism is a kind of madness, and Akhila has for long been suspicious of its lure. Even in her dec
ision to study medicine, she had assured herself, the idea of saving lives was peripheral. She only wished to be consumed by science and to be far away from liberal arts, far from all the long spectral tentacles of Ma.

  She can’t wait to get to the man. It has been over half an hour since she last examined him. Any moment he may slip into shock. Where the tunnel turns steep, she begins to crawl faster.

  But is this really about meaning, or is it just a family tic? Is she, too, like Ma, addicted to rescues?

  When she reaches him, she goes through a set of actions that have become routine, and she does them without looking at his face. The lifeless leg of the woman who is embedded in the rubble, her silver anklet glowing in Akhila’s headlamp, has now acquired the quality of a familiar ad on a hoarding.

  There is the dull drone of a drill. It is the sound of a soldier digging the other tunnel to pull the man out head first. She checks the pulse in his foot. He is beginning to do well. It is as though he is responding to a fundamental change in the way everybody above the ground has begun to perceive him. The past several hours, she had attended to him with caution. He was after all a terror suspect. She could not despise him or even be deeply afraid of him, he was so helpless, but still, he was a man who knew too much about a terror operation. But the last time she examined him, he uttered one word that changed everything. He said many other things, but most important, he said, ‘Laila.’

  Jamal and Laila. Now everybody knows what he has been talking about. Jamal and Laila from Mumbra in a little car on their way to Ahmedabad. Everyone knows that story. The mention of Jamal alone had meant nothing. But that name when taken with Laila made everything fall in place. The new theory among the police officers is that this man is a cop.

  *

  SHE STABS HIS marrow with saline. This time he reacts. His leg shudders in acute pain. She checks his face and there is no doubt that his eyes see her. He has been staring.

  ‘Do you see me,’ she says in Hindi, which she had long settled on as their official language even though he did mumble on occasion in Malayalam.

  ‘Do you see me?’

  She crawls across the beam and slithers over him as she has done many times. Her face is just inches over him but he has shut his eyes. ‘Open your eyes,’ she says. He says something. His voice is not as faint as before but the sound of the drills drowns it. She puts her ear to his mouth.

  ‘Your light is hurting my eyes,’ he says.

  She laughs. ‘I didn’t think of that.’ She turns off her headlamp. He studies her closely in the faint glow of the torchlights she has left around him. In his eyes there is now life and presence. He is probably wondering how a girl like her ended up on top of a man like him in a place like this.

  It was easier to lie on top of him when he was delirious. Now that he is alert, she feels awkward. Also, with the arrival of sense in his eyes, he appears younger than she had thought. Under forty, surely.

  ‘You can see me, you can hear me?’ she says.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You said, “yes”?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Akhila feels a surge of joy hearing him respond to her for the very first time. She wants to put her head on his chest and laugh. The drill in the alternative tunnel falls silent, as though the soldier who is digging it wants to eavesdrop. ‘What’s your name?’ she asks.

  ‘How long have I been here?’

  ‘I think it is a good idea if I don’t tell you.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Mukundan.’

  ‘Murugan?’

  ‘No. Mukundan.’

  ‘Are you a Malayalee or a Tamilian?’

  ‘Malayalee.’

  ‘I can speak a bit of Malayalam but Malayalees say I shouldn’t.’

  He smiles, actually smiles.

  ‘In the morning, you were in a building. It fell. You’re buried in the debris.’

  ‘I figured.’

  ‘Do you live here? I mean did you live here?’

  ‘How long have I been here?’

  ‘What matters is that we are very close to getting you out.’

  ‘Are you speaking the truth?’

  ‘I swear.’

  ‘Please remove me somehow.’

  ‘Am I heavy?’

  ‘I don’t understand your question.’

  ‘Am I heavy on your chest?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Can you breathe easily?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Your speech is smooth.’

  ‘Am I going to make it?’

  ‘Yes, I promise. Do you feel any injury in your back or neck?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I’ve given you a lot of painkillers.’

  ‘Are you a doctor?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I can’t move my legs.’

  ‘There is a huge beam over them, but not entirely on them. Your blood flow is fine but you won’t be able to move your legs.’

  ‘Chop off my legs. Get me out.’

  ‘We may not have to do that now. The soldiers tried to chop off this beam but it was taking too long. So they have started digging another tunnel. You heard the drill? Mukundan, do you hear the drill behind you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That is the other tunnel coming to you.’

  ‘Will they chop off my legs?’

  ‘No. They plan to use a carjack to lift the beam that is over your legs, and they will pull you out.’

  ‘How long will that take?’

  ‘Mukundan, are you a cop?’

  ‘Yes. I am with the Bureau.’

  ‘Does that mean the Intelligence Bureau?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You were saying something about Jamal and Laila.’

  He begins to pant. She lifts her body to give him relief. When he recovers, she bends closer to him.

  ‘What did I say?’

  ‘You were saying that they were in a blue Indica and they were going somewhere. You were saying that the cops planned to abduct them and kill them.’

  ‘I said that?’

  ‘Yes’

  ‘That happened a long time ago,’ Mukundan says.

  ‘Yes. Eight years ago. Nine?’

  ‘Ten years ago.’

  ‘Ten years ago. Yes. That’s right.’

  ‘That happened ten years ago.’

  ‘Why were you mumbling about something that happened ten years ago?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘All day the cops thought you were talking about something that is under way.’

  ‘There are cops outside?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How long before you get me out?’

  ‘Don’t shut your eyes. Mukundan, you have to keep your eyes open. Did you live here? Do you have children? Mukundan, wake up.’

  HE CAN HEAR her but a powerful sleep comes over him. He has been very confused in the time that preceded the conversation. What he remembers is waking up several times and finding himself entombed and unable to move, as though he has fallen hard on his back. He remembers praying for sleep.

  Early in the morning, he had walked to the one-room home of a childhood friend, whose name he has forgotten. The plan was to have breakfast with him and watch election news. The friend’s young wife opened the door. He remembers her name. Bindu was probably annoyed that she had to wear a sari so early in the day. She managed a smile but as usual never met his eyes. She walked away in the sounds of silver anklets. Her feet were turmeric yellow, he remembers that. And he remembers telling himself that it is alright to watch the soft feet of a loyal friend’s young wife.

  He removed his shoes in the doorway and walked into a tiny kitchen where there was the smell of strong filter coffee. It is odd, the things a man remembers about a morning he has mostly forgotten. The friend was having his bath in a corner of the kitchen, behind a plastic curtain. ‘Go inside. I am done in a minute,’ he yelled. Mukundan took out hi
s phone and the bulky wallet and left them on the kitchen platform. He walked into the living room, the only room, and sat on the floor.

  The moment he sat, he felt giddy. It was unusual, he never feels giddy. ‘Here,’ the lady said, holding a glass of water. He must have looked so blank she laughed. But her face soon turned grave. The glass fell from her hand, the room began to tremble. A clock fell; an idol, too. Vessels in the kitchen rolled down. Humans, finally, made their sounds in all the homes. Then a stillness arrived but it was brief.

  There was a morbid yawn from somewhere deep in the earth. The room heaved and sank, Bindu fell on him, screaming. He saw the roof cave in and a family plunge towards him with all their things.

  When he woke up, there was perfect darkness and a deep silence. He had never been more certain that he was alive. There was so much pain in him but he was not sure where exactly. He has never experienced pain without knowing where he was hurt. He was probably so damaged, and in so many places, his brain was confused. He knew he was buried but he had forgotten how. There was something immense and immovable on him. He passed out.

  What he then saw in his mind was not as unreliable as a dream. It had happened, all of it. He was only seeing his memory, but he had no control over how it flowed. He could not stop the visions. He saw himself the way he was ten years ago.

  He was waiting for a man on a street. He had been waiting since dawn. He had arrived before the muezzin’s first lament of the day. Had watched the morning come and the street fill with scrawny and stunted young Muslim men in small jeans, old men with orange beards, a few women here and there in hijab, little children walking carefully to school in the gaps between open sewers and puddles. Any time now, Jamal would appear and get into a blue Indica.

  When Mukundan emerged from the vision, he was once again in his tomb. He kept slipping in and out of deep sleep in this manner. Once, when he opened his eyes the tomb was not dark any more. There was a faint light around him. Someone had left electric lamps for him. Then a new light arrived, brighter, shifting, alive. He heard a girl say something in Hindi. She sounded posh. Moments later, he felt a sharp pain as though someone had stabbed him with a pen but he didn’t know where. And he felt a heaviness crawl over him. The light grew.