More Bodies Will Fall

by Ankush Saikia

‘Manipur, most probably. I’ll have to find out.’

  ‘You’ll have to be careful there. I don’t know if you know, but he was in one of the Kuki groups, last I heard.’

  ‘I’ve been in Manipur before, when I was in the army.’

  She raised her eyebrows. ‘Now I know why Uncle chose you. So what do you want to ask me?’

  A woman in jeans and a light, black jacket with a fur-trimmed hood walked in. Nancy Jamir introduced her as a friend, Baia, and gave a brief description of Arjun, including that he was a detective and had been in the army. The woman appraised Arjun with her large brown eyes and then sat on the opposite end of the sofa from Nancy.

  ‘When was the last time you met Amenla?’ Arjun continued.

  ‘The previous Christmas. She had come here first, and then taken a night bus to Dimapur. So, almost a year before the incident took place.’

  She turned to Baia, and said, ‘You remember Amenla, my cousin?’ and the other woman nodded. Arjun looked at her: she seemed to be Khasi, with fine, straight brown hair.

  ‘She was, as you yourself said, a private person. Anything you remember from the time before she was killed? Something she might have told you on the phone?’

  The other woman was looking at him closely, he saw out of the corner of his eye.

  ‘Nothing that I can recall, no. She was a bit upset at the time she broke up with Rohit. But he would visit her even after that, and she seemed okay by then.’

  ‘I found that a strange arrangement.’

  ‘Well, Rohit was a bit of a strange guy.’

  ‘What about her landlord’s son? Did she ever speak to you about him?’

  ‘She might have mentioned him once or twice. Worked in a hospital in Singapore, I think? I remember she said he seemed to be controlled by his wife and his mother.’

  ‘Did Amenla ever have any health issues?’

  ‘No, she was very healthy. She took care of herself. She would even brush her teeth after lunch.’ Nancy laughed, then shook her head sadly. ‘Oh, Amenla! What happened to you?’

  ‘I met the person from the American embassy, by the way. Cooper Grant. He says he wasn’t going around with Amenla, but Rohit said he was.’

  Nancy waved a hand in dismissal. ‘Typical jealous north Indian, that Rohit.’

  Baia snorted her disapproval, and for some reason it irritated Arjun.

  ‘So I’ve met them,’ he said, ‘and now only Tony remains. I have to track him down.’

  ‘Who else did you talk to in Delhi?’ Nancy asked him.

  ‘The police, her colleagues, her ex-roommates, boys from the students’ groups.’

  ‘What did they have to say, her roommates and the students?’

  Arjun shrugged. ‘Nothing much. The students blame the Delhi Police.’

  ‘They stay there and they’re so anti-everything,’ Nancy suddenly said. ‘And they stick together all the time, they don’t make an effort to mix with other people.’

  Baia looked down at her sneakers, a tiny smile on her lips.

  ‘I found it strange that three girls from different tribes would stay together,’ Arjun said.

  ‘You’re right about that, but I think they were in the same call centre at one time and were looking for roommates,’ Nancy said. ‘Mr Arora, you might know that we Nagas are racist in our own ways; even among our own tribes, we tend to look down on someone who comes from a smaller village.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve noticed that,’ Arjun said.

  ‘He has to go to Manipur,’ Nancy explained to her friend, and then turned to Arjun. ‘Baia keeps going that side. She has an NGO that works with women’s groups.’

  Their eyes met, and Arjun could feel the mutual distrust between them. Still, he asked her, ‘Which places in Manipur?’

  ‘Imphal, Ukhrul, Churachandpur.’

  Arjun looked at Nancy, then asked Baia, ‘Have you heard of someone called Tony Haokip? He was in a Kuki outfit once upon a time.’

  Baia shook her head, not caring to explain further. Arjun had suddenly had enough of the too neat sitting room and the woman from the NGO.

  ‘Well, I guess I’ll make a move then,’ he said to Nancy. ‘If you could ask around for Tony’s whereabouts, that would be great.’

  ‘I’ll do that, but why don’t you stay a while? Have a cup of tea at least.’

  But Arjun was already on his feet.

  ‘I’ve got a few other things to take care of,’ he said, and nodded at Baia.

  She looked back at him, expressionless.

  Nancy showed him out. At the gate, she said, ‘Be careful, Mr Arora.’

  ‘I will.’

  But of course he had nothing else to do except go back to the guesthouse. On his way back he took a right towards Laitumkhrah after he had come up to the field from Nagaland House. Even though it was nearly 8 p.m. there was a long line of cars on the road that gently wound down towards the market, with people on the footpaths and the shops all open. Arjun could recall a night-time ride along this very road with his father decades ago. It had been dark and deserted, and their battered old scooter had been waved down by a CRPF patrol party at Beat House. Now the place was humming with activity, women still selling vegetables by the footpaths and young people sitting in the new cafes. He crossed a wine shop with a wistful look inside, but didn’t allow himself to stop. Going down the slope to the market, he walked around the vegetable and meat stalls in the cemented complex (there had just been rows of wood-plank sheds earlier) where people were still buying the last of the pork and beef for Sunday.

  As he returned from the market he found himself thinking of Nancy Jamir’s friend. Clearly, she was one of those who disliked the army and north Indians, he had seen it in her eyes. What would she have to say about his history though? Growing up in the North-east, having to leave the army for punching a senior officer, nearly executed after being kidnapped while working as a mercenary in Iraq? Judgement came easily to such people. Her eyes though . . . there had been something else in them, a reminder. And now as he walked up the dark, quiet Motinagar street he knew exactly what: Yamini Tiwari’s large brown eyes.

  Back at the guesthouse, Arjun sat outside on the veranda smoking as he waited for the caretaker to bring him his dinner. In the room beside his, a group from Guwahati (he could hear them speaking Assamese, and their car had an AS01 number plate) here for the weekend were getting jolly over a bottle. He finished his cigarette, then called Abbas to tell him he was in Shillong.

  ‘Did you manage to find out anything about Tony Haokip?’

  ‘Yes. It’s better I talk to you in person. Will you be coming to Dimapur?’

  ‘I’ll be taking the night bus from here tomorrow evening.’

  ‘You could also take the night train from Guwahati,’ Abbas suggested, then added, ‘Arora, you’re not carrying anything that links you to your old job, are you? ID cards, documents?’

  ‘No. Why?’ But even as he asked he realized why.

  ‘If you go around asking questions it can be dangerous. Especially in Manipur. The situation is better now than before, but you can never tell.’

  ‘I understand. Don’t worry, Abbas, I’ll be careful.’

  ‘Where will you stay in Dimapur?’

  ‘I haven’t decided yet.’

  ‘Try Hotel Kingfisher near the railway station. Not great, but I know the manager.’

  ‘I’ll go have a look.’

  ‘Okay. Call me when you get to Dimapur, I’ll come down to meet you.’

  Arjun’s dinner was brought to his room a while later—rice and a simple chicken curry—and he finished the lot. He washed up, then got into bed, enjoying the luxuriousness of the soft, cold sheets slowly turning warm even as he turned up the volume on the television news in case the party in the next room got louder. In his mind he tried to run through the details of the case once again, but he found his thoughts returning to Baia. She had a nice figure, he reflected, petite and shapely. It was a shame she saw him as the bad guy.
r />   26

  HE WOKE UP BEFORE 6 A.M. the next morning, and lay in bed awhile, savouring the cold air in the room and the quiet of the hour, disturbed only by the chirping of the sparrows outside. After a cup of tea he walked up the road from the guesthouse, past large new buildings, old cottages and government quarters, till he came upon a bare field at the top, above which swept the extensive, pine-tree covered ridge that overlooked the town. He had come here once years ago, when his father had been posted to Shillong, as part of a cricket team. There had been a match, and now all he remembered was that he had clean-bowled one of the opening batsmen from the other side. It was only later, maybe when they had been in Aizawl, that the football bug had bitten him. After that long-ago match, a few of them had gone up into the forests above, where there was a stream, and smoked. He looked around, as if somewhere there was still a trace of that young boy to be found.

  Coming back, he took a diversion on a steep, narrow path that went down past some old government quarters and then meandered through a jumble of small houses with neat courtyards till it came out on the main road at Jingkieng. He stopped at a tiny kwai shop to buy a packet of smokes. It was a cold, grey day—the grimy shops and buildings on either side of the road were like the sight of old friends to Arjun. A little way ahead—where the main road climbed up to Nongthymmai—he turned right and took the road that wound up past another bare field. There were houses large and small, only a few old tin-roofed Assamese-type cottages among them, and soon he came to a small lane that cut up from the road. He walked up slowly till he reached the small old house, but it took him a while to recognize it, as the larger cemented house beside it now had two more storeys above the single storey where their landlord used to stay. The old house was the same, more rundown now if anything, with patches of plaster having come off the walls. There were children’s clothes strung out on the narrow veranda, and a fair tribal boy playing with a broken cycle outside who looked quizzically at Arjun. There was no one outside the larger house, and Arjun walked on. He had thought of stopping to say hello, but the sight of the boy reminded him that they would have had many tenants over the years. Why would they bother to remember any of those people?

  He returned to the guesthouse, where he had a bath with hot water. After a late breakfast he sat out on the veranda reading the day’s papers he had bought from a newsagent in Fire Brigade. He checked the two local papers for any news from Dimapur. Both of them had a small story from a wire service: two masked cadres of an NPG faction had been shot dead by cadres of another faction in the heart of the city, allegedly over an extortion bid from a trader. Arjun made a mental note to ask Abbas about it. Both factions would probably be under ceasefire as well.

  The taxi he had asked the caretaker to arrange arrived at midday, and he left after settling his bills. As they crossed the outskirts of Mawlai and the waters of the lake appeared far below through the spindly pine trees, Arjun felt himself wishing that he could have lingered on for a few days. He felt a craving for a can of beer, and to distract himself he called his secretary and then his daughter to make sure things were fine back in Delhi. At Nongpoh he asked the driver to stop at a vegetarian restaurant he had spotted the previous day. It was meant for the Marwari traders and their families, apart from vegetarian tourists looking for safety in a region of meat eaters. Arjun had a masala dosa for lunch; there would be meat aplenty in Nagaland, and he needed to keep an eye on his uric-acid levels.

  They reached Khanapara just after 3 p.m., and it took the taxi almost an hour to get to Paltan Bazar through the traffic on GS Road. Arjun went around to the front of the train station via the overbridge above the tracks and managed to get a sleeper ticket on the night train to Dimapur. He was told it would leave at 11 p.m. There were almost six hours to kill, so he took an auto to the nearby ghat in Uzan Bazar, where he sat with his backpack and watched the Brahmaputra flow by. The river, which was born on the Tibetan plateau, was at its narrowest in Assam here, just a kilometre or so wide, much reduced now in volume in the winter, but still an impressive sight. Every hour a ferry would make the trip to and from the Umananda Island in the middle of the river. He drank several small glasses of mud-coloured tea from a nearby shop and thought about their old house in Shillong. He pictured his father on the steps outside the kitchen at the back, polishing his shoes while his mother made chapattis on the kerosene stove and he listened to Hindi film songs on the radio. Those had been simpler times. There was a cold breeze blowing off the river. They had lived in Guwahati too for a while, but that house had been somewhere near Maligaon. Finally, as dusk fell, he took an auto back to Paltan Bazar, where, on the street with taxis parked on one side outside the ASTC depot and shops, hotels, bus counters and travellers crowding the other side, he went up to a shabby restaurant on the first floor of a building.

  He had decided to have an early dinner before going to catch the train, but it was too soon even for that, so to kill time he ordered a cold Coke from one of the waiters idly watching a nineties’ Hindi action film starring Sunil Shetty on the television up on the wall. Ahead of him in one corner, two young men were drinking beer and breaking off pieces of papad. Through the tinted glass windows Arjun could see the taxi drivers on the street trying to gather a few more passengers for the ride up to Shillong. From beyond the dusty buses in the ASTC depot came the mournful hoots of trains. People were always on the move.

  He thought of Abbas’s warning about carrying any old army identification, and the news in the morning paper about the shooting in Dimapur. Sitting in the darkened restaurant he once again felt a twinge of unease about the trip. Shillong had been a pleasant interlude, but he would have to be careful where he was going. That was why he was taking the train instead of the bus; it would be a less noticeable way of getting into Dimapur. He watched the movie till the end, after which he had a vegetarian dinner of roti, dal fry and tandoori aloo, and then left for the station.

  On platform no. 1 he found a bit of space on a bench and sat down to wait for the train. People moved up and down with their cheap luggage, and the old railways smell of smoke and grime permeated the air. In the end he stood up and went out past the people sleeping on the floor of the entrance hall to the parking lot, where he stood by the autorickshaws and smoked. He went back inside and strolled up and down the platform, taking in the clusters of Naga passengers, the poor travellers huddled up in blankets and the armed police keeping an eye on everything.

  The train was on time. It pulled into the station with its headlights on, and immediately there was a mad scramble to board it. As Arjun climbed on, the sour smell from the toilets hit him—some things never changed. He found his berth, a lower one by the aisle, and spread out the bedsheets and blankets in the confined space, took off his sneakers and tried his best to make himself comfortable. An elderly north Indian man, a trader most probably, took the upper berth, and got on his phone loudly in Hindi to relay all possible details about the train and his journey. When it came to self-obsession, Arjun thought, stretched out under the rough blanket and looking out at the tea stalls and newsagents on the platform, no one could beat Indians. The train started moving, and he tried to get some sleep.

  But sleep was hard to come by on the narrow berth. He was no longer a young man. Arjun tossed and turned but no position was comfortable for more than five minutes. In the end he stared out into the night, dropping off to sleep in snatches. Outside was the flat countryside with patches of mist over it and the silhouette of bamboo groves in the distance. The train slowed down at Jamunamukh station in central Assam and Arjun saw wiry, dark-complexioned miya men in blue checked lungis waiting on the platform. Hojai, Lanka and Lumding Junction stations passed, then the train stopped at Diphu, where Abbas would be sleeping in his quarters at this hour.

  As the train moved on, the sky lightened and he could see that much of the original forest cover of Karbi Anglong was now gone, with only spindly trees and undergrowth, patches cleared for sugarcane and paddy cultivation,
and tree stumps on uneven land and hillocks, the morning mist rising from ponds. He fell asleep for a while, and when he next woke the sun was rising over the fields as the train sped along, crossing bits of jungle covered in creepers, patches of water with egrets and cleared areas with tin-roofed huts outside which people were washing their faces and brushing their teeth.

  They arrived at Dimapur station just after 5 a.m., and Arjun joined the stream of passengers moving towards the exit. However, he went straight ahead on the platform, descending to the train tracks and walking towards the overbridge, below which there was an opening on to Golaghat Road with its cheap hotels and Winger counters. Up ahead the tracks were littered with all sorts of rubbish, and miya and Naga women were arranging vegetables and meat on plastic sheets. He went through the opening in the wall and past the shabby autos and walked down the dusty road. A little further off on one side was Hong Kong market. Passengers for Imphal and Assam waited outside the Winger counters. There was a real chill in the air, and the sun was hidden behind a grey sky. He crossed a Sher-e-Punjab dhaba and a Rajasthani bhojanalay, and then just after a transport bus counter was the white-and-pink building of Hotel Kingfisher. The windows on the front of the building couldn’t be opened, he saw, but, in an incongruous touch, all of them had modest overhanging chhajjas with cemented details.

  Arjun went up the dusty steps to the reception area smelling of agarbatti, where a tall man in a brown shirt and oiled, side-parted hair was reading a Hindi newspaper at the counter. Speaking in Hindi he asked if they had single rooms, and then if the man knew Javed Abbas.

  The man nodded. ‘You must be . . . Arora from Delhi?’

  Arjun filled out the register, where he gave his name as ‘Mr Arjun’, and one of the staff showed him to his room on the third floor. The corridors were clean, and his room was small and windowless. Only a tiny window in the rectangular bathroom gave a glimpse of the outside. The bearer returned a while later with a small flask of overboiled and oversweet tea. Arjun sat on the narrow bed and lit a cigarette and turned on the ancient television, where on MTV Unplugged Bob Dylan was singing ‘Dignity’. He could now see the dirt and grime on the floor and the mat, and the faded white sheets on the bed had old stains on them. From the outside came the hoots of trains and bus horns. It was too early to call Abbas. Arjun felt weary and depressed. What was he doing here? He lay down on the bed and pulled the rough blanket over himself and tried to get some sleep.