For a time warp
In the times when the counter insurgency operations in the state were on decline, this happened. This afternoon I submitted the report of this curious incident to the inquiry commission and the trial will begin in few days. Non stop print machines and camera flash lights of media, intellectually enlightened human right commission, vociferous social activists have got another food to go frenzy. And they are absolutely right in their place; they definitely do not own even a slice of the blame, if it exists anywhere.
Yesterday as I closed the hard bound cover of the report and stood in front of the crimson red setting sun, I am yet to figure out whom to blame - that innocent obsession, that frightened but committed silence or the duty that went horribly wrong; there has to be something or somebody to blame.
That day that old woman (she was there to identify the dead as her son or not) accompanied by a young girl came to the morgue to identify the corpse to whose home we stormed into last night and gunned down. As we were approaching, through the corridor, to the room where he was kept, only sound to pierce that dead people's society was our boots'. I could clearly see the terror of uncertainty on the face and the trembles of eyeballs of old woman. Her left palm's grip on the right wrist of the young woman was getting tightened as the door to the room was getting near. The young girl was ice-cold with resigned body language and a slightly suppressed fear on face. As I opened the door, the footsteps of both women stopped at the door and this time the iron channels on the sides of the drawer made a loud noise as I pulled it. The young girl, with firm confidence, trying to drag the old woman inside and bring in front of the drawer; the old woman with a hypnotized but expressionless face, the eyes protruded with fear, desperately trying to resist to reach and peep inside the drawer - a prohibited wish was that drawer comes near her eyes by self. A pair of shuddered legs and another pair of calm legs came inside and looked inside the drawer. And with a tired smile the old woman vented out - "He's not my son". After a long silence and deep sound of sigh from the old woman the words got repeated with a more relaxed voice - "He's not my son".
The horrors melted and both of them turned about; without speaking a word to me both of them started walking away as if a journey to put pieces back to the little jigsaw puzzle begins.
The state was battling with insurgency and the counter insurgency operations for 22 long years. Insurgency arose out of the demand of a political group for an independent state free from the rule of union government - the ideology given was that the race never stayed under anybody's rule and should continue the same. At the decline of this battle, the armed forces started carrying out surgical counter insurgency operations instead of going out on full fledged scale. It was different from the usual counter insurgency operations in the way that latter had more intensity and more deadly where there was no separate intelligence wing of military acted to convey the inputs to the operating forces to take actions and the actions were primarily based on suspicions while in former case actions were carried out based on the specific intelligence inputs on which considerable amount of resources and time had been invested.
At this time, amidst the allegations of violations on human rights and tremendous media focus, I was called in one of the town of the state to head the military intelligence unit in an effort to strengthen it and go more cautiously in counter offensive operations.
The town located at an elevation 4500 feet was feeling the chill of it's winter season in the month of December. Armed personnel were seen at regular distances on streets. A cold mystery and a long borne fright shrouded in tiredness was quite palpable in the air. Everything that made the town - the flowing water dripping from the melting ice chunks on the roads, the evening sunlight filtered from the dark green pine tree branches on mountains, the freezing temperature- all were embracing a shuddered look.
In those times, there were reports of insurgents starting to re-group themselves - they initiated this by dispersing themselves in smaller units, merged with the local population and continued to carry out armed attacks in the town. And the villagers once again continued to suffer from both sides as the insurgents would kill those resisting their entry into the villages while the villages suffered reprisals from the security forces in case ambushes had taken place in their vicinity. Although the cordon and search operations were reduced to the bare minimum level, yet villagers were still in fear of initiation of such kind of operations.
Under my headway, the military intelligence unit in the town was split with two tasks - one was to get engaged with the local ethnic groups to identify the emerging trend of insurgents' movements and their supply chain, another was to analyze the investigation reports of crimes conducted by insurgents via crime scene analysis, interrogation reports of detainees, forensics and biometrics by liasoning with local police authorities.
Our base had a sprawling green campus fenced with barbed wire which was distanced around half a kilometer from the building and guarded by armed men. One night, after dinner I came out in that green campus to lit a cigarette. The night was chillingly cold and the area was mostly dark with dim orange street lights; a thick layer of muteness prevailed everywhere. There's a small lake outside the fence to which I was facing; the lake was still and appearing black with scattered reflections of halogen orange from the street lamps over it. In few minutes there came a couple roaming on the road that separated the fence and the lake. Talks were less in between them - from the expression I could make out that the was girl trying to convince something to him and the boy trying to brush aside her arguments. They sat on the slope that went from the road down towards the lake. I seem to find an amusing interest in that scene - a young couple daring to stay out in night in these insurgency days, so I went a little closer to the fence. In the light of the street lamp I found the face of the boy not belonging to the ethnic group of the state but the girl was definitely someone who was the girl of the land. At one moment the boy appeared to adjust something at the side of his waist; posture like he's taking a deep sigh and adjusting something that could be stuck between his trouser and his waist. Within seconds I came down on the earth and a razor edge thought ran through my mind of the times the state was in. I held my 9 mm caliber parabellum pistol tightly when I saw him taking out a steel grey colored pistol. In a flash I also took my pistol but still waited to watch out for more. The girl swiftly opened her vanity bag and he put his weapon swiftly in milliseconds inside it, I was noticing every movement of theirs. They kept sitting there and chit chatted for another 10 to 15 minutes and then started walking away on the road towards the direction from where they arrived.
That incident raised many questions in our reflections - were they some volunteer of the separatists to have a surveillance of this place, could this be the new face of this battle where in non natives of the land were getting hired and infiltrated to execute their plans (previous intelligence inputs warned of this possibility when they discovered the beginning of regrouping of insurgents).
In the next few days, via scrutiny of police investigation reports of major incidents/crimes committed by insurgents in last one year, one of my team brought an input that a huge cache of arms were discovered in a house in the near by market. The house was used by them as a major operational base to carry out actions in the town. A raid by local police in association with army killed 3 insurgents. Now the house was one of the many relic of past 22 years and an abandoned structure. Previously the house was inhabited by a family who possibly had migrated out of the state.
I along with two more people decided to search that house one night. The house was situated at the last turn of the road through which we walked to reach it. It was a two storey house with hut style, brick colored slanted roof. Once mud yellow colored walls turned achromatic with passing time. Standing in front of the house, the upper storey of the house had a small balcony in it's right that was pierced by the leafless branches of a tree. We entered the house with the crank of the iron gate; the floor was covered with dead yellow leaves. We stepped up two stairs and pushed the door at our right. Inside the house was pitch dark, finger numbing cold. We lit a candle and the marks of bullets on the beige colored walls were visible. Apart from a few dusty, broken furniture not much things were there in the ground floor. There was an aridity in the air. Through staircase I went up and entered into another room the floor of which was lit by faint blue halogen lamp of the street. There was a dark oak colored, short heighted wardrobe. And to my another surprise, compared to rest of the house, this room and the wardrobe had very less settled dust as if it was being used often. I opened the wardrobe and few sketches were kept on one of it's shelf - one of a monastery on a moon lit night, one of a barbed wire fence on the other side of which lay blood soaked dead bodies on an open grey field and one of that lake in front our military guest house. The sketches could be easily identified as freshly prepared, not many days back.
The house was clearly breathing a secretly oozing conspiracy that was getting plot in that town, the place was getting inhabited by a group of people although for limited purpose. We searched the entire place like a combing operation but nothing more interesting was discovered than this. We then decided to keep track of this house in the coming days. Since it was a residential area, to carry out this watch I had liasoned with an adjoining house to have my two officers placed there for some days.
And not after many days, one night at around 11:00 PM, one of those officer informed me on walkie talkie that a man and a woman was seen entering in that house. I rushed to the place and we were on the terrace of our operational base. In the same faint blue halogen light of street light that was hitting the floor of the room on second storey, the man and the girl whom we saw were the ones I saw that day outside our base area. Things were getting unfolded in bizarre secretive ways. One candle was lit on the top of that wardrobe and the girl was standing on another side of the room carrying another candle. Slowly they came close to each other - in front of the window from where the blue halogen gleam was flowing in. The lady carried the candle with her, the man left his on the wardrobe. As they were near to each other, the two people, under the blue gleam, appeared as two psyche drinking lunacy to have a bloody end of their love saga. In a flash they kissed each other passionately for few seconds; the candle from the hands of woman dropped on the floor. Next moment the man took out the pistol and held it with his hand parallel to the floor; the girl murmured something to him and the man then held the gun to his chin; the girl held his hand and put it down to keep in his pocket. The man then brought the sketches and they, on the window, kept talking of those sketches. Expressions were of longing, the man frequently looked outside as if to measure some distances. The entire thing appeared to be a rehearsal of something - rehearsal of an innocent but a deadly attempt. After sometime they left the place and started walking on the road. I kept the two officers on the terrace to keep a further watch on the house and myself followed them.
Through the dark, lonely, chilled, slippery streets with melted ice of the town under siege and crossing a culvert over a river they reached in front of a house. They bid good bye, the girl went inside and the man started walking again. After around 15 minutes of the walking the man too reached his home and went inside.
I went back to the girl's house and knocked the door. She opened and showing him my id card I said - "From army. I need to talk to you."
She gestured me to come inside. I sat near the fireplace on a bamboo chair; she too sat in front of me. I told - "We suspect you. We have seen you with a man nearby the lake in front of our military base when you have swiftly kept a gun inside your vanity bag. We have seen both of you today in that abandoned house again with a gun and few sketches. Things are suspicious but inexplicable for us. Can you explain these."
She was looking at me with rock still eyes during my speaking. As I finished, she looked towards the red glow of fireplace, again looked at me and uttered - "I think almost everybody in this state is a suspect in the eyes of military; normalcy in air, in human beings, in behavior is a far fetched expectation in this land. You are very well authorized to doubt us, our behavior, our thoughts, our movements but for ourselves we are perfectly normal beings."
I fumed at her ice-cold ignorance to my question. With low but irritated tone I replied back - "I am not here to listen to your lectures of righteousness and dos and dont's for the forces. I need to do my duty; if you are not guilty you will be spared. Else don't forget we have special powers to seize, search and detain anytime."
A deep muteness prevailed for next few moments; few amber color lamps were illuminating the walls. Both of our faces were glowing with fiery red reflections as if two warriors crossed swords in last days of this earth.
She replied with a husky, low toned but angered voice - "I have seen enough of your powers since one and a half decade, that's nothing new to me."
She took a sigh of tiredness and as if she had no regards to the person in front of her.
After a short pause she began to speak - "I aged 12 years when I understood the meaning of insurgency. Random searches at households at uncomfortable clock hours and thorough frisking of women and girls by male officers, frequent cordoning off of the colonies and checking the identity proofs of residents in search of people belonging to the communities of insurgents and then making them accept that they are insurgents by placing gun nozzles on throats had become common by that time. People who used to accept used to be taken into custody, people who didn't had been gunned down. The screams during these affairs at midnight created a shrilled terror in the valley.
"As years passed these stories started to create buzz in media and began to be leading front page news. This triggered the Human rights probe in the state. The army, in order to strengthen their operation had extended their raids and searches to the households of media persons. Seizures of literature belonging to the insurgent tribes/groups and consequent arrests of persons found in possession of those were initiated to impose an unwritten and undeclared order on the press and media not to speak a word against special powers of your forces. As a result, new battle lines emerged and that was between press, media, human rights and the special powered armed forces.
"And all these had finally added a new dimension to the already complicating problems of the land. To counter the newly drawn battle line, the army had started conducting raids at the homes of media and human rights people in the darkness of night, picked them up, tied their eyes with black cloth, put them in armored vehicles and deported them outside the borders of the state; my father was also not spared from this. The clock had struck 02:00 AM on that night when the forces came in, dragged my father out of his bed holding the collar of his white t-shirt and took him away out of the state; me and my mother kept staring through the iron grills of the windows in addled silence. The state borders were also sealed for any entry inside and state had been cut off from the rest of the world. All of us were facing each sunset with a scary anxiety, with a diminishing hope; entire valley was gripped by a jittery sensation that something eccentric is about to come.
"It didn't take too long for our fears to come true. After eight months of raids and deportations, the army had now come out frisking people randomly on the streets; horrors crossed all limits with women been taken to nearest covered places either behind bushes, trees or inside their offices at the check posts and frisked by male officers at the gunpoint. Women who opposed were either gang raped and killed immediately with their bodies never found by their family or kept in their custody for months left bruised and drained unknown to their families. This continued for 6 long years; it was the time when only terror and counter terror existed in the valley. After 6 years administration had allowed press, media and human rights to have restricted access of the land; people had started returning and like many families we too hoped for our father's return.
"In this house, in my room there's a window above my bed that opens up to the street where, many times, I had seen people been brought either in police or in your military jeeps and shot down; blood appearing pale red on the neon lit orange street and raw terror on the face of dead men. On one such night when I was thinking how less the cost of human life is in this land, an army jeep sounded on the street. I glimpsed through the window; they took out an average heighted man. I could see him begging for his life with his trembling palms united; the street lamp over his head had created a shadow story of a horror. The officer pulled out his gun and the man bent his head back to look up, may be towards the lamp wishing to light the crooked heads in front of them, and I saw the face of the man. He was my father; my father was standing in front of the gun and I am left with seconds to see him alive.
"I jumped out of the bed and rushed through downstairs; the dim lit walls around the stairs passed by me as if I was riding on gusty storm of infinite speed so that I can reach to the world beyond this as quickly as possible. I arrived and he was lying dead; two bullets had been pumped in the chest. My mother came rushing in and stopped at once behind me. The officers looked confused for a moment and then continued with your so called procedures and taken him away. And there we were once again kept staring, this time under the star studded sky, in an addled silence once again.
"Next day, your forces released a press briefing that they had gunned down 3 insurgents mastermind and hatched the conspiracy of a big explosion in city's main market. My mother never spoke after that day making herself a mute spectator on this earth neither she could gather the courage to end herself. I haven't yet got the answers as to why my father was killed your forces, was he really with the insurgents armed struggle or not."
I couldn't bring myself to terms to her narration. I stared at her and she was staring at the diminishing fire at the fire place. I took out few pieces of dry wood from the holder kept at the side of the fire place and put in the fire. The heat of the new blaze appeared to bring her back suddenly from her past.
I broke the silence - "Nobody was wrong; everyone was right at their own place. You and residents of the valley, establishment, army; may be the insurgents, deep within their heart, I also don't know what made them wage a war for a separate state. What was wrong was time; wrong times provoke wrong decisions. Time is a mystery, nobody can choose time."
She reacted - "Times' excuse cannot justify wrong doings. As a child we used to hear a story where a man brings home a cub and starts to pet him. As the cub started to grow, he used to come daily to his master's bedroom at night and lick his master's feet. The master thought it as a part of cub's caresses towards him but lot of people warned him that it's actually the taste of blood that the cub has got and they advised him to hand over the cub to a zoo. But the man continued to ignore. And after few more years on one unfateful night, cub by then the tiger torn him apart and enjoyed his flesh. Power is like the taste of blood; more you taste the more it inebriates you and one day it devastates."
"Who will decide what inebriates more - the addiction of power or the affection with freedom. I am neither a philosopher nor I carry any ideology. All my life I had served my duty, I trusted that my duty will give me wisdom. What I believe is answer to a wrong doing cannot be an adamancy and answer to wrong times cannot be madness."
On the way back to my base, through up and down dimly lit curvy roads, the only thought that kept crossing my head on that night's darkness was how the ending of this era look like; how will this valley appear when we will leave this state one day - scary, anguished, numb?
By now the information gathered was this that the man used to teach native language in one of the mid sized school of the town and the girl earns livelihood by making and selling carpets; she had a small shop in the town's main market. After few days a piece of intelligence information dropped in that he will be travelling to another town of the state; the information on the reason could not be extracted. I immediately instructed two people from the intelligence team to track him up. And in his absence from the town I decided to search his house that night.
It was 01:00 AM at night when I entered his house. The doors opened to a decent sized living room, the head heavy cold room was illuminated by the feeble light from the street lamp. Few magazines and newspapers were neatly folded and kept on the glass top of a small table, at one corner there was a chest of drawers with no drawers keeping any significant thing of interest, a tall wooden empty flower pot was kept at another corner. That night, in that dim lit house wrapped under a thick layer of silence, made myself a cynic to my senses in a wonderland unchanged since ages.
I entered the next room but was less illuminated than the living room; appearance suggested it was used as a bedroom with a big double bed on which were kept two whiskey glasses, an ashtray kept on a piece of paper and a half filled whiskey bottle. I searched the bed under the mattress and on one corner there was a pistol kept - probably the one that I saw the night for the first time outside our base camp. I then picked up the piece of paper; a scratchy handwriting had written this -
"One day on this land furled up smokes will overcast the days and gun trotting sounds will dazzle the nights.
"One day on this land broad day lights will illuminate horror on the faces and beautiful moon light will make the lunacy shine brilliantly.
"One day on this land the water from melting ice and the blood will flow through the side walks of the road simultaneously and the color of ice will be forgotten.
"One day peace will arrive on this land but not before the green cedar valleys turn scarlet red and thousands of people will lie there sleeping forever"
I couldn't collect myself after reading this; for minutes I sat on that bed staring at the dark outside and thinking is this man's mind the darkest place on this earth - darker than a far away, never seen shelter of thousand trees at night on the slopes of these hills?
In absence of any significant thing of our interest, I was leaving the house. As I reached the door the girl confronted me. It was unexpected, probably for both of us.
I asked - "What is meaning of all these?"
She replied - "A uniformed officer committed towards his duty should not be inquisitive of meanings; he should only be doing his duty."
"Do not make the present hazy by pulling the threads of past."
She smiled and replied - "You are giving wrong advise in wrong time. I accept we are slaves of time but certainly we can choose what advise to give."
"We will meet the day when you will learn to believe on time." and I left the place.
That night, a piece of information received from the team tracking the him that he was seen in an isolated place of another town. He met with 5 other people inside a rock cave. By the time team arranged a raid with local police, he had left the place. In cross firing four people had been gunned down and one escaped. A large cache of arms and ammunition had been found there along with few maps in the form of sketches of town's few market areas. All the evidences and the things found there were suggestive of a probable massive attack to result huge civilian casualty. I immediately ordered the team to ring alert to all the security and intelligence agencies of the state.
After this incident when we were planning the arrest of him, to our surprise we discovered that he didn't return to the town and became untraceable. I went to her home; an old woman opened the door. I asked for her and she only made a resigned gesture that she also doesn't know. I didn't press further as I expected this. Left with no option I ordered to launch a massive manhunt for him.
After a week the intelligence team came up with reports of activities in that abandoned house where we first saw them together. There were two people residing in that home one of who was had escaped from the gun battle raid of that town; another person was him. Next few days of close watch on his original abode and track of him and that girl brought an unusual freeze of everything - both the men didn't go out anytime from that abandoned house; nobody stepped into original house anytime; the girl was also neither seen at his home nor any attempts were made to meet him anywhere. It appeared as if time has frozen for years in that valley, days and nights were passing by in a dull manner and amidst all these a suppressed instinct of fear was floating inside me of something terrible to happen.
And after another week news had been brought that a car had been hired, for the next day's night, by the residents of the abandoned house to drop them to a forest valley few hundred kms from the town; that forest valley leads to the state's border. After so many months of intense tracking and intelligence gathering, this move sent shudders across the forces and intelligence teams; it was indicative of a dangerous event in immediate follow up days. With the vision and plan to induct them in LIUs (Local Intelligence Unit), I immediately ordered the army team to nab them the same night the day news had arrived. At around 9:00 PM, a bunch of army men were dispatched. At around 10:30 PM a message was sent to the wireless that both of them were killed in a fierce gun battle. The commanding officer reported that both of them had been asked to surrender but they retaliated with gun fires; in reply the team had stormed into the house and after much wasted efforts of capturing them alive, they were killed in the exchange of fires.
Next day I received a note from that girl - "I want to tell you a story. You can come down at my place sometime late evening if you have time and wish to listen. But I won't be awaiting your arrival."
That night at around 10:00 PM, we were sitting outside her house in front of a bonfire; for few minutes crackles of burning wood and friction between the fire and air were the only sound between us. Her eyes were fixed on the bonfire with stone cold expression; her glowing face with fiery red reflections that night carried a failed longing and an extreme mercy. Finally she broke the silence-
"I don't know how should I tell this story that is believable to an army officer in an unusual time that the land is living in. But I will not regret if you don't believe; I will pacify myself by thinking that I met a traveler, tired and sleepless, to whom I narrated a story listening to which he had the most peaceful sleep of his life.
"Since the day I started sensing this world, I found this land plagued with ideological polarization and tremendous insurgency. When the armed forces used to raid the insurgent's isolated hideouts, they took shelter in the houses of residential places. Learning from this, the armed forces then started to conduct horrific raids at houses in which they even opened fire on insurgents resulting in killing of innocent civilians along with their targets. Political machinery was still divided into 2 blocks - one adamant for land's autonomy and have a separate country and another still trying to mediate and bring the separatists on the talk table. But it was when political colors also touched the polarization that the armed forces were equipped with the special powers; it began an era of incredibly dramatic operations that knew no boundaries.
"I was in first year of my college, studying literature, when I first known him - he was in 3rd year of his college studying social work. I got to know him when he was organizing a protest rally for the repeal of special powers of armed forces. Bright eyed, sharply pruned face impressed me with the clarity and purposefulness of his thoughts and knowledge about his scope of actions. His modulating voice in the speech that he made on the eve of the rally touched an inspirational chord inside me that stayed all that night long.
"The rally didn't happen the next day; he was detained the previous night by the armed forces with the charge of conspiring against armed forces to support the insurgent's campaign. At the assembly point in our college from where the rally was supposed to begin, I heard that the reason of his detention as belonging to the same ethnicity as of insurgents. That was the first time I discovered that there exists an ethnic divide on this earth. Since that day I realized that the battle lines and bloodshed on race, religion, ethnicity have more value than the cost of human life on this earth.
"Owing to the fear of random frisking on the streets a small group of students including myself and him had started taking the dirt roads of woodland over the normal streets to return home in the evening. As he stayed two streets parallely away from my home, we were the only two remaining in those woodland roads after a point of time and it was this phase when our relationship deepened and I discerned him more. I remember an evening when the sky was wrapped with orange hue of sunset and the woodland appeared to be encased in a photo chromatic glass house filtering the light of sunset making it lit with a light having a tinge of darkness.
"He spoke - 'Last night a sound of bullet firing made me wake up from my sleep; I saw the open field visible from the window above my bed under the full moon lit night. I saw a man lying on the ground and a jeep of security force rushing through that open field. For the next few moments I kept watching that lifeless body lying under the moonlight with utter muteness and grim fear - a fear that this lunacy doesn't overpower the cost of human life so much that one day this land appears to be soaked in a deep, rich sepian hue. I laid down and imagined if I take a stroll through this night how magical the far away crests and troughs of the mountain ranges would be, how deeply suspicious the closed doors might appear at night, how sharp would be the barbed wires of terror that will pierce the heart if the reflection of the moon is seen in the pool of blood where that lifeless body is lying.
" 'I couldn't find answer to where is the horizon of this lunacy but I realized that this dark time has taught me, all for this land, the feelings of an inebriated love, platonic imaginations.'
"It was sleepless night for me; I kept thinking about the canvas of his thoughts and kept sketching them in the airy space.
"One evening we left our college early and while we were the only two walking through the woodland paths lit by afternoon sun rays filtered from the leaves and branches, he suddenly held my hands gently to stop me; he sat under a tree and pulled me to sit beside him. He gave a deserted look towards the sky and spoke-
" 'These woodlands are not stranger to me; as a child my father used to bring me here on Sunday afternoons. Sitting under these chiaroscuro of sun rays and shadows used to sketch, on white drawing sheets, what I loved in this town in the week gone by. Initially it didn't excite me, I mostly ended up sketching the natural scenary of this town carving out from my imagination. But with passing days, as I looked at my own sketches under the warmth of sunlight on lazy Sunday afternoons, I felt good of my own canvases and this was the beginning of an unspoken and unbounded attachment for this land. And on my drawing sheets I started capturing various forms of this town's life and natural landscapes of the valley at different times and seasons. It was a phase where I was frequently found deeply lost in keenly observing the happenings of the town and thinking of translating them into my sketches. And it was a phase when many times, standing in front of the orange horizon of setting sun, I wished that let there exist only this town that brings, each day, unseen shades of life and my endless sketches scattered on the paths of this woodland.
" 'But the convergence of madness of insurgency and eccentricity of counter insurgency had not spared this little pleasure; and it turned into a secret longing wished in nostalgia to die for.
" 'I remember my father narrated a story, a few days before we completely stopped spending our typical Sunday afternoons - A newly married couple migrated to a new city and began their new life. Within few months, one morning, the girl finds her husband turned mad - he couldn't recognize her, neither himself, nor the place; he remembered nothing and involved in crazy behaviors and lunatic acts. Frightened and baffled, she took him for medical examination but to her surprise it didn't show any nervous disorder or abnormalities. In grief and dejected, she turned into a lifeless living being, all the day running after her crazy husband to save him of his mindless acts and at night when he slept scratching her memories to transport herself into good old times of togetherness. One night, standing at the window looking towards the outside darkness she decided to join him in his lunacy thinking that faking herself into madness will slowly get her rid of all the feelings for him and eventually making her heart free from the soaks of aches and longings. In search of peace she began her walk on the path of wilderness but within few days her own behavior brought fatigue to her mind. She was torn between a possessiveness of losing her original self and an obsession of faking her sanity to get rid of human emotions. Months passed and her craziness were suffering loneliness, her sleepless nights were morose with feverish, tired mind. And she feared of actually turning into a mad person. One early winter morning when the town was yet to wake up, she took him to the top of a mountain and threw him down; she watched him going down at a gorgeous speed down in the abyss. When he disappeared out of her sight, she looked up and watched the sun rising from the crimson red horizon; she closed her eyes and felt the softness of morning rays on her eyelids. But when she turned back, she was blank; she forgot her way back to home, she couldn't recognize the place, she couldn't recognize herself. She sat down on that mountain top, blank and void of everything forever.'
"In the following days I noticed an unusual restlessness and stubbornness in him - a restlessness similar to the one when we wait in anticipation of such a dream turning into reality for which we waited so long. Most of the time he was found pre-occupied in himself - he never revealed the subject of his pre-occupation. His talks began to contain an unconditional defense for himself and his reasons. As I recall this today, I realize that I failed to recognize the obsession that began to simmer in him. I got to know that he started taking strolls at night of the town; I feared for his life. I prayed daily at night before retiring to bed that in the next morning's first sun light I don't have to see what he had seen that night under moon light. But I couldn't tell him my fear, couldn't express my feelings. I was scared that if I tell him, secretly somewhere at the corner of his heart, he would mis-mean my fear as my possessiveness and think that I am trying to curb his canvas of thoughts to convert his love for the land into love for me and eventually I would end up losing him.
"Few years later one morning he found his father had ended his life; the blood from his slit wrist had turned the white bed sheet deep red - that was the first time, he told, he came to know the color of blood. In his suicide note his father revealed that the previous evening he lost his job from the college; he and few other professors of his ethnicity had been charged with inciting the ideology of separate nation among students and secretly conspiring with the insurgents in toppling the government. As he came out of the college campus, there appeared a crowd of political facilitators and brainwashed students with all the slogans and shouts against them and their ethnicity. They were then detained by police, strip searched by police and army at the army camp in full view of the force, warned of adverse consequences of their families jointly and asked to leave the land. The humiliation kept him awake the whole night and finally he made peace with himself. He asked his wife and son to leave the land as early as possible.
"One evening during our way back home he didn't utter a single word when nearing our home he told - 'That day when my father told the story of mad husband and wanna be mad wife, I couldn't understand it. Today when I see the eccentricity of this land turning darker, I realize the wisdom of continuing with sanity when everyone other is losing theirs.' "
"The next day armed forces conducted a horrific cordon and search operation that night. They checked all of our id proofs and started picking men and women from the race that belongs to the insurgency; at the gun point they started making them confess that they shelter insurgents. Some were shot between their thighs and bellies and left profusely bleeding on the ground while some were shot at the legs and taken to custody. Their chilling cries of pain and the sounds of gun shots created a bed of horror spikes that pierced our entire body. They then picked me for frisking; one of the office rested the nozzle of his gun at the point between my thighs and two other officers frisked me thoroughly. I stood motionless, I felt the world around me spinning and falling down like a crushed material; probably my eyes also didn't blink and watched the darkness of that night with a dead pan gaze. I could hear my mother screaming loudly in trying to reach me to stop the officers but was shackled. And after few moments her cries faded away. I didn't know when their frisking ended; when everyone left. When senses prevailed I found myself alone, kneeled down on the ground with nobody around. I couldn't find my mother around as well. And till today I don't know where she had gone, what happened to her. I spent many sleepless nights terrified with the thought of discovering her to the same fate as my father's but that too didn't turn into reality.
"When I was still recovering from the shrills of that horrific night, I came to know, one day, that he had been detained from his house last night by the armed forces but he eloped mid way. When I visited his mother, she looked at me with deserted eyes and didn't say anything; neither did she cry. I brought her to my place.
"After a few days, I received a short letter from him saying he is safe where ever he's. He wanted to meet me; he mentioned the name of a train and asked to catch it the next day if I too wished to meet him.
"The next day I boarded the train scheduled to depart at 10:30 PM. I had to get down at the last station where the journey of this train ends; a person wearing an entire black attire carrying a small triangular flag of red and black would await for me to take me to his place. The train reached at it's last station at 5:00 am the next; it was chilly, cold morning of a small station that was surrounded by mountains laden with cedar trees whose branches had been left bare by the winter bites. There were no signs of sunrise yet; it was still like the mid of the night - lit by white halogen lamps and silence of deep sleep all around. The person was at the driver's seat of the jeep and I sat beside him. Through the distant view of dark skies, dimly lit roads - sometimes with orange neon lights, sometimes with white halogen lamps, zig zag roads with mountain walls on one side and thousand feet deep valleys on the other, few culverts with sounds of flowing water underneath, dirt roads we reached at a place after 2 hours that was where a quite a few tents were stationed on a green grassland surrounded with green mountain walls and tall trees.
"But the first fresh breath of that morning that I took, partly due to the refreshing retreat of nature's view and partly out of the sense of assurance that I will soon be in his embrace, sent a chilling sensation down inside me when I saw men coming out of their tents to perform their morning chores with guns hanging from their shoulders or in their hands. It took no time to dawn upon me that the place is dwelled by separatists and was one of the base of the ongoing insurgency. He came out of one of the tent and took me to the another. I think he assessed my inner feelings; he understood my doubts about him of joining the insurgency. He asked to freshen up; he spoke nothing the entire day and neither we intended to interact until after dinner when others were preparing for the sleep he held my hand and took me outside the tent. Still silent, we sat on a huge rock. It was a moonless night; only lights that lit up that sprawling, mystical landscape were the faint amber radiance from the tent houses.
"Someone needed to break the heavy silence that was prevailing between us since morning; I did that - 'I didn't know you have finally joined the ideology.'
"He didn't look towards me and kept staring at the distant endless darkness of the sky. He spoke with no tone of self defense, no anxiety and with utmost serenity - 'There was a time on this land when what existed were only lives and it's stories. From the misty, pastel hued sky of tranquil dawns to the clear blue sky of bright afternoons to the saturated crimson hued horizon of warm dusk till the star studded shelter of serene nights the consciousness of the people were largely confined to the boundaries of mundane world. It sensed like writing our personal diary in the night when our surrounding world is in deep sleep and we can be contended to be confined in our own self because nobody is watching us. It never needed an explanation of it's thoughts that cross it's mind. But suddenly, I don't know exactly when, a reality struck this land and brought along with it a sense to perceive that reality. Today I see that the sense had touched more and more people over the years.'
"Fumed at his sarcasm I retaliated - 'I don't need any sense to perceive the reality; it's in front of me. You have been sheltered here, in an ideology that your wisdom once termed as eccentric.'
"He still remained unfazed and relaxed and spoke - 'On the night when I was detained, I was being carried in an army van. At around 3:00 AM the van stopped at the side of the road; the forces started to get down and pulled me as well. It was a narrow road, absolutely pitch dark with dense forests on both sides appearing like a never ending tunnel domed with black walls that absorbed even the dazzling headlight of the van. The darkness of the place and the muteness of the night left me bemused and frightened. I could feel my heart beating hard against the wall of my chest. I could feel my palms warm and wet with sweat. A tension of what will happen next was palpable in the anxious faces who are trying hard to hide it by staying as far as possible from the traces of the van's head light. An officer came forward and opened my hand cuffs and the commanding officer asked me run and elope from there. I felt my heart beats stopped, I didn't know whether I was breathing or not; I felt weightless, my palm dried up. The next moment I ran; tried to rush and vanish from that place in one breath and one leap. Through the dense forest, as I was running hard, I heard a gun shot. I stood absolute motionless for a second and I found myself safe. The next moment I thought to turn back and see what happened but I was still in the hangover of escaping from that place in a rush and so I continued to run and run hard.'
"He stopped his story to take deep breath by closing his eyes and resume again - 'I don't know what happened behind me that night. I could have been easily shot down, buried and forgotten in that night's darkness but I was not and I don't know why; probably I might not know when I will be exhaling my last warm breath. I rested against a tree when I got tired of running until morning sunlight woke me up. I wandered the entire next day in search of a restive place or way back home whichever I could find earlier and reached a small village by the evening. The walls of almost all the structures, throughout the village, were supporting the pamphlets of black and red flag movement. And in those I noticed few faces very known to me - they were the fresh faces that made entry to my college when I was in my final year. I sensed the feeling inside me about the reality same as you feel now; I remembered them gifted with brilliant wisdom and razor sharp yet poised thoughts.
" 'The next day I started early morning to trace the place where they put themselves up - they surely should not be far from this place. And I reached here.'
" 'It's been 7 days I am at this place, with these people, with the varied versions of single ideology. I listened to them - their humane stories in inhumane pages of a diary that is trivial to this land. All dated back to the days when the college started to get politically charged up to involve the youth in protest marches, banners for repealing special powers of armed forces. The chosen wing leaders assigned to different areas began to spend sleepless nights accompanied with tea sips in locked up rooms with different state leaders to chalk out strategies and means and ways to get heard to the corridors of central powers. The armed forces were swift to act and began detention of students involved in such protests; the idea they wanted to convey was clear - armed forces should not be instructed from any corners what to do and what not. The detentions sparked off anger among the students who switched to violent protests by then; army too retaliated strongly - detained students either didn't return home or released with signed statements to be considered as insurgents if involved in such activities further. All these gradually weakened the energy in multiple political and student factions. Their stories thereafter that led to them here were all accustomed drama of bollywood movies or best sellers but the tragedies belong to them - deep inside them it's theirs, only they have the right to look at their tragedies with whatever ways they wish to.'
"He paused as if to spare a moment of silence for those hidden tragedies. And for the first time in our conversation he looked towards me and continued further - 'Two days later, they brought the news that my mother committed suicide. Probably she was tired of waiting. she was tired of the gradual speed with which loneliness was approaching her. I felt this world so empty that night, I have never imagined days and nights without my mother. On that sleepless night I made a silent wish to to delay the morning so that I could stay soaked in my imagination - may be if that wish would have been granted, I would have asked for no day lights on this earth; only nights. The sleep came at dawn and I kept sleeping the entire day to wake up in the evening, when the sun was setting somewhere at a distant place, with a lethargic body and morose mood.
" 'Following this, they began a concerted effort to coax me to join them. Amid their persuasion, I fought inside with my acquired wisdom, battled through all nostalgia, bled for my fondness for this land. I sketched people, I sketched lives of them. And I could not forget the moments that I have lived and spent on that land. I know time has flown by but I still want to have -
" 'One day on this land of warm daylight and serene night
" 'One day on this land of humble faces and senses shining brilliantly under the beautiful moonlight
" 'One day on this land to see clear water from the melting ice flowing through the sidewalks of the road and joy of the finding that the color of ice is still white
" 'One day on this land to make a journey to those green cedar valleys where people will be having a peaceful siesta under the warmth of the sun'
" 'But I know if I attempt to return to my land now, the dread of that night will turn into reality. But I cannot stay away also. And in all these I have found a way to return.'
"It took no time of me to understand that it was a gambit to make him join the group. He could not move out of that place as the manhunt was on for him in the town and surrounding areas, so he believed them. For once I cogitated to tell him the truth. But I feared the ambiance and the people around. If I would have told the truth, he would have retaliated against them - then and there and it would have jeopardized both of our lives.
"What he revealed next numbed my senses and froze my mind. He was caught in a crossfire of a wish and reality - on one side he was dying to return back to his land where his emotions and wisdom belong to but on the other side he was fearful of his life in view of the ongoing manhunt for him.
"The only way he decided he could return to his land was nobody recognizes him and to achieve this he decided to go for plastic surgery to alter his face. A deal was struck between him and the insurgents that they would take him safely to the city ___________ where they have a trusted and known surgeon of them to achieve his wish. In return, when he would be returning back to his land, he needed to allow his abode in the town to be used as operational base for the insurgents especially housing arms and ammunition. I think by then he realized he cannot escape back to return the favor to them for sheltering and shielding him against the forces.
"The next day, on our way to the ___________, throughout the journey my mind kept oscillating between a fluttering conscience and the dream of such a reality that I knew will remain unfulfilled. Conscience to melt my lunacy and set myself free from the fragile dream - the dream to kindle an unending togetherness and a warmth in each other's embrace of we two souls when realized that we have no-one but each other to share ourselves - by telling him the truth. I dreamed of a tinge of beauty in our forlorn world and I wished that in his larger than life obsession for land I find a delightful small place which is untouched by any fear, any obsession or any reality. But that dream was not untouched by my fear - the fear of what will happen if one fine day he discovers that his mother is alive and stays at my place. I was selfish and I decided to give this dream a chance.
"We returned with susceptible wishes, profound prayers and a new face. What followed thereafter was merely a flash of my fears turning into reality instead of that dream in which I was a helpless witness. He could not recover from him obsessions but continued to sank deep in it by the guilt of bringing more bloodshed and mayhem to his land with that deal. And there I was once again kept staring at my misfortune and kept fearing of losing him, in a deep penetrated silence as before.
"The abandoned house from where you discovered the pictures, or you might have seen us there together that night, was the place where he used to stayed. It was ambushed by the forces one night but he was not present at that of the night. While after that ambush he continued to act as a facilitator for housing arms for the group but he became more frightened than ever for his life and it was clearly reflected in his conversations and thoughts. Whatever you have seen you have discovered were only one of few handful moments that we tried to spend with love and peace; whatever sketches you had discovered from there were merely an attempt to relieve ourselves by re-creating nostalgia. I was witnessing every bit of my fear getting worse - his resorting to alcoholism at night and scribbing dark sensations on white papers on sleepless nights; frequent frictions and sentimental accusations that left me destituted of everything in this world and helpless of myself when he wished to visit my place to spend night after getting tired of many sleepless nights and I outrightly used to deny by giving all sorts of worldly reasons that could jeopardize him.
"Her mother told me you came to our place looking for me a few days before he was gunned down. He was not there in town and he went to that same old place; so I understood your arrival. He went there to beg to relieve him of the deal. I think he realized his end is near from all the corners of his life - the armed forces, the insurgents and his own mental affliction.
"And it all did end, at the light's speed.
"I don't know did he wish to live more before he finds his end but his prayers were fulfilled - he died in his own land that he loved equal to his life and not at a remote place that is unknown to him."
It was all silent but crackling sound of the diminishing bonfire when she ended her tale. Both our eyes were stuck at the dying fire and we were motionless.
I took a deep breath and spoke the first words - "I don't know how the adjudicator of sin and virtue will regard him there but in this world of crime and punishment I leave it on you to decide whether you find this world growing a little saner to understand this story. Human right groups have cried foul play in this case and investigations have started. As soon as it will finish, I will have to sit down to draft the investigation report. I will wait for your reply."
She didn't gave any expression, neither she moved from her place. I got up and was walking away but I stopped. I turned back and came near her. Her eyes were still stuck at the last peck of burning wood.
I said - "Neither I know how will you be judged in the eyes of law of this land but deep inside us, in our conscience, we all are having compunctions today, we all are sinner to at least one person on his earth and that is his mother. We cannot be pardoned but we can at least lessen our pain by giving her a chance to see her son for one last time, although unaware she will be and a reason to hope, for the rest of her life, that her son may be alive somewhere on this earth. His body is kept in the morgue and soon the forces will perform the last rites. I will wait for you tomorrow there."
Next day, in the morgue, when the old woman vented out - "He's not my son", the horrors melted and both of them turned about; without speaking a word to me both of them started walking away as if a journey to put pieces back to the little jigsaw puzzle begins.
After few minutes, she returned and left by saying - "In this world of crime and punishment, I don't have the stature to judge the sanity of this world. I am just another mortal beloved who still misses her man, feels lonely, repents her acts yet want to live because she's also scared to die, frightened to imagine her absence from this earth. So I leave this judgement on you.
"I am thinking what would have changed if I have spoken the truth to him about his mother ? Or the truth about her son to this mother ? So far there are no answers. But I sincerely want to thank you for your kindness. It might not change my perspective towards armed forces but with the course of time it might change my perspective towards you."
There are some stories that were never meant to be understood but holds the capability to capture the vivid imagination and this is one such story.
I have submitted the investigation report and decided to reveal the story in it. I didn't ponder neither did I dare; I only prayed that this world remains sane and silent for a little while when this unusual story will see the light of the world.
