Untitled.....

The annoying sound of the deep snort of crushed nose candy stirred her from the slumber to find her in the wooden surroundings of the smoky dark flooring of the room. It was damp and musky. As if the wood was protected by a sea of moss. Her kohl lined eyes opened slowly, eyelids fluttering dizzily to the distant ray of light above her. She quietly whimpered to the pounding headache; the hangover had to leave its marks. A barely audible fearful cry, fearful of being assaulted if heard. Another day had dawned. The stench of decomposing defecation, of rotting bodies and dirt hit her like an anvil dropping on her and she quickly got up holding the thin dirty tarpaulin sheet to cover her otherwise nearly naked salt eaten body. Around her were eyes, concupiscent, evil and cruel, dirty, dust laden and intoxicated. To her, faces were all the same. Same old dirt but different faces! But nothing unusual, for her it meant one more day of survival in the cellar. They had been on the seas since a week, lost all count of time in the tropical humid air, living on dry fruits and glucose powder to keep them alive. Their mission- to lay siege and take hostage on enemy country, inflict as many casualties as possible. And her mission - to kill the enemy of her country, the divine retribution for the one who had brought down that destruction in her family, who made her an orphan right in front of her eyes, who showed her what bestiality meant and who transformed her to what she was today, that’s what she was told, that’s what the institute professed to all cadres like her. She scarcely remembered all of that past. She remembered just the training institute, the near death survival training and her motive, the picture of that fair bright-eyed person with the golden hair on the moth eaten newspaper. That picture was inscribed in the frozen hive of her mind, that face with a slight scar on the right cheek, the lips contorting as if there was a statement to be made, a perfect nose and kind yet mysterious eyes. She could never miss that face, now that she saw him in the TV before leaving. She gently took out the newspaper from that crumpled bag and looked at that black and white photograph in the shimmering light. The letters in the background were hardly of any importance, they were illegible. She folded it back and took a deep snort of the remaining coke on the floor and looked up into the funnel of light poring mercilessly on her.

…the pebbled, mucked up road twisted at the group of bamboo trees and turned right near the lake to enter into the thick growth of broom shrubs beneath the ever flowering red bougainvilleas. It was the most beautiful part that the road cut through, twisting and twining between the apple groves ending at the very doors of a small solitary thatched hut. 2 boys with their oversized pants tied at the waist playing sticks at the front yard while a small girl of around 4 years wearing a soiled frock chasing the pigeons away. The father seemed to carry a heavy bunch of tree branches in his arm and mother seemed to pick up the clothes that were strewn on the ground for drying. There was golden hay lying all across the ground and beside the bamboo gate there were flame-red chilies of the size of her thumb kept for drying Mother used to say that father worked for the government. There was a strange machine with an upright black pole which talked by itself and made strange illegible sounds. Father used to talk to it and wouldn’t allow anybody to come inside when he was talking…

Nearly 5 months had gone by, since she was living in the outskirts of a remote village. All the arms were stashed in the cellar below the wooden footing and all communication was through radio transponders. The villagers were simpletons, kind and unaware of the impending militia within their very own village. She was hardly bothered with any of this. She was a killing machine, made for a purpose; a messiah, to wreak vengeance on the person who had put her at peril, to claim justice for the lives of those “oblivious” family members and to claim honor by giving her life for the nation. Every day and night that she spent on the foreign soil, she dreamt of the institute; she remembered the blood boiling speeches of the institute, the stories of the acts of bestiality and cruelty that they had committed in the name of war, the plight of the homeless orphans like her and their brethren who had been killed before their very eyes and ultimately the terror which this nation had wreaked on them; her life was a very small price to pay, the best that she could do. And she waited for the day, calmly and patiently. That night she dreamt.

… there were men in green uniforms and harvest green colored berets with automatic rifles slung over their backs on that road, moving in a single file, alert and quick. They were much unlike her father, rugged, unshaven and cruel. The village people had informed about nearby villages getting razed to the ground, men and women being brutally killed by militants and called for immediate evacuation. But father had brushed away all such concerns of mother, their village was the closest to the border patrol; there was no way that any miscreant could ever lay hands on that village. She was near the bamboo bush looking for the rabbit, when they called her and asked for directions to the nearest house; they said that they were from the border patrol and that they were thirsty. She pointed out her house and ran over to the corn field by the bamboo bush. After a while, she spotted the fleecy white ears of the rabbit and approached it slowly and stealthily and quietly bent over to catch it. Sounds of gunshot! She looked behind her and saw smoke from the house. On a sudden instinct, she ran over from the fields shouting for mother and her brothers. The bamboo gate had been thrown away. There was an unearthly silence, as if each living organism had been a part and a witness to the ghastly spectacle. As she looked with tears drawn to her eyes, the house burnt brightly vomiting pitch black corpuscles of soot into the air. She knelt down in helplessness realizing her futility and cried bitterly. Her entire world had been dashed to smithereens. The world around her grew darker until it was pitch black as she closed her eyes and fell down unconscious …
… The sun was shining uncomfortably into her eyes as she weakly got up from the make shift bed by the thatch. It seemed to her like a big bad dream. There were lots like her, sleeping, crying; injured and healthy. An elderly woman came to her and stroked her head. She said that god had picked them as the chosen ones and the institute will protect them from all harm at any cost. The next month when hundreds of cadres of the ‘army of God’ were addressed by the guide, paper cuttings of newspapers were given to each of them. She was told about her parents and her siblings’ deaths. The person whose photo was on the cutting was the perpetrator of all sufferings and all innocent deaths would be duly avenged by the chosen ones. The speaker veiled behind a black colored cloth said, “hatred breeds hatred and we shall give them their share…”

People were thronging in thousands, fighting to get to the front, nailing and pushing, climbing on each other to get a view of the Minister. He had come to address all the villagers, promising them with aid and support. They were all kinds the young, the elderly, the teenagers; happy, sad, rowdy, serene, laughing, crying and so on and so forth. And there was she, at the second row of the line of people. She wore a sari and was draped in a bright decorative green shawl. She had put on her best make up and with her feminine build and feline looks, she looked the prettiest in the whole lot. She looked forward to his grand appearance and her final act. She was the agent of an event which would change the course of history; the executor of justice to bring down retribution and glorify her existence. Those days of endurance and penance when she had transcended all limits of the calamities of trauma and suffering, would be put to test today. He came down from the stage to greet the crowd. He was no different from the picture on the newspaper, just that he looked a tad older. As he joined his hands before the women in the front, their eyes met. It was a strange familiar meet, as if a stranded piece of the jigsaw puzzle had been put into place to make a complete meaning. She did not flinch or move. As she looked motionlessly, her right hand mechanically moved to activate the switch.