03:02 (21 page)

I didn’t say a word either, as we walked. To be honest, I was more scared than I had been at any point since the Blackout began. In the initial stages of the crisis, my instincts had kicked in and, more by accident than by design, I had done what I could to keep those around me safe. The only real physical danger had been from the gang. However, the confrontation with the terrorists had come as a cold dose of reality for me, telling me that I was quite out of my depth. I was pretty confident I could handle a looter in unarmed combat, but if a dozen men like the one I had grappled with attacked us, armed with assault rifles, then we would be slaughtered.

As I walked towards the society gates, it seemed like every single person who lived in our community had come by. People were thronging the sidewalks, and I saw many of them point towards me as I walked in. The meeting room itself was overflowing beyond capacity and people walked up to me to shake my hand and pat me on the back. What the hell was going on?

As I entered the room, I saw Akif and Ismail in a corner. They came up and stood next to me, each carrying one of the captured AK-47s. Pandey was carrying his rifle and the two sten guns had been passed on to two of the younger men whom Pandey had been training. Even Mahadev was carrying the .22 pistol in his hand and he smiled broadly at me as I entered. Two others still were carrying pistols. Less than a week ago, we had been executives, students, businessmen and an auto-rickshaw driver. Now we looked like members of some sort of armed militia. The General was sitting in a corner. I noticed that he was carrying a walking stick for the first time since I had met him, and his face seemed to have a slightly bemused smile. Even Suri, who had opposed most of our initial plans and then contributed little to our efforts since then, held out his hand for me to shake.

‘What the hell is going on?’ I whispered to Akif.

The General got up and walked towards me, leaning on his walking stick for support.

‘Come aside, my boy, and we’ll talk before you address the group.’

Megha was still holding my hand as I moved into the next room, and Akif and Mahadev followed, along with the General.

‘You see, Aadi, Akif just told people how you killed two of the terrorists.’

I glared at Akif. ‘Why would you do that? I barely managed to get out of there alive.’

Now the General’s smile was gone and his expression was deadly serious. ‘I told him to say so.’

‘Why?’ I asked, taken aback.

‘When Akif began talking of terrorist killers, black flags and dead bodies lining the street, you should have seen people’s expressions. Unfortunately, Nitish pitched in saying that he thought the lights being on at the airport and it being under terrorist control confirmed that they’d had cells in place here before the Blackout. They were prepared with generators and probably protected their vehicles from the EMP by putting them in Faraday cages or some such contraption—basically shielding them in metal boxes, as far as I can understand. Talking of an abstract faraway enemy is one thing, contemplating such an enemy so close at hand would terrify anyone. They were on the verge of panic, so I nudged Akif to embellish the encounter a bit, to tell them how you managed to fell both terrorists with ease.’

‘But why lie to them?’

‘My boy, you see it as a lie. I see it as giving them some hope. When they see a leader who is capable of standing up for them, they will rally behind him as one, otherwise they will panic and scatter.’

I looked down, trying to control my anger, and said, ‘A lie which will make people have false confidence in a leader who really cannot do much to lead them? What chance do you think we stand against armed terrorists like those?’

The General laid a hand on my shoulder.

‘Sometimes it doesn’t matter whether you stand a chance or not, but whether the fight is worth fighting.’

I looked up at him and he continued. ‘Or would you rather surrender? From news reports before the Blackout you know what to expect, what these men used to do to captives in Iraq and Syria. Now you’ve seen it with your own eyes. Men will be slaughtered, and women and girls will be taken as slaves. Do you want Megha to be taken as a sex slave by one of those terrorists?’

‘Shut up!’ I spat out my rage, all my doubt and indecision replaced by cold fury.

‘Keep that anger. Stoke it. Channel it. Against the men who have destroyed our world and now threaten our homes and loved ones. But even anger needs a lightning rod—a leader who can channel our collective anger into constructive activity, and you, my son, whether you like it or not, are that leader.’

‘Will they come looking for us?’

‘Are they going to attack?’

The anxiety was perfectly understandable. It was one thing to talk of fighting for our homes, quite another to do it when you knew the lives of your loved ones were at risk. I felt an emptiness in the pit of my stomach as I contemplated any imminent attack on our community, and I had only Megha to worry about. As I scanned the room and saw worry on the faces of those who had children and parents to worry about as well, I could only guess how anxious they felt. I could do nothing about that, but what I could do was to channel that anxiety into some action and to make us as well prepared as we could be, now that we knew what we were up against. I still felt scared, I still felt I wasn’t up to the task, but I forced all those feelings back, instead focusing all my energies on one simple truth—the fact that I would gladly die rather than have Megha taken by those animals.

‘We cannot control what they may or may not do, but we can focus on what
we
need to do.’

That got their attention and they leaned forward to hear what our plans were.

‘First, Kundu, we need the supply teams to divert their energies to one specific task for a little while. Get bags filled with sand and mud and line them up along the barricades facing Ghatkopar and Chandivali. If they come, those are the likely routes. We can barricade the others tomorrow.’

‘Should we use rocks?’

‘Easier to get, but if a bullet hits them and sends pieces of rock flying, we can die just as easily from a splinter as a bullet.’

His eyes widened at that and he rushed off to gather his teams.

‘Also, let’s get the cooking teams to work early. Let people eat an early dinner so that when it gets dark we can focus on sentry duties.’

It was now past six in the evening, and Anu and a large number of people moved out to get dinner organized.

‘Pandeyji, how are we placed for weapons?’

‘We have a lot more than we did before. Two AKs and two pistols that you brought back, to be precise. The problem is that we’ve been rotating weapons duties and a guy holding a gun was enough to dissuade a looter or refugee, but against these guys we’ll need people who can use the guns in a firefight.’

‘What do you suggest?’

‘We move to two teams who are qualified to handle the weapons and they’re the only ones who get them in rotation. Other volunteers can do spotting and sentry duty. I have in mind folks who’ve shown aptitude and welcome other volunteers to try out, but we have limited weapons and ammo, so we need to ensure that the people using them know what they’re doing.’

He ran through the weapons inventory and those he wanted on the weapons teams. Nobody seemed to object to it and I noted that he’d left out the two pistols I had, one of which was now with Mahadev. I nodded at Mahadev. ‘You can keep yours. You’ve proven yourself in battle.’

He beamed and seemed to stand a foot taller. The General had another suggestion. ‘At all our checkpoints, we are essentially blind till someone gets close. Also, our lamps there actually work against us since any approaching enemy can see us long before we see them. Nitish, can you get some volunteers to set up kerosene lamps or torches at least a couple of hundred meters ahead of each checkpoint? That way we’ll have some advance warning of who is coming our way in the dark.’

Another set of people headed off, and by now more than half those who had gathered there had left to get to work. I called out to Dr Guenther. ‘Doctor, you, Megha and Marie were enough for normal illnesses and injuries, but if there is fighting, people will get shot and suffer more serious injuries. It may be prudent to start an ambulance corps of our own using one of the auto-rickshaws and to start training a few more paramedics.’

As people got busy with their duties, Akif pointed to the gear we had brought back. The AK-47s were a big boost to our firepower, but he pointed out things which would be perhaps equally, if not more, useful. He handed me one of the two bulletproof vests we had recovered.

‘You should wear one. We’ll save the other one for whoever is on hazardous duty.’

‘Why me?’

He winked at me before saying, ‘Because you have a habit of putting yourself in harm’s way.’

Then he pointed to the handheld radio on the table and turned it on. We heard static followed by some words in a language we couldn’t understand. With a big grin, Ismail said, ‘Those sons of whores don’t know Akif and I can understand Arabic. They’re asking their patrols to be on the watch for attackers. By listening in on this we will know what they’re planning.’

An hour later, Megha and I were sitting in my apartment and she was holding my hand, trying to calm me.

‘You can’t think of everything, you know.’

I turned towards her in the dim light offered by the candle burning on the bedside table. While each apartment could have powered up lights using the generator, in an almost unspoken agreement, we were foregoing that luxury, a sign that we were all hunkering down for the long haul. Also, we knew the lights on in our apartments would not have gone unnoticed by the terrorists earlier. There was nothing we could do to undo that, but keeping them on now felt like painting a target on ourselves. While some essential lights were needed—in the common areas, the hospital and in the common washrooms—most were at lower levels and not visible from the airport.

‘I know, Megha. But I feel responsible. That’s new for me. I was single, and all I had to worry about was my job and career. Now I have people who think I know what I’m doing, and I have you.’

Megha held me tight. ‘You know what my mom would tell my dad every time he’d go on a sortie? That he should not worry about us; he should not make us a weakness. Instead, he should take strength from knowing that so many families like ours depended on him.’

‘Megha, he was a career officer. Till a week ago I was a cubicle dweller for whom a bitter battle meant arguing for investments from the head office.’

She smiled, leaned in and kissed me. ‘Now we’re all warriors, and fighting together for us is what will give us strength.’

Suddenly I recoiled and she stared at me. ‘Did I say or do something wrong?’

‘Shit, I don’t want to repeat my mistake.’

‘What mistake?’

‘Of just worrying about us and leaving others in danger. The people at Nahar have no idea of who’s out there and the danger they’ll be in if the terrorists come towards us. I’m sure the terrorist leaders have spotted the lights in our building. If they come here, they will pass Nahar, and the people there will have no idea who they’re dealing with. A few college students with hockey sticks might have scared off looters, but they’ll be massacred by these guys.’

‘You can’t go out in the dark now, Aadi.’

‘I’ll be back. I promise I’ll come back to you, but I need to do this.’

It was a big gamble. I knew we could lose some of our firearms if we ended up getting into a fight and lost—but I didn’t bother to ask for permission. In what now seemed like a different life, Dhruv had once taught me a lesson that I brought to work on many occasions: If you really want a breakthrough, it’s better to ask for forgiveness later than to always ask for permission. In a very different context, where the stakes were infinitely higher, I was following my old boss’ advice. I had no idea how Dhruv and his family had coped with the Blackout and its aftermath, but I could do nothing for them. I could, however, do something for the families in the school at Nahar.

I told only those I thought would be up to such a crazy venture—Akif, Ismail, Mahadev and Pandey. They were more than eager to come with me—Akif said he heard someone on the radio asking for a raiding party to search out nearby apartments for those who had killed their men. We decided against taking an auto-rickshaw because we would be heard coming from a long way off in the silence of the night, and instead took a bicycle each.

The ride to Nahar was uneventful enough but we didn’t push our luck—we dismounted our bicycles well before we reached and proceeded on foot. We were all wearing dark clothes and Akif had insisted we rub black shoe polish on our faces. Given that all of us were varying shades of brown, this measure was a bit unnecessary, if not melodramatic, but it seemed to help give them all confidence, and so I didn’t say anything about this further attempt at pretending to be elite commandoes and not a motley crew comprising an executive, two out-of-shape businessmen, an auto-rickshaw driver and a pot-bellied security guard.

Without realizing it, I had held my breath during the hundred metre or so walk in the darkness to the school, and I exhaled in relief when I was greeted by two pimply teenagers carrying cricket bats and not more dead bodies. I was let in when one of them recognized me from my earlier trip. Mahadev and Pandey stood guard outside while Akif and Ismail went further down the road to warn us if we were going to have company. I went into the school auditorium to find it packed with at least a hundred people, mostly families with several young children. The elderly man I had met earlier now came up to greet me.

‘We were never properly introduced. My name is Vikas Sood and I am the chairman of the society and also used to be the principal of the school. It was my idea to have everyone seek shelter here.’

‘That choice was the right one if the problem was going to go away in a few days, but it looks like it’s much more serious than we thought.’

I told him what we had seen on the airport road and the confrontation with the terrorists. I could see his face sag and many of the people in the group started asking questions all at once.