The Gandhian Adventures of Raj & Iqbal: A Novel (11 page)

Yes but not people, said Veeru from behind me, only goats and chickens.

I turned to Veeru in confusion, and then back to Yoosuf in surprise. Now I was not sure what to think. Could it be that these buggers are still in training and hence are only murdering and blowing up these small animals that probably do not have AK47s for their own self-defense? But still, if you are to become a professional killer of men, then why not practice on men only? Why kill the goats and chickens?

For the mutton biryani, said Veeru from behind me, and the chicken kabaabs.

Yes, said Yoosuf, we are representatives from the Pakistani Association for Preparation and Serving of Food.

Yes yes, said Veeru, we are cooks.

T
hen why did you tell the Netaji that you are terrorists? I asked.

By this time we had explained that we were not Indian extremists but actually Gandhians, and so the tension had dissolved a little bit. We had entered the small cabin area of the Pakistani lead boat, and we were sitting in close quarters in a dining hall kind of place that smelled very strongly of the wondrous dishes of the Pakistani people.

Because when one of our members tried to arrange the exchange by giving the true name and purpose of our group, said Yoosuf, your leader told us he will only deal with terrorist groups.

I see, said Iqbal.

I nodded. This was indeed consistent with what Netaji said was his strategy. After all, he said that when he provides onions to the angry groups, they become less angry and are hence less likely to inflict angry actions of dissatisfaction against others. Of course, the members of all these angry groups are simply just the villagers from the small towns, and when they receive onions, they pass it on to their families and their groups’ cooks.

And that gave me a brainwave.

But where did you get five thousand kilos of guns? I asked suspiciously.

Yoosuf made a sighing noise and looked at the ground.

Yes, he said, many of our cooks are in fact cooks for some militant groups or camps.

Yes, said Veeru, and so we banded together and made a raid of the gun storage places and what-not.

But is that not dangerous for you all, said Iqbal.

Yes, I said, what if they had discovered you in the act?

Then we would have been chopped up and discarded immediately, said Veeru.

Yes, said Yoosuf, because we ourselves are not violent people or even angry people.

These militant groups are the only employers in our villages, said Veeru, and so we only have the choices of being cooks for the militant groups or being soldiers for the militant groups.

Of course, said Yoosuf quite seriously, third choice is to have ourselves and our families simply starve to death in the mountain villages due to no job or money.

But we are not good at these hunger strikes, said Veeru, like your man Gandhi was.

At the mention of Gandhiji I felt proud, because indeed the great Mahatma secured many concessions and allowances and freedoms by going on hunger strike at great risk to his own life as well as to the life of Kasturba-ben, his noble wife.

Our man Gandhi, said Yoosuf quietly.

Like our man Jinnah, said Iqbal in reciprocation.

I was inspired by this exchange of respectful mentions of the respective godfathers of the Indian and Pakistani nations. In Pakistan the man Jinnah, originally an Indian of course, as are many old Pakistanis due to Pakistan having not existed before 1947, is held in the same regard and esteem as Gandhiji is held in our country of India. Of course, Jinnah was a great Indian freedom fighter as well, and even though all wise scholars of both Indian and Pakistani history will know that the two countries say different-different things about these two great leaders, it is not the place of us humble Gandhians to say which is correct and which is incorrect. The simple truth is there can be no doubt that both are great. Separate, but equal, one might say.

I said all this aloud to our small group of four men—two Indians, two Pakistanis, two Hindus, two Muslims—total four. For once everyone listened without smiling or laughing or calling me a silly bugger or telling me to shut up, and I could feel that I was drawing the strength from the holy rock island on which the Haji Ali darga quietly sat in the night, unmoved by the gentle waves of the high Arabian Seas. It truly was a moment of great magic and wondrousness, and I knew that all these men on this boat were simple people and brotherly in spirit and intention.

Our moment was broken up by the sound of wood striking wood and the loud shouts of what must have been Bhatkoo and Shamoo and the Pakistani henchman with the AK47.

Do not shoot them, I shouted, they are without weapons of note.

Not to worry, said Yoosuf, our guns are not loaded.

But perhaps your henchman will get bullets from the hatch where thousands of kilos of weapons are present for the exchange, I said.

Not to worry, said Veeru with a smile, the guns we have provided do not match with the bullets we have provided.

And the bombs do not match with the detonators, said Yoosuf.

And so, I shouted in delight, due to deductive logic all the remaining guns and bombs and bullets and detonators in the militant group storages back in Pakistan are mismatched and hence unfit for ignition or explosion.

Yes, said Yoosuf.

Yes yes, shouted Veeru in pride.

But then another shout from upstairs made us alert to possible drama outside, and so we had to cut short our celebrations of the smart peace-loving actions of these Pakistani militant cooks of mutton biryani and chicken kabaabs.

When we emerged into the dark starry night we saw that Bhatkoo and Shamoo had brought their boat close by, and now the second onion boat was touching the first onion boat, and Bhatkoo and Shamoo had been deposited on the ground near us and were being held there at gunpoint.

Do not shoot us, said Bhatkoo.

Or only shoot us in the non-vital organs such as kidney or thigh, shouted Shamoo.

Yoosuf instructed his henchman to put down the gun, but the henchman looked very angry and suspicious.

These two were activating some mechanism on that big onion boat, he said, and I think it must be a timed bomb to kill us once we have left the vicinity.

No no, shouted Shamoo, we would never destroy five thousand kilos of onions like that.

Bhatkoo kicked him as if to shut him up, and now even I grew suspicious because these two chaps were acting like they had been doing some funny business that was unknown to myself and Iqbal.

Show me, said Yoosuf to the henchman.

The henchman pointed to a metallic object that seemed to have some kind of small red blinking light on it. The object was affixed to the side of the large onion-boat, and to me it definitely looked like some kind of device that could possibly be a sign of trickery on the part of Bhatkoo and Shamoo, or perhaps even Netaji.

Now the trust has been broken, shouted Veeru, and we must kill them with our mutton-choppers.

The henchman turned his gun towards me and Iqbal and indicated for us to sit on the ground next to Shamoo and Bhatkoo, but since I knew the gun was not loaded, I was not scared. So I simply ignored him and I started to slap Shamoo and Bhatkoo hard and on the face with extreme prejudice and great immediacy. They shouted and screamed and cried, but I did not stop until Yoosuf and Iqbal together pulled me away from them.

No, said Yoosuf to Veeru after I had been restrained, sometimes you have to maintain trust on the basis of instinct even when trust appears to have been violated. We will sort this out. If it is a bomb, then I do not think these two jokers will want it to detonate while they are close by, so we are okay for now I think.

Unless they are suicide bombers, shouted Veeru.

Yes, said the henchman, you can never tell with these Indians.

I told you they are murderers and extremists, shouted Veeru again, and now I am proven correct.

Stop it, said Yoosuf.

He looked at me and then at Iqbal and then at me again and then away into the distance at the glowing lights of the Haji Ali darga.

I do not think these two leaders knew of this device, he said finally.

Of course we did not, I shouted as if in anger but really it was in relief.

Iqbal did not say anything, but I could tell he was relieved. Or perhaps he simply had faith that the instincts of Yoosuf would ensure that the situation would not escalate to the use of mutton-choppers on us.

So tell us now, said Yoosuf in a stern voice that was more scary than even a fully loaded AK47, what is this device that you have affixed to the boats we are to be leaving in?

Tracker, said Bhatkoo quietly while looking away from everyone’s eyes.

Satellite-based tracker, said Shamoo while looking up into the black sky as if to search for a satellite.

For the Coast Guard to track us and arrest us, said Yoosuf with a sigh.

Bhatkoo kept looking down, and Shamoo kept looking up.

Answer him you bloody fools, I shouted.

They remained silent for many more moments, and finally I began to lose my patience.

Bring me one of those mutton-choppers, I said, and I will dislocate some of the non-vital organs of these buggers.

I think Bhatkoo did not believe me, but Shamoo did not know me as well, and plus I must have looked quite impressive in my black kurta-pajama standing there gently rocking as if I was master of the high Arabian Seas. And so Shamoo finally blurted it out.

Maoists, he said quietly.

The Chinese, I shouted in surprise.

And now everyone shouted, more in surprise than anything else, but possibly a little bit of fear as well, because if the Maoists showed up, it was very likely that they would have no such issue of mismatched guns and bullets, and would laugh at our mutton-choppers as they shot us full of tiny holes and dropped us into the Arabian Seas to add to the other floating objects.

A
fter some more interrogation under threat of chopping off the non-vital organs of Shamoo, the full plot became clear to us. Netaji had made a double-deal with the Pakistanis and the Chinese. The Maoists had been given the locator codes for the tracking device in exchange for a small finder’s-fee that Netaji would reinvest into the hydroponics infrastructure, and once we had successfully completed our exchange and separated from the Pakistanis, the Maoists would arrive and hijack the Pakistanis and take away the onions.

After all, even though China is number one in onion production, they are also number one in onion consumption, and they rely on some exports from India. So when there is onion problem, these poor Maoists suffer the most due to being lower down on the Chinese hierarchy. And since the Maoists are the ones most active along the India-China borders, their suffering is translated into border usurpation and covert strikes.

I understood that Netaji at some level was trying to create a win-win situation for India by using two external parties against one another. From my limited knowledge, this is the number one strategy of foreign policy, and so I could not fault Netaji, who is a self-proclaimed foreign policy man, for engaging in it. And since he believed that these Pakistanis were actually terrorists, perhaps he did not feel so bad about their potential loss of life at the hands of the Maoists. Possibly he even didn’t mind if there was a gun battle between the Pakistanis on the onion ships and the Chinese on their gun-ships resulting in an indeterminate outcome. He could maintain tracking of the situation in case both sides got finished off and the onions were left to float freely on the Arabian Seas. Onions spoil only after long time, and with the salt in the air, possibly the onions could float for months without spoiling.

My detailed thinking was interrupted by the scared voice of Bhatkoo. When I looked at him in contempt and expecting him to be fearful of me, I noticed that his fear was not of me.

We must separate ourselves from these onion-boats, he said, because now that the device has been activated, the Maoists will descend upon us with extreme prejudice and fearful immediacy.

Then why did you activate it, I shouted, you bloody fool.

It was a mistake by Shamoo, said Bhatkoo.

I was only trying to fix it on the boat, protested Shamoo, and I did not know that fixing it in place would automatically activate it.

It becomes active the moment it is in direct view of a satellite, said Bhatkoo, that is why we did not fix it on the boat to begin with and instead kept it closed up in a black cloth.

I gave Shamoo one more tight slap on his face, and then I turned to Yoosuf and Iqbal, both of whom seemed to be the answer-men, for answers.

Should we all stay on the gun-boats, I said, and simply abandon the onions?

I think so, said Iqbal, because loss of onions is better than loss of life.

We cannot return to Pakistan without the onions, said Yoosuf softly but with determination.

And we cannot stay on the gun-boats, said Veeru after some hesitation that made me wonder.

Why not? I said.

Because they are already sinking and will be underwater within fifteen minutes, Veeru replied without looking at me directly in the eyeball.

I looked around, and sure enough, the water levels around us were noticeably higher, which meant by deduction that the ship-surface levels were noticeably lower. I stared at Veeru and then at Yoosuf, who nodded in agreement.

Yes, he said, we have unplugged some pre-made holes on the ships that are allowing water into the lower decks of the gun-boats.

But why? I shouted.

Because they assumed we are Indian violent extremists, said Iqbal wisely, and so they did not want us to have possession of so many weapons despite the bullets and detonators being mismatched.

So even you have done some kind of double-deal, I said to Yoosuf without anger and even with some admiration at the Gandhian qualities of the double-deal.

You could say that, said Yoosuf.

Yes, said Veeru, sorry.

No problem, said Iqbal, we understand why you would want to sink us.

In fact, I said with a laugh, our plan was to sink the gun-boats anyway and escape on a third boat that would come after you are gone.

And this gave me yet another brainwave, my third such brainwave of the night, and I immediately jumped up and down and shouted.

Oh but the solution is simple then, I said, we can all escape on Netaji’s boat.

Brilliant, said Iqbal, we will just wait on board the onion-boats while the gun-boats sink.

And when Netaji comes, I said, we will all get onto his boat and be saved.

No, said Yoosuf, we cannot leave the onions behind.

We will fight with mutton-choppers if necessary, said Veeru, but we will either win by gaining the onions or lose by losing our lives.

Now I felt we were in a thick situation. On the one hand we had experienced some bonding with these Pakistani cooks and I did not want to leave them for certain death at the hands of the Maoists. On the other hand, I did not want to meet certain death myself at the hands of anyone, let alone some Maoists on the Arabian high seas.

Then it is decided, said Iqbal, we will all stay on the onion boats and face the Chinese together.

My blood became like milk-curds at hearing this, and I wondered how many holes the Chinese bullets would make in me and whether my body would be found near the Haji Ali island and whether people will even know that it is me. One small tear came into my eye as I breathed in the moist salty air and thanked the gods for having a nice life and then cursed some different gods for forcing my life to end like this.

But sirs, came the squeaky voice of Shamoo.

At first we did not pay attention, and I even wanted to slap him a little bit more just to warm up my blood before the final death-battle with the Chinese.

But sirs, said Shamoo a little bit louder.

What is it, I shouted angrily.

But sirs, he said, why do we not simply pull off the tracking device and throw it into the sea and it will sink and then I do not think the battery will work and also I do not think the satellite signal will penetrate the water.

We all stared at Shamoo and then we all looked away, taking care not to look at any other person directly in the eye because we were all too ashamed and embarrassed for not thinking of such a simple solution to the Chinese onion problem. It is funny how the thoughts can so quickly move one to get ready for a death-battle without first considering all the less dramatic options. That is also one characteristic of foreign policy, I believe.

So we simply sent Shamoo to the onion-boat to pluck off the tracker and throw it into the Arabian Sea, which happily swallowed it up like it was doing a service for us.