Caution: Spoilers ahead about the movie ‘Berlin’.
In Atul Sabharwal’s Berlin, a sign language teacher is hired by a government intelligence officer to interrogate a deaf-mute waiter suspected of participating in an assassination plot. Starring Aparshakti Khurana, Ishwak Singh and Rahul Bose, Berlin has been premiered on ZEE5.
Sabharwal’s beguiling take on the conspiracy thriller is set in 1993, after the end of the Cold War. The movie title refers to a cafe in Delhi where agents from different countries meet. Why are the tables at Berlin always occupied? Why are all the waiters deaf-mute? And what makes one of them, Ashok Kumar (Ishwak Singh), dare to go beyond his job description?
Berlin is based on Sabharwal’s short story, The Decipherer. Read the complete story here, reproduced with Sabharwal’s permission.
‘The Decipherer’ by Atul Sabharwal
The Wall was still hot at the tables. The winter in Delhi had frozen twenty nine souls to death as per the last count, but it could not weaken the heat around the Wall. At one of the tables, those two men, they are probably discussing that the plan to bring the Berlin Wall down was hatched in New Delhi. Indira Gandhi’s second masterstroke after she had midwifed Bangladesh. Rest in peace poor old lady, the Prime Minister of substance, assassinated by her own guards, five years before the Wall was pulled down. Five years before, eh? Yes, only she could come up with a plan so foolproof that even her death could not avert it. The people of Germanys should feel indebted to her, just like the people of Bangladesh.
A man walked into the café and looked around. The tables were all occupied. They always are. It was a part of the understanding that traders on the floor had with the owner – to keep the tables full all the time. This café is a marketplace for trading information. It has all the hustle bustle of a stock trading floor, as I am told. Premium information comes in dirtiest packaging here, facts adulterated with fiction and misinformation so that only an expert trader could extract the purest form.
A trader could be a professional – an ex or current officer of the government, from civil or defense, or a power broker, a politician or an intelligence agent. Over the years amateurs too have been initiated in the trade by the professionals – drivers, wives, sons, lovers, brothers, gangsters. The backstage members in the theater of current affairs.
And then there are people like me. People with hearing impairment. The deaf who cannot eavesdrop. Every day the café owner allots us our tables, placing us like acoustic walls between the tables occupied by bona fide traders, his regular customers. The deaf pretend to talk aloud, pre-rehearsed lines from a script, adding noise to garble the trading voices.
That was one of the purposes of hiring us. The other purpose was to dissuade non-traders who walk into the café. To a non-trader we all looked like ordinary customers, occupying the seat that he desperately needed. A non-trader who had just walked into the café turned around and left. Urgency of their thirst or hunger always made them leave. Those at the tables continued to tend to their day trade.
But right now there’s more a pretense of trade here rather than any actual trade. The Cold War ended. The USSR had collapsed, blowing icy Siberian dust over the information industry. The market had crashed.
Tea and tradecraft
I was introduced to the café owner through his agent. Or was that guy my agent, the friendly man who hung around Sharda Devi Institute for Deaf near R.K. Puram? Perhaps he was a double agent who sourced deaf workforce for the café owner and found employment for deaf people like me.
This was three years ago. The owner was thorough, he didn’t trust the double agent working for him. The doctor who was on the owner’s payroll examined me and the other two fresh entrants, by poking his instruments deep into our ears, right where it hurt and confirmed that we indeed were deaf and hence fit for the job.
The job was simple. We were to sit at the allotted tables, make conversations from a pre-rehearsed script. On some days we worked as waiters and tended to bona fide traders, while keeping an eye out for spotting a trader’s hand go up to summon one of us. The traders would repeat their order slowly so that a deaf waiter could follow their lips. Sometimes, they wrote it on a piece of paper if their waiter could read.
Most of the deaf in the owner’s employment could not read or write though. But, I could. I was just a slight cut above the rest, a slot which neither lets you belong nor allows you to crossover. I was paid 75 rupees a month with two meals a day and a weekly off. The first few months were exciting. I earned money by just sitting around. Then the job became routine. Boring. And I too joined the rest of the deaf staff in trading stories.
Some of the veteran deaf of the café had had the chance of going through the owner’s drawer in the past, while the man took his daily afternoon nap. Among the discovered artifacts were some East German Marks, an empty pack of F6 cigarettes, fading postcards and letters addressed to ‘Joseph’, a few Russian Rubles in coins and an expired Indian driver's license.
This café, Café Berlin, was started by Herr Joseph, an escapee from East Germany. Once here, he started baking and selling cakes and cookies along with tea and coffee. The café soon became popular among the employees working at nearby government offices, spread across various departments. Even those in the intelligence business hung around here. The current owner of the cafe was an employee of Herr Joseph back then.
After the Germanys were reunited, Herr Joseph left Delhi. The café fell into the current owner’s care or lap, depending on the perspective of your choice. Where the facts and artifacts on Herr Joseph proved to be slim, I filled in the blanks in my head.
Probably Herr Joseph never went back to his country. Maybe he was killed by the current owner and was dumped on the outskirts of the city, along the swamps of river Yamuna. Otherwise why would Herr Joseph not sell the café and take his belongings along? Or, did the joy of returning to the motherland overpowered every other decision?
There was nothing much to do besides thinking of such scenarios and then forgetting about them, to make headspace for new ones. Something always triggered a scenario – moving lips of a trader, or peering over a trader’s shoulder at his newspaper or gathering torn paper bits with a broom while sweeping the floor. On my day off I would tape those bits together at home.
There were dustbins too. One outside, in front of the café. The other one was kept in the alley behind, where the rear door of the kitchen opened. There was always some pay dirt in the form of a paper, a slip, a ticket, or a bill discarded by some trader, fodder for scenarios. It was through these scenarios that I deluded myself into believing that I existed on the outer periphery of the trade that went on here. Days mundanely passed like this. Then one day, she walked into the café.
Shangrila biscuits
She was alone when she arrived. She looked for a table, not dissuaded by the fact that they were all full. When she didn’t leave for five minutes, the owner approached her. I could see that he asked her something. Probably, what would she like to have? She must have said lemon tea, because that’s what she was served later. And she asked for something else, to which the owner shook his head with a smile.
It was probably Shangrila biscuits. The owner never stocked any Shangrila biscuits. It was just a code to let the owner know that she belonged. That she had business here. The owner guided her to a table by the window, signaling the deaf occupants to vacate it. She sat, lit a cigarette. Whoever had invited her here, probably wanted to gauge her from across the road before showing up.
Mr. Kumar walked in a few minutes later and joined her at the table. It is me who had given him that name. Mr. Kumar, nearing fifty, always has a nice old tweed blazer on whose stitching had started to show some wear. His shoes looked polished every day, perhaps to hide the chipping leather at the toes. Smell of turpentine oil oozed from the polish on his shoes if one sat or worked close to him.
Five minutes later Mr. Sharma joined Mr. Kumar and the woman. Again, a name that I had given to a face. Mr. Sharma was slightly younger than Mr. Kumar, fitter. His hair had started to thin and his clothes had started to fade a shade. I did not move my eyes much beyond the woman and neither could I move from my allotted table. Tied to my slot, I searched my memory a bit, for more details on Mr. Kumar and Mr. Sharma.
Not so long ago, Mr. Kumar and Mr. Sharma used to sit at separate tables, away from each other, each man by himself. They didn’t mix with each other but they had a lot in common. They both had been in government service once. They both arrived daily to the cafe by bus numbers 783 and 561 respectively of Delhi Transport Corporation and would get off at the bus stop across the road from the café.
Every day, Mr. Sharma would squeeze his bus ticket into a tiny ball with his fingers and flick it like a carrom board striker at some unsuspecting acquaintance, or at the slow spinning ceiling fan in summers, or at a random corner that fancied him for the day. Both Mr. Kumar and Mr. Sharma often waved at a certain Mr. Gupta, that is, if Mr. Gupta chose to acknowledge their presence by looking in their respective directions.
Mr. Gupta seldom came to the café, but when he did there was always an air about him. He drove a Fiat 118 NE and even though he was not as regular as Mr. Kumar and Mr. Sharma, the café owner personally greeted him.
A second shot at glory
In every trade there comes a time when a magic portal opens up unannounced. The gifted few, the men of foresight, recognize it and hop across. They make their buck while the bulk of the crowd, the so-called veterans of the tradecraft, sit at some table and just sulk. In the end loners and losers are always drawn closer and so Mr. Kumar and Mr. Sharma started sitting together, probably hoping that their information industry would see better days again. A second chance. Someday.
I was at an allotted table again when the woman came to the café to meet Mr. Kumar and Mr. Sharma for the second time. This time I had my back towards their table. When they walked out an hour later I got off from my table, pretending to go to the washroom.
From the corner of my eye I kept looking at the window, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. She got into her Hindustan Contessa. In the backseat. And the chauffeur pulled away. DLT 3483, the number plate read. I kept repeating the number in my head until my shift got over. That day, on my way home, I bought my first pocket notepad. I scribbled the date on the page, the time and the Hindustan Contessa plate number.
A week later, on the third day of their meeting, I looked at her hoping that the woman would look in my direction, summon me to her table. She was on her third Navy Cut. She had started to look a bit more on the edge since I first saw her, the circles under her eyes had started to darken a bit.
Mr. Kumar walked in by the time she stubbed that Navy Cut into an ashtray. There was a newspaper under Mr. Kumar’s arm. He dropped it on the table. It startled her. Could a newspaper make a sound that loud?
I waited for Mr. Kumar to summon me to the table. No such luck. Not until five minutes after Mr. Sharma arrived. He summoned me by a quick flick of the tiny ball of his bus ticket. It flew at me, stung my cheek, right below my eye. Mr. Sharma then waved at me. I am deaf Mr. Sharma, not blind.
I walked to the table and Mr. Kumar’s practiced hand turned his folded newspaper upside down, very gently. Mr. Sharma held up three fingers in front of my eyes. Three. And I saw his tongue hitting the gums of his upper jaw, twice, in quick succession. What is it?
CHIN? JIN? GIN? or NIN? And then he opened his mouth. CHA? JA? NA? Again. CHINCHA? NINJA? JINJA? Ginger. Ginger Tea. Three cups of ginger tea. Jinja, Eee? I uttered, making a T with my fingers. Mr. Kumar smiled, nodded and then he pointed at the display shelf. I followed his finger. Pineapple Pastry. I slowly turned my head back to him and let my eyes pick quick details from the facing page of Mr. Kumar’s newspaper. Times of India. Double folded. Kapil Dev’s photo. Pakistan beats…I nodded and walked away from the table, scribbling Mr. Sharma’s order on a piece of paper. Between my toes I gripped the fallen ball of Mr. Sharma’s bus ticket.
At the place that I called home, eight of us slept on the floor. I didn’t know what most of my floor mates did, not even about the guy who had his armpit shoved under my nose every night. Thank god it’s winter in Delhi.
Will they make a fuss if I turn the torch on? I took a chance. On my way back I had picked today’s edition of Times of India. Five copies. I opened the sports page and folded the paper. Twice. Kapil Dev’s photo. Pakistan beats India… at Sharjah. I flipped it upside down. The side that Mr. Kumar had hidden from me at the cafe, now faced me.
Boris Yeltsin…Kashmir. I unfolded the paper. Two headlines were side by side on that pase – first was the Soviet Prime Minister Boris Yeltsin to Visit Delhi. Second said “Kashmir Burns”. Unrelated? The other thing that I had picked today was Delhi Transport Corporation’s Route Guide for Passengers. I switched the torch off.
Next day was my weekly off. I had arranged with Rehman to borrow a bike from his workshop for the day. He gave me a moped instead. Luna. It’s all he could offer, he said.
He too is just an employee at the workshop, a deaf like me, perfect for working calmly amidst all the banging and hammering. His specialty is fixing unclaimed stolen vehicles that rot at Police Lines and are then auctioned by Delhi Police. Rehman handed me a slip. DLT 3483 is registered to an address in Khel Gaon. A police constable had extracted it from the records of the Road Transport Office on Rehman’s request.
Camaraderie at the workplace. I wish I was good with automobile engines or motor parts. Then, like Rehman, I would have been employed for my talent and not for my handicap. What talent did I possess? I often wondered. Whatever it was, I was not going to discover it by sitting at the tables predetermined by others.
Chasing the shadows
Khel Gaon or the Asian Games Village was built almost a decade ago along the ruinous wall of Siri Fort to house the participating players in Asiad Olympics of 1982. After the games the same houses were sold for a premium to rich or to highly placed government officials.
My moped crawled along the deserted road. To my left, the wall of Siri Fort ran above the layer of fog, like a zigzag strip of gray and brown. It must be a world record of sorts, I think, the number of marauding dynasties that ruled Delhi over the centuries.
Slow down. The house mentioned on the slip was right ahead. The Hindustan Contessa was parked under the porch. A man from the neighboring house looked at me sideways. A cheap moped rider sticks out in the locality of the rich and influential. A knot formed in my stomach. I turned the moped around, pretending that a wrong turn had brought me to this place.
I am not very good at this, I realized as I took the same road out. I parked under a tamarind tree, from where I could watch the road. If she leaves today in her Contessa, it will be through this road. I opened the Delhi Transport Corporation’s Route Guide for Passengers again.
I had picked the booklet at Sarojini Nagar bus depot for 50 annas. On it I placed Mr. Sharma’s ticket that I had flattened back from the crumpled ball that he had flicked at my face. The fare mentioned on it was 1 rupee and fifty annas. In 1 rupee and fifty annas bus number 783, on its upward journey, could get Mr. Sharma to Café Berlin from four stops – Dhaula Kuan, AIIMS Circle, INA Market and Safdarjung. From one of these four stops Mr. Sharma boarded a number 783 DTC bus every day to come to the café.
Her Contessa emerged a little after 2 PM. I followed it the best I could on this slowest vehicle the man ever invented, the glorified bicycle. It had pedals too, in case it ran out of fuel. I lost the Contessa somewhere around Aurangzeb Road, where foreign embassies and bungalows of politicians and the highly placed government officials were neatly lined along the pathway. There’s an armed guard at every gate here, standing in a green hut with his rifle. Red brick walls have been fortified with gunny sacks and barbed wire, to stop assassins and their bullets. Two years ago, militants of Sri Lanka blew Indira Gandhi’s son Rajiv to bits, somewhere in southern India.
Before returning home that day I went to the four bus stops, those on Mr. Sharma’s route. At every bus stop I pasted a copy of the newspaper page that Mr. Kumar had put face down at the café to hide it from me.
Winter had begun to loosen its grip on Northern India. Days now were not as cold as nights. Pink and golden patches of sun could be seen scattered here and there, around the café. Yet Mr. Sharma arrived shivering, rubbing his palms, his eyes darting here and there. He joined Mr. Kumar, who had been sitting alone for a while.
The woman wasn’t here. At my table, I kept moving my mouth to make rehearsed noises, alphabets and words are most probably indecipherable coming out from my mouth. Mr. Sharma put a torn paper in front of Mr. Kumar. The latter looked at it, puzzled first, then horrified. Mr. Kumar crumpled the torn paper, the page of Times of India that I had pasted at one of the bus stops, and shoved it in his pocket. After that, Mr. Kumar and Mr. Sharma did not sit for long. For the brief while that they were at the cafe, they remained uneasy, scowling, darting suspicious eyes here and there. Not once did they look at me.
Not for once did it cross their minds that I had entered their orbit. I felt bad for them, the two ageing men, out probably for one last hustle. There are no more big games in this trade. And whatever their game was, they were compelled to run it from the café because they could not afford a safe house away from prying eyes, unlike Mr. Gupta who probably has a safe house somewhere. That’s why his visits are few and only friendly, to get a whiff of the word on the street.
My shift ended around 8 PM. The owner was preparing to lock the café. I walked. That night I did not board my regular bus from the bus stop near the café. Half a mile down, at the next bus stop, I boarded a 783.
I handed 1 rupee and fifty annas to the conductor for the ticket. At Safdarjung bus stop the newspaper page was still pasted to the wall. Same at INA. At AIIMS it was not there, the page has been ripped off the wall. At Dhaula Kuan the page was intact where I had pasted it.
Earlier in the day whenever Mr. Sharma must have come to the AIIMS bus stop, he must have noticed the page on the wall. It must have puzzled him. None of the other passengers noticed it. Boris Yeltsin and Kashmir were not on the common man’s radar. So, horrified, Mr. Sharma must have plucked that page off the wall to show it to Mr. Kumar.
On my next day off I arrived at AIIMS bus stop a little before the evening. There were no shops nearby to wait it out, to blend in the crowd. There was a lone bench with a view of the bus stop. Not quite conspicuous. Still I waited.
Walls with ears
Waiting is excruciating. It’s not easy wanting to be at the same level as insider traders who throng to the café day after day. How to be an insider among the insiders, uninvited, uninitiated? Even though the traders would never acknowledge it, we, the deaf of the café, were as much a part of their conspiracies as anybody else. We were the walls that have no ears. Eyes, yes we have, but most of us chose not to see, or to see but not to take the pain to decipher.
It’s that vantage point that I wanted to be at. To be able to see what the pro traders saw. To decipher. To not kill time by supplying the make believe of my own mind’s manufacture.
Mr. Sharma got off a 783 around dark. There was no lamp post above the bench and I stirred not. I let him walk a few paces ahead before I started following him. Delhi is a sparse city, every housing colony is surrounded by one or two large plots covered with wild grass, swaying in the winter breeze. The buildings are not more than four storeys. Drab socialist architecture, homogenous from outside, yet categorized as Lower Income Group, Middle Income Group and Higher Income Group housing. Fluorescent white tubes of low wattage glowed on every lamp post, yet the tarmac below them stayed dark. Good for me. Shadows are handy.
I did not follow Mr. Sharma up the steps. I instead circled the building, watching him laboriously carry his body up the floors. On the second floor he unlocked his apartment door.
A window lit up. No one was inside before him. An hour later he opened his window to empty his ashtray out. Butts rained down and a tiny cloud of ash flew off in the dark. I resisted rubbing my palms or stomping my feet to distract my mind from the chill that was penetrating my skin lest he spots my movements. At around 11 PM the light inside the apartment went off. No one arrived after him.
The whole of next week at the café went in routine fashion, except Friday. It was around lunch. Mr. Kumar, Mr. Sharma and the woman were at one of the tables. Amar, one of the deaf waiters, was serving them their tea when a cup slipped off the tray and fell on Mr. Sharma’s thigh.
Mr. Sharma sprang to his feet, brushing the hot liquid away with his hands. A commotion ensued and Mr. Sharma slapped Amar. The owner intervened. He made some space in the kitchen for Mr. Sharma to take his pants off and ordered Amar to run to the next door laundry to get the pants ironed and dried.
But the pockets had to be emptied before that. Mr. Sharma was most concerned about the small phone book in his pocket. It had become wet. He took a paper napkin and, standing in his briefs, he dabbed the precious pages before they sodded to death while Amar pulled the remaining things from Mr. Sharma’s pants – few currency notes, a cigarette lighter, a pair of keys. He neatly arranged them on a shelf and left for the laundry.
Later that night, Amar handed me a soap bar. He had taken a quick impression of Mr. Sharma’s both the keys on it while emptying his pants. I paid him the money I had promised, five rupees. The key maker charged me two rupees for making a replica of both the keys from the impression. My grand plan – just to keep going from one clue to the next until I hit a dead end.
Then, on my next day off I broke into Mr. Sharma’s house.
Breaking and entering
I could not have done it earlier than that. Breaking the attendance routine at the café with a sudden request for leave would have triggered off questions. Lies would have led to suspicion and that was not a professional’s way of working. It’s simpler this way. I was not at the café because I was not supposed to be at the café on the day off.
One key got me into Mr. Sharma’s house in his absence and the other opened his Godrej almirah locker for me. This was the moment where one would think that I should turn away, lock Mr. Sharma’s door behind me and walk out as a content man.
I had reached the point where an enthusiast stops. Between the first and the second doorstep of wonderland is the point where an enthusiast is aware that he has succeeded in penetrating the impregnable through sheer persistence. A glimpse of the wonderland should suffice. There is an awareness of success, the tingling joy. So what if I am the only one who has awareness of this success?
But the world knows an enthusiast not, nor his feat. Only a showman would go beyond this point, would risk more for the full view. A showman’s act is for the world, not for himself – success or failure, ridicule or glory. A glimpse? Or glory?
I pulled the things out from the Mr. Sharma’s almirah locker – notebooks with phone numbers, addresses, code books, cipher breakers, a vintage Mauser pistol, a passport in the name of Hari Singh Mahajan. The passport had Mr. Sharma’s photo. Great to meet you at last Mr. Mahajan. I can stop calling you Mr. Sharma now.
The last thing inside, resting against the farthest wall of the locker was an envelope. It was heavy. Inside the envelope were Orwo negatives and prints – photographs of the pretty woman from the café, with a man. I had never seen him before and he didn’t seem to be of Indian origin. I saw a shadow move behind the door. I had left it ajar to spot any slightest movement against the light. I moved behind the curtain and held my breath.
Three men dragged Mr. Mahajan in, all the way to the almirah. I didn’t get the time to close it. I didn’t want to risk the damn metal door making any sound. I had seen people at the café often jump whenever the owner opened or closed his cupboard.
Mr. Mahajan froze with disbelief. The shock of seeing his open locker overpowered the fear he must have felt in the company of these men. They had beaten Mr. Mahajan before bringing him here, he had wounds on his face. Mr. Mahajan dipped his bloodied hand into the locker. Everything was there, as it should be. Everything, except the envelope with the negatives and the photographs. I had it hidden under my sweater, close to my fast beating heart. One of the men pushed Mr. Mahajan aside and sweeped the contents of the locker out on the floor with his hand.
They dragged Mr. Mahajan to the living room and tied him to a chair. I could see that they were asking him questions. I watched Mr. Mahajan shaking his head vigorously. Two of the men pulled Mr. Mahajan to the telephone. His bloody finger spinned the dial and he waited through the ring, sweat breaking through the floodgates of the skin on his forehead.
It did not matter who would answer the phone at the other end. Mr. Mahajan had only one story to offer. The truth. Theft. These men will either believe him or they won’t. If they believe him, they will either look for the thief inside the house or they will run out, to chase. They are interested in the envelope that I have. I am interested in knowing what these men know, what Mr. Mahajan knows, what Mr. Kumar or the woman know. It’s a simple trade-off but only among equals. It’s the bridge that I have to cross.
Catching fire
I looked towards the floor. Whatever these men had thrown out of the locker is right in front of me, including the Mauser.
The gunshot must have been deafening for these people. Mr. Mahajan dropped the telephone receiver and covered his ear. The man closest to the bedroom door clutched his ruptured neck as he fell, coughing blood.
I fired the next shot and saw the window glass crumpling like a house of cards. I am lousy with my aim. A man leapt towards me. My frantic finger pressed the trigger. He doubled up holding his stomach.
Mr. Mahajan flicked a wooden stool off the floor and smashed the third man’s head. He is trained for such situations. Mr. Mahajan kept swinging the stool at the man’s skull, until the flying drops of blood covered his face and the walls. Mr. Mahajan then turned to hurl the stool towards me.
I pointed the Mauser at him.
He had the training on his side and I had the element of surprise on mine. That expression on his face, I relished it. Didn’t expect me, did you? I thought.
I flicked a small paper ball with my free hand. It hit his face, right below his eye. I jerked my neck. Pick it you asshole. Mr. Mahajan dropped the stool and picked the paper ball. He flattened it out and looked at me. I nodded. He said something. Why is he talking to me? You know that I cannot hear you. Mr. Mahajan spoke again. From the movement of his lips I could tell that he was repeating the same words, but not slow enough for me to decipher.
I watched his eyes instead of his lips. Closely. There was a slight movement in his pupils towards the left, towards the dangling telephone receiver. He was not talking to me. He was calling out to whosoever was at the other end. I kept the pistol aimed at him and, walking a few steps back, I yanked the phone off the wall.
We walked towards a black Fiat Premier Padmini, parked across the empty plot, behind the housing colony. I had the pistol in my hand. Mr. Mahajan had the car keys in his. He had pulled it out from one of his dead captive’s pockets. We both opened our doors at the same time. He got behind the steering wheel, I got into the backseat, behind him, keeping the pistol aimed at his head. He looked at me in the rearview mirror. I had sufficient distance between his nape and the tip of my pistol. Don’t even think about spinning around and snatching the gun from my hand.
He assessed the distance correctly and gave up on the thought. That’s how we conversed, without speaking a word. He started the car and put it in gear. The slip that I had flicked at his face, he threw it out of the window. We didn’t need it now. He knew the address and I knew it too. The address that Contessa DLT 3483 is registered at.
We drove forever, like sailors, adrift in the ocean at night, floating through infinite darkness, not a star in sight to navigate. The headlights of Premier Padmini could penetrate only the five feet of fog in front of us. The landmarks of the city were all veiled in night and fog. Mr. Mahajan was probably driving us around in circles, to tire me out.
My eyes spotted something familiar. Headlight beams brushed the face of a signboard. Khel Gaon. He must be as desperate to know my angle as I was to uncover his. I was at the same level with an insider for the first time.
Mr. Mahajan killed the engine in front of her house. Headlights died in an instance. There’s a power cut in the area. I stayed a few steps behind him as we walked towards the house, past the Contessa parked under the porch. Mr. Mahajan looked at me as he pressed the doorbell switch. You idiot, there’s a power cut. I knocked the door with my pistol butt and aimed it back at him. Mr. Mahajan is perhaps habitual of pressing that switch, he’s probably been here often. He said something. Not to me. To whoever was behind the door.
She opened the door, standing there in her silk nightgown. I smelt alcohol on her breath. She looked at Mr. Mahajan’s face. In her state, she probably thought she’s hallucinating.
I pushed Mr. Mahajan across the door and he almost fell over her. I stepped inside quickly and closed the door. They both regained their balance. She asked him something, shock wearing the intoxication off her face. He replied, his eyes angled at me.
I pulled the envelope from my sweater and set it on her table. I then slid it towards her. She moved her dazed eyes, from me to Mr. Mahajan and back. Come on, it’s not a letter bomb. I nodded at her. She picked it and dipped her hand in it. Mr. Mahajan, what wouldn’t you give to have it back if only it were not for the pistol in my hand?
We looked eye to eye. He smiled, shrewd bastard. I didn’t. When I looked back at her she had just about lifted her eyes from the photographs and the negatives. For the first time there was a sense of smile on her face and I realized that I hadn’t seen her smile ever before. Is this what they had against you?
She clutched the envelope to her chest, firmly within her arms, fearing some unseen force would snatch it again from her. I almost smiled back, seeing her reaction but she opened her mouth wide, horror filling her eyes. It can only be a scream. Why would you scream at me? Again she screamed and stuck herself to the wall. Is it someone behind me?
The blow to my head was severe. A brass vase or something. The gun in my hand went off. The bullet went through the chandelier. The gunshot flash filled the room with light for a brief second. Mr. Kumar’s face, I saw it in that flash as my head hit the floor. Dark again.
I lifted my hand, in the direction where I had seen him and fired a shot. Flash. The bullet nicked past Mr. Kumar’s cheek, carving a gash across his face. He screamed cupping the wound with his hand. I saw the woman running for the door with the envelope. Mr. Mahajan darted after her. I caught his foot. He tripped and fell face down. Flash. Not from my gun. It was from Mr. Kumar’s gun. The bullet went through my cheek, bursting half of my jaw.
Mr Smiley
I realized that my life had been saved only on the sixth day, after the surgery. I was at hospital. Doctors would come and check my wounds. They also checked my ears time and again, sometimes in the presence of government officials in safari suits and policemen.
I saw other patients walking in the lawn, outside my window. It was a sealed window with a mesh. I was in a solitary room. Apart from the time of routine medical check-ups the room stayed locked from the outside. As strength returned to my legs and fingers a heavily built ward boy was placed inside my room. Then they started cuffing my hands to the bed. On the day of discharge the hospital staff along with some policemen and officers in plain clothes transferred me to a police van.
I was sent to a prison cell. Then came interrogations. Questions. Endless questions.
They had a man in their team who could communicate with me through signs, written words. They wanted to know who I was, who I was working for, and what my political leanings were. I told them that I wasn’t working for anybody, nor did I have any political leanings, and neither an allegiance to any state ideologies.
They took me for a tough cookie and persisted. I was sleep-deprived, beaten, and denied food. Then the questions were repeated again – about my superiors, about my political leanings and whereabouts of the woman.
Whereabouts of the woman? They showed me a photograph. It was her. Where is the woman? I asked them through the interpreter. They didn’t know. She was not traceable since that night. Mr. Mahajan, he would know? I told the interpreter.
They brought Mr. Mahajan into the room, in front of me. He looked beaten and tortured. We looked like allies, comrades, boys in the same team. They thought they would play us against each other. Mr. Kumar was brought in next, in no better condition than both of us.
Mr. Kumar, is that the name that this man gave you? I was asked by my interpreter. They showed me his i.d. card, from his Foreign Service days. His name was Rajan Mehta. I nodded at Mr. Mehta. No more calling him Mr. Kumar. He spat at me. They asked me again, about the woman and her whereabouts. I told them to ask Mr. Mahajan and Mr. Mehta about Boris Yeltsin and Kashmir. Mr. Mehta broke free from his guard’s grip and leapt at my throat. He was pulled back.
At that moment I made the mistake of smiling. I couldn’t help it, couldn’t believe that I had brought these intelligent people to this, wasting their time, asking me questions. They took my smile for something else altogether. They didn’t think I was amused. They thought I was being condescending.
The interpreter was the only nice guy in the room. He must have worked with deaf people enough to know what they are not capable of. He knew that deaf don’t get hired as spies. For my own good he warned me about my situation. Mr. Mehta and Mr. Mahajan were charged with hiding sensitive information from the government, for making personal profit from it.
I was facing a graver charge. Treason. By helping that woman escape and by letting her take crucial evidence with her I had conspired against the motherland. It was my turn to get surprised now. Not at myself. But, at them. Did they really believe I had pulled off such a feat? What a show I had put on.
I repeated the truth, about my association with the woman, that I had seen her only at the café with these two gentlemen whose real names were Mr. Mahajan and Mr. Mehta. They told me that there was no point lying, that they already knew she was a mole, working for the US Embassy, for CIA, taking advantage of the competition between India’s two intelligence agencies. She was leaking secret security plans regarding Yeltsin’s visit to the CIA who were passing them to their ally, Pakistan’s ISI, to prime Kashmiri militants to blow a bomb in Delhi during Yeltsin’s visit.
They offered to believe that she had played a con on me, a possibility of extending me a benefit of doubt, if I told them the rest in exchange, the details, the truth. They said all this and I just asked them one thing. Her name. They threw me back in my cell.
Lying on my iron cot, I wondered if I should start marking the days on the wall. Count them towards what though? I thought.
There was no release date to look forward to. Will I not like to keep a track of time anyway? No. Inmates do that. Prisoners. I am not one of them. This is the place where I completed the story, not by filling it with the make believe of my mind, but by joining the dots, by figuring everything out, by living through it. Right here I was as free as a bird in the sky.
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