Heroes R Us (6 page)

'Good you're here; otherwise I thought I'd go crazy talking to myself. The doctor's in there checking her, so we can't go in for a few minutes. Let's go out for a minute- I need some fresh air.'

As they walked out to the garden outside the ward, Arnab asked Jayantada what had happened. By way of reply, Jayantada asked,

'Mind if I smoke?'

As Jayantada lit up and puffed away, he saw the expression on Arnab's face and took a deep breath,

'Am telling you in a minute. I just need to cool myself down a bit.'

As the two of them walked along the garden, Jayantada started telling Arnab what had happened.

'Mishti had gone to Gurgaon to meet some friends for dinner last night.'

'I know, I was with them', replied Arnab.

'Oh, I didn't know that. Well, after she left, she was still on the highway when a gang of guys in a black SUV started tailing her.'

Arnab felt his stomach tighten involuntarily as he imagined Mishti alone, driving in the dark, being chased by the gang.

'The smartest thing Mishti did was not to stop. She kept driving and it seems the chase went on for several minutes. But when the gang started closing on her, she panicked and lost control of the car.'

Arnab was listening in complete silence as Jayantada continued.

'Luckily, a couple of nearby cars stopped and came to see what had happened, and brought her to hospital. The gang disappeared when they saw others coming to her assistance.'

'How is she, Jayantada?' Arnab asked in a low voice.

Jayantada put an arm around Arnab's shoulder, and Arnab began to appreciate that there was much more to the man than being a cantankerous old librarian.

'Thank God that she is not more seriously hurt than she is. She's fractured an arm and has a few cuts and bruises, but the doctor says she's lucky to be alive.'

Arnab breathed an audible sigh of relief and was about to ask about the gang when the doctor appeared at the door and called for them to come in. When he entered the room, he realized he'd have to wait even longer before he got a chance to talk to Mishti, since she seemed to be giving a statement to a police officer. Mishti was lying on the bed, with her left hand in a sling. Her face had several bandages on it, and her lip was swollen so that when she spoke, the words came out slowly and slightly garbled. She saw Arnab out of the corner of her eye and turned and smiled at him, but even the act of smiling seemed to have hurt as she flinched in pain. The police officer was sitting on a chair by her bed, taking notes in a small pad.

'So Miss Ghosh, how many men were there in the Tata Sumo that was following you?'

Mishti seemed to be searching in her mind for a few seconds before she replied.

'It was dark, and I certainly didn't stop and count, but there were at least three of them.'

The cop wrote that down and asked if she had got a look at any of their faces, but Mishti said that she had not got a close enough look at all their faces.

'But I did notice that the one who was driving was wearing a red bandana around his head.'

The cop took a few more notes and then thanked her. As he left the room, he spotted Jayantada and Arnab and told them that the police were on the case.

'This is the third attack in the last two weeks, and with each attack we are getting more information on them.'

Arnab asked the policeman what the previous attacks had been.

'Same modus operandi. They attack women driving alone at night on the National Highway. Miss Ghosh was very lucky compared to the previous two victims.'

He lowered his voice as if he didn't want Mishti to hear him, 'Both of them were raped and robbed.'

As the policeman left, Arnab and Jayantada approached the bed.

'Mishti, I hope it doesn't hurt too much.'

Arnab realized it was a meaningless thing to say, but he had no idea what he could ask or do. Mishti smiled again at him as he handed her the bunch of Orchids he had bought for her. She motioned for both of them to sit down but Jayantada was visibly agitated and kept walking around the room.

'Bloody animals! It's just not safe for women nowadays in this jungle. I shouldn't have let you go out all alone at night. What will I tell your parents?'

Mishti laid a reassuring hand on the old man's arm.

'Jayantada, I'm not a little girl any more, and who could ever have planned for something like this? Remember you used to always scold me for driving too fast? See that's what saved me yesterday!'

Seeing her smile and be able to still retain her sense of humour made Arnab smile but he realized that seeing her like this was making him angry in a way that he had never been before.

'Mishti, I just wish I had gone with you last night. You wouldn't have been all alone.'

Mishti smiled again at him, and held onto his hands.

'Don't be silly, Arnab, what could you have done?'

Jayantada backed her up by saying, 'Arnab, what can people like us do against such hoodlums? There seems to be no law and order any more- it's just the law of the jungle where might is right.'

As Arnab left the hospital, Mishti and Jayantada's last words kept ringing in his ears. He thought back to what had happened on the bus and to what he had discovered himself capable of at home. As he boarded the bus on the way back to college, he kept thinking of what he could do.

He may not have been there for Mishti the previous night and the old Arnab Bannerjee would certainly have been of no use even if he had been there. Perhaps there was indeed no real law and order to count on but if these goons thought that might was indeed right and that they could always get away with it, he was going to prove them wrong.

***

FOUR

That night Arnab made his way back to Gurgaon. Throughout the journey, he kept thinking in his mind what he'd do to the gang if he caught them, and he relished the thought of their reign of terror being brought to an end. And yes, he thought about taking revenge for what they had done to Mishti. By the time he reached MG Road, he was beginning to have doubts about his plan. It was a huge area to cover, and he had no idea how he was going to find the gang, let alone confront them. It suddenly occurred to him that it was so much easier in the movies or books, when the bad guys conveniently showed up on time and made it all so easy for the good guys. Not really knowing what else to do, he remembered that Mishti had said that they had followed her out from the mall itself, so he settled down in front of the Metropolitan Mall at a vantage point where he could also see DT Mall on the other side of the road. Two hours passed, and finally hungry, he took a break to grab some dinner. At about midnight, with his anger now tempered by the onset of sleep and boredom, Arnab returned home a sleepy and defeated man.

The next morning, he struggled to keep himself awake in the library, twice earning sarcastic comments from Jayantada on how the young nowadays had terrible sleeping habits. Arnab ignored it all, choosing to spend his time thinking about what he could do differently that night. Just after lunch, Jayantada told Arnab that he was going to meet Mishti at the hospital. Arnab's first instinct was to join him, but he held back, feeling that meeting Mishti without having avenged her somehow wouldn't be right.

That night, Arnab was back at MG Road, wondering if this was all a colossal waste of time. There was no guarantee that the men would ever strike again, at least in this area. For all he knew, they were in another city altogether, while Arnab waited in the frosty November night, planning all manner of revenge, but achieving precious little other than to burn a deeper hole in his pocket with his daily trips to Gurgaon and wasting precious time that he should have been using to prepare for various upcoming exams. At least on the latter count, he had come prepared this night. As he sat sipping a Pepsi at a Pizza Hut located in front of the mall, he alternated between scanning the area for any sign of the men in their black Sumo and brushing up on the past 10 years' papers for the state banking services examination. At about ten o'clock, he began to get seriously bored and stepped out, deciding that this was indeed perhaps a waste of time. He began to ask himself what he was doing there in the first place. Mishti was nobody to him, and certainly he had no right to speak or act on her behalf. Perhaps it would be best if he just went home and got some sleep.

Then he looked up and stopped in his tracks.

Standing less than six feet away from him were three men. They would have looked unremarkable in the crowd of young people around them had it not been for three things. One, they were very obviously checking out women who passed them and exchanging comments between themselves. Two, they were clearly drunk, struggling to stand straight; and most importantly, the tallest and biggest of them was wearing a red bandana tied across his forehead. Arnab could hear his heart beating so loudly that he was barely able to hear much else around him. There was no way he could be sure that these were the men that had chased Mishti, but it all seemed to be too much of a coincidence. All his plans of vengeance dissipated in the confusion and fear he felt at that moment. He had no idea what he should do or say. He couldn't really launch into the men and attack them on a hunch that they were criminals outside a crowded mall, could he? At best, the police would cart him away, and at worst he would get seriously hurt if the police did intervene. While he was aware of all his newly found powers, he also remembered his lessons from the rooftop well enough- he was still mortal and could still be hurt.

In the midst of all this, a large crowd emerged from the mall, talking excitedly about the movie they had just seen in the multiplex upstairs. As they jostled for space in the narrow exit, Arnab lost sight of the men for a few seconds. When he tried looking for them again, he realized to his dismay that he couldn't see the men anywhere. He rushed to where they had been standing, and frantically searched for them, but in a few seconds he realized that his indecision had completely botched his plans.

The next day, Arnab was in a foul mood, and even Jayantada took notice of this sudden change in his otherwise reliably good-humoured assistant. At lunch, he asked Arnab if anything was wrong, and Arnab told him that he was worried about his preparations for the upcoming exams. It was only a partial lie, since Arnab knew only too well how badly his preparations had been hit by his misadventures of the last few days. That thought only served to make his mood even worse. He debated whether he should go again that night, and finally, realizing that he would drive himself crazy thinking about whether the men had come again that night, he decided to give it one more shot. If they didn't show up that night, then he would just give it up.

It was mid November, and the Delhi winter was beginning to make its presence felt. Now knowing how late he would probably be out, Arnab decided to wear something a bit warmer. He took out an old sweatshirt that had been gifted to him on his birthday several years ago by his friends in college. It had been a favourite of his, and one thing he liked about Delhi was that the winters gave him an opportunity to wear it more often. Years of wear and tear had taken its toll, and of the original 'GAP' brand logo displayed prominently on the front, only the 'GA' remained. He took the sweatshirt in his hand and set out once again, praying that the men would be there that night, and resolving that if they were there, he would not throw away the opportunity like he had done the previous night.

By about half past nine, Arnab was beginning to lose patience, and put on his sweatshirt, ready to start on the journey back to his home. As he stepped on the curb, he saw a black Sumo parked a few feet away to his right. He kept walking a few paces, and then stopped to turn around. There was no reason that this had to be the black Sumo Mishti had described being chased by, but he figured that there was nothing to be lost by waiting a few more minutes. So he sat down near the car and waited, pulling the hood of his sweatshirt up around his head to keep out the cold wind that was now blowing at a brisk pace.

He couldn't believe his luck when a few minutes later, three men walked over to the car. They were the same men he had seen the previous night, and if he had any remaining doubts about their identities, their conversation was a sure giveaway.

'Which bitch did you guys fancy?' asked the big man with the bandana around his head.

'I liked the one in the jeans and the white top. The one with the long legs' responded one of his friends, a smaller man, who was holding a can of beer in his hand.

They all laughed and passed a few vulgar comments about the women they had seen in the mall that night, when the big man pointed to a woman walking towards them.

'While you've been lusting after everyone you see, I've been making a plan.'

When his friends asked, he said that the woman was alone, and her car, a Honda, was parked just a few feet away. He outlined a plan to follow her till the highway and then force her car off the road in a dark spot. Arnab was sitting just a few feet away from the men, and their conversation had made his blood run cold. It was one thing to think about these criminals in an abstract sense, but quite another thing to see them as flesh and blood people, calmly planning a rape as if they were planning a family picnic. He felt anger build up within him, and stood up to confront the men. Just as he stood, the woman the men had been discussing got in her car and drove away. The men rushed into the Sumo to follow her.

For a second or two, Arnab stayed rooted to the spot, not knowing what to do. Then, distraught that he would lose them again, and even worse, that his inaction would enable them to attack another victim, Arnab started running after the Sumo.

Arnab didn't think much of it at first, but after a few seconds, he realized what was happening. He was chasing a car on foot and keeping up! He had no idea what speed the Sumo was driving at, but by any stretch of the imagination, he was running faster than any man should. As he tried running faster, he realized that at full tilt he was actually travelling a bit faster than the Sumo and was steadily gaining on the car, which was now perhaps no more than a dozen feet ahead of him. Feeling the wind blow into his face at high speed was hardly comfortable, but the hood helped a bit, and the sheer adrenaline boost of the chase made him forget everything but catching these men. He stumbled on a rock and fell by the roadside, wincing in pain as his elbow hit the ground. His glasses were knocked off his face, and he cursed himself as he tried to find them, knowing that without his glasses, he would not be able to do much, no matter how fast he ran. That was when he noticed something that blew his mind. He could see clearly without his glasses! No, more than that, despite the near pitch darkness of the stretch of road leading to the highway, he could see everything as clear as daylight. All the objects he saw had a bit of a green tinge to them, of the sort he had once seen displayed on a Night Vision scope on some Discovery documentary, but he could see them crystal clear without needing his glasses. What sort of magic was this? The sound of the Sumo making a tight turn into the highway brought him back to his senses, and he put his glasses into his pocket, as he resumed his pursuit, determined not to let the men get away.