03:02 (8 page)

‘Mrs Khatri, we’ll talk more when I get back.’

With that, Pandey and I began our ride back to the hotel to give the poor people there the respect and decency in burial that they had been deprived of so brutally in the last moments of their lives.

The old couple and the kids were fast asleep in one of the apartments where someone had graciously offered up a bedroom to them, but the two men were still there in the meeting room when I returned. Both were a bit overweight, and with olive complexions. One of them came over to me and extended his hand.

‘My name is Ismail and this is Akif. We’re businessmen from Turkey, here on a business trip. We tried to help but we couldn’t do much. At first we thought they were cops since they were wearing uniforms, and then we were outnumbered and they had weapons. Before we knew what was happening, they had us in cuffs. After that we couldn’t resist much.’

I looked Ismail in the eye. Here was a man whose shame was turning to rage. Something I was happy to see, though for reasons I couldn’t yet fully put my finger on.

Akif spoke up. ‘We are old businessmen today, but we both had military training when we were young. We’ll help you when you take revenge on the gang.’

My head snapped up and I looked at him. What made him think I was going to do any such thing? Before I could say anything, Mrs Khatri called me over. Everyone had assembled in the meeting room and while food and drinks were being passed around, the mood was sombre, unlike the celebratory mood just an evening earlier. Mrs Khatri addressed everyone, her speech slow and halting.

‘Things have changed. I don’t know when the lights will come back, but till they do, we cannot assume our world is the same one we knew. Last night showed us that. Thanks to Aadi and the others who stood watch, we were saved from what happened at the Meluha.’

Everyone turned towards me and I involuntarily shrank back, neither seeking nor wanting the attention. But what Mrs Khatri said next took me totally by surprise.

‘I am an old woman, good at managing everyday affairs and resolving small issues of repair and maintenance. I cannot deal with the threats that lie out there. I propose that Aadi be our new leader in these difficult times.’

I stared open-mouthed at her. I wanted no title or any mantle of leadership. None of that mattered anymore. I had spent a lifetime chasing titles and encomiums, only to realize over the last couple of nights that the business card I’d coveted and the bonuses I’d craved counted for nothing if they couldn’t save a woman from being raped and murdered in front of her child. Even as people began to clap, I stepped forward.

‘Mrs Khatri, you should be the leader. I want no such thing. All I want is for us to be safe till this crisis lasts and for no family in the neighbourhood to have to go through what the poor folks at the Meluha did last night.’

Suri spoke up.

‘Protecting our building is one thing, but going out to try and take responsibility for others is another. Why would we do that? Why can’t we just stay safe in here?’

I exploded in anger, regretting the words almost as soon as they came out of my mouth.

‘Because, Suri, people like you are content to sleep in your homes and leave the protecting to others. We should have warned the people at the Meluha, especially the foreigners who had nowhere else to go. We should have given a damn.’

He looked at me in silence, though his eyes were burning with contempt. Then he said, ‘We have families to take care of. We can’t be heroes or take the law into our own hands. This is not an anarchy.’

I walked up towards him and he took a step back, almost tripping over a chair.

‘What happened last night was anarchy, and we have to stop it before it visits us.’

Then I turned towards Mrs Khatri. ‘Ma’am, we cannot just sit here and wait for a gang to strike us. We need to take control over at least part of our neighbourhood again. We cannot just sleep in fear and hope they don’t come for us. For that we need to talk to our neighbours and get them to help.’

It turned out to be much harder said than done.

The guards at the building next door refused to let us in, and while there were only two of them and we could have forced our way in if we wanted, we decided to wait till they checked with their society committee. The other complex next to us was a large one, with two towers to our one, and almost double the number of families. Having that many more eyes to keep watch and hands and legs to help us would be a huge asset, if only we could convince them that we were better off joining forces instead of staying isolated. Mrs Khatri had led our delegation, with me, Pandey and Nitish for company. As we waited, I was reminded of how medieval chieftains had formed alliances and carved out territories. It had not taken too long, or too much for us to revert to the same behaviour. Finally, a sprightly middle-aged lady walked out, flanked by several of the residents. Mrs Khatri’s eyes lit up in relief.

‘Anu, thank god you’re in town. I thought you were visiting the kids in the US.’

Her friend smiled. ‘Yes, I’m here, whether that is something to be thankful for or not is not yet clear. Things have been crazy, haven’t they?’

While Anu Bhatia, the secretary at the adjoining society and a friend of Mrs Khatri’s, was warm towards us, the reception we were getting from the others was decidedly frosty. I couldn’t really blame them, because the events of the last couple of days had made everyone jittery.

All of a sudden, Nitish spoke up. ‘You guys are without any electricity, aren’t you? All I saw were a few candles last night.’

Anu looked down as she answered. ‘Our generator wasn’t too well maintained to begin with and now we can’t seem to get it to work. There was nobody here who really knew how to fix it anyway—we always thought the service company was one phone call away.’

‘I could help.’

She looked at Nitish sceptically, so I chipped in.

‘He’s the one responsible for keeping our generator working. We have a working lift and, if we want, every apartment can have lights and a fan working.’

I studied the expressions on the faces of the residents. A few of them looked meaningfully at Anu.

‘That’s why we are here,’ I went on. ‘To see how we can help each other. I don’t know when the lights will be back, but till they are, the world we are living in is very different from the one we were used to. Last night’s events at the Meluha should teach us that. Security is not something we can take for granted; we can’t assume the police will take care of things.’

I saw several heads nodding as I spoke. Finally, an elderly man nudged his way through the group and addressed me. He wore a bright blue turban, his hair and moustache were grey and he walked with a slight limp, but his eyes were bright and alert. ‘What do you need from us?’

‘Sir, we share a common approach road, and last night the gang came in through an alley that is impossible for us to scan, so we didn’t see them coming till it was almost too late. We need to get better security along those roads.’

He nodded as I continued.

‘We can’t watch all the approach roads—one of the alleys comes in right in front of your society so we don’t have a clear view of it, and the same goes for you when it comes to the alley in front of our society. To really be secure, we literally need to watch out for each other.’

He nodded again and as Anu started to say something, he raised his hand to ask for more time to talk.

‘Young man, do you have any ideas on how we could do that?’

‘Yes, sir. We block both alleys.’

‘How will you do that?’

I waved around us at the road outside.

‘There are more than enough cars lying dead on the road. All we need to do is push them into place and jam the alleys. It would still be possible for someone to just climb over them, but they’d make more noise and would only be able to come through maybe one or two at a time.’

I was talking, almost oblivious to the eyes on me, all my past training coming back to me in a rush. I had made many presentations for deals worth millions of dollars, but here I had no slides, no data tables, yet the stakes were much higher, and indeed, the conviction I felt was more intense than I had ever felt in a meeting room in office.

‘Once we do that, sir, we just need to keep patrols going, and for that as well we would need to pool resources, since we’ll need guards along the perimeters of both buildings.’

‘Son, were you ever in the Army?’

His question caught me off balance.

‘No, sir, but I was in the NCC for six years.’

He nodded at Anu.

‘What he says makes a lot of sense.’

Then he extended his hand to me.

‘I’m Major General Lamba, Indian Army. Retired of course, but I’ll help to whatever extent I can.’

And with that, we had a deal. No treaties were signed, no conditions laid down, but the informal rules of engagement were clear. Food stocks were still not on the table, and indeed there were enough people on both sides who were sceptical about the whole thing, still hoping that the lights would come back on at any moment. What we had agreed on really required us to do nothing more than watch out for our own societies, albeit with more conscious coordination, and of course to pool together to block the alleys.

I took Subin, Prashant and a handful of young boys from the other building and it took less than an hour to have the alleys jammed close. For good measure, I had motorcycles and scooters lifted and placed on top of the cars blocking the alley, to make access to the road even more difficult. That left just the main road through which anyone could have a clear access to our buildings, but that could be watched more easily than the dark, narrow alleys the gang had come in through the previous night.

It was about six in the evening and, normally, people would have been coming back from work, planning an evening out with friends. All of that now existed in a world that seemed distant and forgotten after just two days. I was back in my apartment and had found the kids fast asleep with Marie. Dr Guenther had helped himself to a Scotch and was sipping it when I entered. He looked at me and raised his glass.

‘I hope you don’t mind. After that nightmare, I needed a stiff one.’

‘Not at all, Doctor. Just pour me one as well.’

I collapsed more than sat down on the sofa next to him and took the glass he was offering. I took a long swallow; the warmth spread through my body and I felt myself relaxing.

‘Marie and I had always wanted to see India. We went to the Taj Mahal, visited Rajasthan and were to fly back home via Mumbai. I just retired a few weeks ago and thought we’d take a break. Who would have thought something like this could happen?’

He gripped his glass tighter and took another sip. There was nothing really to be said that would help him deal with what he had seen, so we just sat there for a while in silence before he asked me what I did.

‘I work with a venture capital firm here. I’m the vice preside—’ I stopped myself. Did any of that matter any longer? What use were those titles and office politics when life was stripped down to the basics of survival as we had seen in the last couple of days?

‘Forget it. I’m just a guy trying to keep myself sane and alive till the lights come on,’ I said.

He raised his glass and clinked it against mine.

‘No, young man. You’re doing much more than that. I’ve heard about how you saw off those thugs last night, and I saw how you helped us. You’re doing much more than just staying alive.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I was a surgeon in Zurich.’

He had barely said that when a bulb went off in my head. The hospital. If the gang was after soft targets, they may have concluded that societies would now be alerted and, at the very least, be ready to put up some resistance. The hospital would have cash and drugs, and very little by way of security. When I had passed it on the way to the hotel, I had seen none of the policemen or security guards that had been there earlier. Also, none of the waiting relatives were there. I could not let what had happened to the hotel happen there. I downed the last of my drink and rushed out.

‘What exactly are we doing? And what do we propose to do if we do run into the gang again?’

Pandey’s question was a valid one, and I had to appreciate his coming along without asking much more in front of the others at the society. I knew if others had asked the question, they may not have approved of our going to the hospital and seeking out trouble. At least, that’s how a lot of them would have seen it.

‘Pandeyji, I just don’t want anyone else to suffer because I didn’t help or warn them when I could have. As for the gang, we’ll take it as it comes.’

Actually I was counting on the fact that they would not be brazen enough to launch a raid while it was still light outside. It was a quarter to six and I assumed that they would wait for darkness before striking. That was why I was pedalling as fast as I could, Pandey and Nitish right behind me. Nitish was nervous about heading out, but I had asked him to come along to help out in case the hospital needed any help with their generators.

I had no intention of seeking out a confrontation with the gang, but I was hoping to at least warn the doctors on duty. They must have heard the screams of the previous night, but there was no telling if they actually knew how much danger lurked in the darkness. I’d ask them to lock the doors, maybe keep all lights off to not attract attention, and to put some of their staff on guard duty at all times during the night. Importantly, I needed to pass on the information that the gang was wearing police uniforms.

I had asked Nitish to get along a couple of torches to fashion into makeshift searchlights. That tactic had worked for us, and I was hoping that if the gang went to the hospital, the mere fact that the folks inside were ready for them would dissuade them, as it had in our case. When we reached the hospital, I was surprised to find the main door wide open. I motioned for Pandey and Nitish to be quiet as we crept in. A man in a hospital uniform was lying dead behind the counter. I could hear someone moving in a room to the right and as we got closer, the voices became audible. A female voice was pleading. ‘Take the money. You already have all the money we have, but I will not let you hurt my patients.’