Authors: Piyush Jha
Tanvir enquired, 'What camera?'
'The one we put around her neck to record the goings on in the godown. We have been looking for it all over, but it has disappeared.' said the ACP, his terse tone revealing that he was on edge.
Rabia replied, 'I don't remember. Aalamzeb must have found it when he was strapping the bombs on me. I was in a daze then.'
The ACP quizzed, 'How many men were there with Aalamzeb?'
Rabia gave a muddled answer, 'Two...or...three... Their faces were covered... It's hard to remember...'
Without hesitation, the ACP reached out and pressed hard on her bandaged wound. 'Try to remember clearly!' he said in a flat tone.
Rabia screamed. Tanvir sprang at the ACP, but Hani had anticipated his move. He pulled out his automatic pistol and asked Tanvir to stand back.
'I have failed!' ACP Hani shouted at Tanvir. 'Aalamzeb and his cronies are free to carry out their deadly mission.'
Rabia continued to cry in pain. Tanvir stood back with a murderous expression on his face. The ACP continued his tirade, 'Now Rabia is my only source to get any information on Aalamzeb. I will get it out of her, using force if I have to.'
Tanvir looked at the ACP with a disgusted expression. 'ACP saab, I had respect for you, but now you seem as crazy as the terrorists'
The ACP didn't say anything because by now, Rabia had lapsed into unconsciousness.
Tanvir shook his head in disappointment. 'You and I have destroyed this woman's life.'
The ACP turned away from Tanvir as he holstered his gun. 'Don't stand around giving philosophical lectures, Mr Gangster. If you really want to save what is left of Rabia's life, you better help me find Aalamzeb and the other Pakistanis'
Tanvir strode out of the room. From the corridor outside, his voice floated back towards the ACP, 'I'll be back soon.'
◉
Tanvir crept between a line of European gravestones in a remote corner of the Sewree Christian Cemetery, a torch in hand. He had been tramping about Excel Godown, where the search was on for the nazar bead camera, for the past hour. It was now just about midnight and the ATS men were losing their patience. They had shooed Tanvir away after initially allowing him to be a part of the search.
Like a drowning man clutching at straws, Tanvir was still searching the cemetery, in the faint hope that he might find the camera there. A slight movement behind a gravestone caught his eye. A thin figure detached itself from the shadows and ran in the opposite direction. Without thinking, Tanvir leapt after him. He ran behind the figure, cursing and swearing as his still-booted feet slipped on loose masonry. The figure seemed to know its way around and weaved its way expertly through the unkempt undergrowth between the graves.
The cemetery land opened up into a flat patch with a bald, grassless surface. The figure in front of Tanvir suddenly emitted a sharp cry and fell flat on the ground. Tanvir pounced headlong on to the writhing figure. He shone his torch into the face of his captive, only to realize that he was a young boy, no more than thirteen or fourteen years old.
'Ow!' cried the boy, clutching his ankle that seemed to have twisted.
'Who are you? Why are you here?' shouted Tanvir.
The boy now burst into tears. Tanvir thought that it was because of the pain, but then realized that he was trembling with fear. 'Please, bhai. Don't tell anyone about me. My father will lose his job. He'll be thrown in jail!' he pleaded.
Tanvir helped the boy up. 'Who is your father?' The boy was silent. Tanvir now repeated the question, this time with a threat attached, 'The police will beat it out of you in five minutes. Come on, tell me who your father is?'
The boy blubbered, 'My father is the sentry employed at the godown. Tonight, he came home shaken. The police let him go only after he promised not to tell anyone else what happened here, but he told my mother. I overheard him and I was very curious. I couldn't stop myself. I know this place well. Sometimes, my little brother and I come and play here when my father is on duty. I told them at home that I was going to study at my friend's house and I came here to see what was happening.'
Tanvir nodded in understanding. He then bent down and examined the boy's foot. It was swelling at the ankle. 'Come on, let me take you home'. The boy shivered, perhaps fearing the beating his father would give him. 'Look, you need to put some cold water on that. Don't worry, I'll tell him I saw you fall into a pothole on the road.' The boy smiled at him in gratitude.
'Where do you live?' asked Tanvir.
'We live in the Sewree Koliwada.' Tanvir gave the boy a supporting shoulder and helped him hobble through a gap in the fencing on to a small mud path that led away from the cemetery
◉
Ganpat Suryavanshi was full of gratitude. Tanvir had wanted to leave right after depositing Ganpat's son home, but the sentry and his wife would have none of it. He had dragged the reluctant Tanvir inside and plied him with a hot glass of chai and some khari biscuits. Tanvir had initially relented because Ganpat had said that the gods would be angry if they let a good Samaritan go away without offering him anything, but now he was really thankful, as the first bite of sustenance was doing its bit in rejuvenating his fatigued faculties. He realized that he had not eaten anything since the morning. Without warning, the shock of the events of the day again reared its head inside him. But this time, Tanvir fought it. Ganpat Suryavanshi had been looking at him, curious, for the past few minutes and now, there was a flash of recognition in his eyes. 'You!' he said. 'You are the man who saved the woman in the burqa.'
Tanvir nodded with his mouth full.
Ganpat Suryavanshi seemed scared now. 'Please, why are you here? I have not done anything. I told everything to the police.'
Tanvir drank the last of the chai and wiped the khari crumbs away from his mouth, 'Don't worry, bhai, I know that you were not involved with them. I was just on my way back from there. The police and I were searching for something.' He got up to leave. Nodding at Ganpat's wife, he said, 'Thank you for your hospitality.'
A relieved Ganpat smiled. 'I'm just a small man. It was too much for me. But you are brave. I wish I could help. What are the police looking for now?'
Tanvir was in a hurry now and didn't really want to engage in a conversation. He walked towards the door, 'Oh, nothing really. Just a small marble-like glass bead. Anyway, take care of your boy. Salaam!' He exited before Ganpat could say anything further.
The night was cool outside. Tanvir started to wind his way out of the narrow maze-like gullies, in the direction from where he had brought the young boy home. As he came out from the Koliwada onto the main road, he heard a voice behind him. 'Wait!' He turned to see Ganpat Suryavanshi rushing down the winding path at a distance. A little irritated, Tanvir hung back, waiting for Ganpat to catch up with him. He wondered what the sentry wanted. Ganpat reached him, huffing and puffing away.
'What is it now?' Tanvir's impatience was now at its height as he waited for Ganpat to catch his breath. Ganpat opened his hand and extended it towards Tanvir. In his hand lay the evil eye pendant shining in the meagre streetlight. Tanvir's eyes lit up with excitement.
Ganpat panted, 'As I was leaving the godown tonight, I saw this lying at the corner of the gate post. I thought it was just a kid's marble, and so I picked it up and brought it home for my younger son to play with.'
Tanvir grabbed the bead and held it up. It didn't seem have a scratch on it. He guessed it must have come loose and rolled away towards the gate when he had torn open Rabia's burqa. Tanvir's happiness knew no bounds as he hugged the still-panting Ganpat.
◉
'Allied Computer Peripherals' proclaimed the signboard hung over the shut steel shutters of one of the wall-to-wall shops lined up on Lamington Road's wholesale electronics market.
The shop in question was owned and run by one Sarabjit Singh Sondhi, who was never likely to be lauded for his expertise as a homegrown Indian computer whiz, but was going to make a fortune through the cyber business, nevertheless. Through cyber crime, to be more specific.
Sarabjit and his small team of computer geniuses specialized in credit card fraud. He used his computer peripherals business to launder the money that he nibbled away from the credit cards of high net worth citizens. Sarabjit was also an iconoclast in other ways, in that he was married to Zulekha Siddiqui, his college sweetheart from Khalsa College. Not many people knew that Sarabjit and Zulekha's inter-caste marriage had been made possible only because Sarabjit had, in school, been friends with one Tanvir Khanzada. An upcoming young gangster, Tanvir had made sure that no hothead from either community challenged the two lovers as they bound themselves to each other in holy matrimony.
Now, as Tanvir rapped his fist on the steel shutters of the shop, he heard a familiar voice from inside, shouting, 'Fuck off, you bevda!'
'Your father is a bevda, and you are a chutiya,' retorted Tanvir, smiling. In a flash, the shutter was half-raised. The smell of stale food laced with rum floated out to Tanvir's nostrils. A grinning bearded and turbaned head popped out from under the shutter 'Oho, Eid ka chand, come in...come in.' Tanvir slid under the shutter into the dimly-lit shop. Sarabjit's grin widened as he gave Tanvir a warm hug. 'Sorry yaar, there's a drunkard who lands up here every time we're working nights. He keeps knocking and knocking, asking for a sip of our booze.'
Tanvir looked around the small shop. At a small workstation, two other Sikhs were sitting, working away on their laptops. A mass of jumbled cables, hard disks, USBs and connecters lay around them, intermingled with paper plates of half-eaten chicken tangdis and plastic glasses of half-sipped rum and Cokes. 'Tanvir, you remember my two kid brothers' He turned to the engrossed Sikhs, 'Oye bhenchodon, pay your respects to Tanvir bhai.' The two Sikhs momentarily looked up at Tanvir and flashed him warm smiles, bobbing their heads in respect. 'Please forgive them, Tanvir, they are busy unloading some dollars from a fat Amriki tourist whose credit card we got today.'
Tanvir held out the nazar bead. 'I need to know what's on this.'
Sarabjit broke into a quizzical smile. 'Oh! So finally
teri goti kat ke tere haath me aa hi gayi?'
Tanvir smiled at Sarabjit's bawdy joke. 'This marble has a chip camera inside it of the latest technology.'
Sarabjit's brothers, who had been busy on their laptops, stopped all of a sudden. Before Sarabjit could answer, one of them got up and grabbed the bead while the other brought out a torch and a toolbox.
Sarabjit smiled. 'You just said the magic words "latest technology"'. He broke into a throaty laughter.
Within seconds, the two boys were busy dismantling the outer core of the bead. It didnt take them long to tweeze the tiny chip out of the bead.
'For these two, this is as exciting as finding an item girl's panties,' said Sarabjit, between guffaws.
One of the boys took out a super-small SIM-card-like object and shoved the chip inside. Sarabjit smiled and winked. 'That my friend, is our "Khulja SimSim" card. It converts any kind of coded information on any chip into the code that we have created.' His brothers coughed, trying to attract his attention. Sarabjit smiled and pointed at them, 'Correction. A code created by Santa and Banta here.' The two gave him a mock-dirty look.
The SIM card was now inserted into an iPad that was connected to a mass of wires. The iPad flickered into video mode and an image sprang on the screen. The image was of a serene-faced man who looked as non-threatening as a clerk in a nationalized bank. But what he said, made everyone's blood freeze. 'You may think I'm a bad man, but history will know me as a visionary who crossed the border to help his Islamic brethren in India. I want my brothers and sisters in India to get out of the poverty-stricken conditions that they have lived in for the past sixty-five years' Tanvir realized that it was Aalamzeb talking to Rabia, while three other men, who had their faces covered, were wrapping something around Rabia. Tanvir guessed that it must be the bomb corset. He glanced at Sarabjit and his brothers and saw that they were staring at the screen, shell-shocked.
On the screen Aalamzeb continued, 'I want true vengeance for you, for all of Islam. The only way you can avenge your Muslim brothers is to tell the police that I will be hiding in the Bombay Stock Exchange building. Tell them to come and meet me on the roof, and all will be avenged.' Aalamzeb now took some plaster tape in his hand and began taping Rabia's mouth. 'But you can't actually tell the police that, can you? Because you are a bomb yourself, and bombs don't talk, they simply blow up.' Aalamzeb laughed a dry laugh that chilled Tanvir to the bone. Then he turned Rabia away from the camera, so that the camera now faced a wooden door.
After staring for a while at the image of the wooden door, Tanvir shot a glance towards the Sikhs. He saw that one of the younger brothers had fainted. Sarabjit sat, dumbstruck, all his jocularity was gone. Tanvir extracted the chip from the iPad, put it in his pocket and prepared to leave. Behind him, Sarabjit croaked, Are we all going to die?'
'Not if I can help it,' Tanvir replied.
◉
A hopping-mad ACP Hani, along with two of his men, helped Rabia into a taxi outside Dr Chitrekar's Lie-in Clinic. Standing next to them, Tanvir watched as Rabia settled down on the backseat.
On his way to the clinic, Tanvir had called the ACP and asked him to release Rabia in exchange for the camera. When ACP Hani had threatened him with dire consequences for his actions, he had laughed and reminded the ACP about the dire consequences of the ACP's actions. Tanvir had been clear that if he did not release Rabia, Tanvir would throw the camera chip into the sea. ACP Hani had reluctantly agreed, but only on the condition that Tanvir would not leave the city and would make himself available in case he was ever required again. Tanvir had given his word.
The taxi driver now started up the engine. Tanvir turned to ACP Hani and handed him the chip. 'It is the Stock Exchange Building,' Tanvir informed the stunned ACP as he slipped into the taxi next to Rabia.