Lalit and Momi became our rather close friends. They were part of our celebrations, we a part of theirs, as we danced and laughed with them. Soon normalcy drugged itself into each of us. Lalit was now looking for a Job and soon decided to stay at his own house a few kilometers away. We helped him set up his house and looked for some kind of employment for him from Security related to business contracts. Lalit tried his best to be responsible and fulfill the duties of a husband and bread winner.
But I guess things were not what both he and I expected. No one was dishing jobs around which he wanted, nor was the army throwing money on luxuries. Basic support yes, but the remaining was a slow battle of me trying to fight the system to get him his due. The best I was doing was giving him brotherly treatment. Whenever he was with me, he stayed at my place, ate with me, slept there, watched movies together and well we just were like the best of buddies who went for operations like one bloody maverick team.
Momi too had her ways and had slowly started settling as a house wife. From a fiery warrior she had mellowed down and used to keep her house clean and neat and attended social and cultural obligations like a good wife. She was hospitable and courteous whenever I went to their house to pick up Lalit for some work or just to catch up on some intelligence that I wanted. There was this unmistakable admiration that I had for her. I guess it was her qualities as a guerilla and fighter that I appreciated. To top that she was clever and considered the army useless and poorly trained and had a tendency of teasing me with challenges that if she were still with the organization, she could’ve given me hell and bullet fire. She once told me quite blatantly that she could bet that I would never get any success in her village. A village so remote and surrounded by forests and water bodies, that Army had never had any successful operations against the militants in 25 years of militancy. I had never been to her village to comment, as it lay in a different unit’s area of responsibility. I had however heard of previous fiascos the army had suffered in that area and about the godforsaken terrain with a zillion escape routes.
It was sometime during this phase of time when the army had raided a Temporary militant hideout in the forest island and eliminated twelve militants in a month long operation in the worst of weather conditions. The camp had provided tones of intel which took days to decipher. To make things easier the HQ had sent sets of similar intel material to different units. From matrices, to codes, radio telephony details, training manuals and other documents, we had a treasure trove of stuff to play around with. It was then that we bumped into certain land and financial documents, from fixed deposits, insurance policies, to bank accounts in the name of a person from a nearby area. It took me some time to put together the truth behind the entire episode and prompted me to dig deeper. It was a brutal story, painfully recreated using inputs from newspaper cuttings, police records and civilians staying close to the area.
The owner of these documents was the same person who about eight months back had helped the terrorists bury close to Six million of extortion currency in the middle of the forest somewhere close to Momi’s village. Greed got the better of him and a few months later he exhumed the booty and stole half the amount and fled his village. As a security measure he bought a new house very close to the colony where the military base was. He then went on and purchased bonds, insurance and land in his family’s name. It wasn’t long before his family was hounded through relatives and soon a death letter was issued in his name. This was handed over by Lalit when he was a militant cadre, personally to the man’s wife. Finally, as a last resort the militant organization requested him to bring all the financial documents to their camp in the middle of the Brahmaputra and they would let him live for old time’s sake. This individual took the dire measure of going to meet the militant cadres, who bound, tortured and shot him in the head. Lalit was witness to the entire episode and shuddered when narrating the barbaric methods of torture used on him before he was killed and buried close to the camp. I felt like a detective digging out a crime scene with only the evidence lying around. It was further corroborated when we recovered the skeletal remains a few days later from the forest with Lalit leading the way for us. It was a jack pot of sorts which could have highlighted the evil side of the terrorist organization. Somehow we needed a witness apart from Lalit. We just didn’t want him to get involved in all this and so we went knocking at the dead individual’s family staying at Momis village. It was on the second trip early one foggy morning when I had been tasked to escort the wife and village head back to base for questioning that things got bloody ugly. Out of some tactical insight I inadvertently split my team in two. One team was tasked to hit straight for the ladies house through the village while mine would reconnoiter from the east and decided to approach the ladies house from the forest side.
Weapons ready and senses tense we half ran half scouted through the edge of the forest towards the ladies house. Somewhere in between I saw a clearing in the twenty feet high foliage and decided to cut across into the village from there. I halted my team and field signaled them to move into the village using that clearing. My scouts would have just moved thirty or forty meters to a clearing when they bumped head on into a fleeing terrorist making way for the jungle after having spotted the other team entering the village. The next instance was a thunderstorm of bullets whizzing past with both my scouts and the terrorist getting trigger happy with just about twenty meters between them. By the time I could understand what happened, the terrorist was dead and writhing in pain. The bamboo hutments behind which were horrifyingly in the line of fire of my scouts, had hordes of ladies and children crying and screaming like banshees. We had been served the first success for the military in 25 years of counter terrorism operations in the most hostile and impossible area. Though the rather easy operation made me feel good, it created a suspicion in the terrorist organization that this success would have happened only if Momi had leaked inputs about the village.
Momi on the other hand was surprised at our success. I could sense that after this particular operation she started silently giving me my due as a soldier. It sure was a treat to get acceptance for ones soldiering from someone as tough spirited and rebellious as her. It felt all the more satisfying as it just wasn’t her to admire the army or appreciate their abilities. She acknowledged this operation along with the one I had been with Lalit and the numerous others she had heard of and started treating me with more respect than before. It was a silent mutual admiration for soldiering abilities that only soldiers would know of. She had slowly started confiding to Lalit that she was comfortable of him going for operations only with me. She trusted me with her husband for reasons she knew best. It could have been the brotherly affection we shared, the tactical acumen I might have had or just plain faith that I would take care of him. Lalit more than once disclosed of his wife’s trust in me and more than often I had him skip dangerous and difficult operations in blatant contravention to my orders, just to keep him safe. Kind of never wanted him to get exposed to the same evil he left. I wanted him to start a new life and live away from the influence of the army.
Lalit and Momi were living their own lives and our interactions now were only as friends. I had out rightly stopped taking Lalit for operations and saw him as a lifelong buddy. I adored the couple which fought, made up and fought some more like children and were pure and simple at heart.
To the dismay of certain factions in the army who were finding Lalit obsolete as a good source, I continued as a good friend, helping him find jobs and helping him in whatever way possible.
This was a phase of my life where I had proved my bit in the face of bullets and odds and stood strong before the men I led as a true military leader. It was a period of mythical proportions, the locals adored us and we them, the popularity charts in local circles was soaring with random people one met miles away telling you that they have heard about you. It was a period when I sported a devilish beard and a clean shaven head making me look like a psychopath. I danced the local way, sang their songs, spoke their tongue and loved every bit of being with them. Life was a high.
No comments:
Post a Comment