“Oye, bring two tea...special, quickly!” hollered the large man, Ganesan.

He
continued scanning the shops in front. The shorter man, Ramesh with him turned
towards the rear of the tea stall, staring hard into the jungle.

The shops opposite the tea stall were even smaller, books and medicine, never
to be used by the natives. Occasionally, a car would stop and someone would
ask for a cup of tea, flip some pages from the magazines, refill the medicine
inventory and drive away.

A small boy came with the tea. He looked not a day more than 8, tattered
clothes, and his rib cage prominent. His hands were rough, nails coarse.
Misfortune in one’s kismet was not limited to malnutrition in these parts. “Why,
chhele, don’t you go to school?” quipped Ganesan. His partner apparently was
not interested. Before he could open his mouth, the boy’s father spoke meekly
from behind the stove, “Saabji, I can’t afford the books and uniform. And what
good it’ll do to him, he must learn what he’s learning with me from the books of
life.”

The transmitter under his gamochhi crackled with static, and his words choked
inside the throat of Ganesan. “He’s approaching, alone...” the electro-mechanical
voice said, as Ganesan steadied the transmitter. Both the man’s eyes turned
towards the road yonder. The tea shop owner sensed that something was wrong
and gestured his son to come back.

Both the customers continued to sip their tea.

A young man grew into the vision, gradually, walking slowly towards the shops.
His hair locks flew behind him and he effortlessly tucked them behind his ear. He
looked an intellectual, simple, thin, in slippers. A bag hung on his shoulder; it
bounced with his steps – in rhythm. Keeping his eyes straight he turned to the
book stall and peeled off a magazine from the shelf. The owner, waved off the
flies.

Couple of steps behind him, the radio crackled once again – “All teams, move
in!”

The bushes hurled and figures appeared out of nowhere. They were armed as if
to control an entire mob, surrounding the lone lean figure as the shopkeeper
tried to lower himself below the books. His paunch clearly required some extra
effort to move.

Ganesan and Ramesh came forward, breaking the ring of people. The young man
was yet to turn; he persisted with the pages of the magazine, indifferent to his
environs.

“Finally, we got you, you son of a bald woman!”

Unhurried, the man put down the magazine and turned back. His eyes exuded
radiance, and his mouth was in a half-smile, as if he had himself planned his
incarceration.
 *

The police station was just another sarkari office. The shelves that lined the walls
were overloaded with files, bathing in dust. The only lively story they could tell
was of the spiders and cockroaches that dwelled in them. Everyone else was
dead. The gap between the tables was punctuated earnestly by wooden
benches. Their skeleton was broken at places and sometimes entirely hinged off
too.

Some of the havaldars had earned desks to themselves; they kept the surfaces
clean. At the far end a chocolate coloured table was resting – royal most
furniture in vicinity, for the senior most officer. A telephone sat on its top. It had
not rung ever since it was installed. The petty thieves joked from behind the bars
that they put the phone, but forgot to extend a line to it.

Behind the table, a dark alley led to the prisoner cells. It was dark, from the lack
of electricity or from the deeds, nobody knew. Somehow, both led to each other.
The three cells were filled with the stench of urine, beedi and of dark chill of
crime. The policewallahs avoided the cells except for the daily inspection rounds,
or to lock someone up when they would cover their nose and switch on a bulb,
do their work and rush away. There was no electricity that day and the
interrogation was to take time, this was no ordinary man. And so Ganesan
decided that the man should be kept in the office.

The prisoner stood in the middle of the room. Eyes from all sides peered at him.
The young man stayed silent looking down at his handcuffs. Ramesh saw that
and jibed, “You won’t be able to break them.”

“I am not planning to”, he said, as he looked up to Ramesh, still smiling.

Ganesan interrupted, “Enough, look we are not here to play games, just tell us
where the fuck are all your other companions.”

“They are hanging on the wall behind you.”

“You think you can get away by pointing to Gandhi, Nehru? You are wrong
Chetan, you are damn wrong!”

“But who said anything about getting away?”

A constable who was scanning Chetan’s bag had found out some books in it. One
of them fell on the ground. The interrogation stopped in middle. Ramesh
promptly went and picked it up. It read – Mahatma Gandhi’s Interpretation of
Bhagwad Gita.

“Bhagwad Gita haan, you read Gita and kill innocent people?”

“The people who got killed were not innocent, have you read Gita?”

Ganesan interjected again, “Don’t give me your intellectual crap. Just tell us the
name of your friends and their location.”
“Gita, asks us to fight against what is wrong and in favour of the righteous”,
Shyam quipped, unbothered by the question.

“Don’t you piss me off boy, you can’t justify violence and blame it on the sacred
book, you are not even old enough to understand it.”

“Are you? Are you old enough? And what text do you use to justify your violence
on innocent aadiwaasis - the constitution?

“Look here you...”

“What gives you the right to justify your violence, to justify you raping the young
girls, of sodomizing the culture of this land? What’s wrong if we become violent
in protect what is rightfully ours?”

“How dare you argue with us? You cannot break the law...”

“Oh, so this is it, you are on that side of the mutilated table of law, and so all that
you do is lawful! Is it? And since I am on this side of table, my deeds are crime.
Tell me, does the government of India officially issue you the license to kill?”
Shyam’s voice had risen from its usual level.

Ramesh started towards the young lad, his hand clenched into a fist. He was
stopped by Ganesan.

“Look son, let’s not make it tough for either of us; just give me the names of your
friends and I’ll help you in all the ways I can.”

“I already told you, who are my companions. There’s no more to us than the idea
that they planted. We’ll not let you run down our homes, culture and people. Do
you want to know why we killed that mahajan? Because he took away a man’s
land in lieu of his payment and made his family slaves. That is why we killed him.
We killed that engineer, because he had made that road in village not of coal tar
but of millions of bribed rupees. And do you want to know, why you are still alive,
inspector Ganesan? Because you only are doing your work without any tainted
intentions, doing what you are ordered to do, by your Government of India.”

Chetan’s legs buckled and he fell down on his knees on the floor. He was hit by a
lathi behind his knees by Ramesh. Several men drew their weapons and moved
towards the man on the floor.

This time Ganesan didn’t stop any of them; his eyes went to the floor and then
closed.