Having ransacked a house, found nothing but picked up a suspect ,they know they are in no position to expose their
spoils to the media, so they creep out from the village amid the howling canines.
They cross the parapet-less bridge over the Leisha Canal and
charge their way towards the highway and after having crept along for few
kilometres they arrive at the university gate guarded by club-wielding security guards who slouch by the gate in creaky chairs, their
tiny and drowsy bodies clothed in thick khaki over coats and heads below khaki
berets and necks wrapped with mufflers.
They lay there like some abandoned immobile lumps , their faces revealed by the glow of the beedi which they
pass around among themselves. They have failed to notice the approaching
vehicles, only when the driver in the leading vehicles ,carrying the Major and
the lady suspect, sitting on the same seat, issues some thundering swear words
in Hindi, “sister fuckers! You motherfucking Chinks open the fucking gate!”, then they scramble.
Out of the three two of
them run about to push open the gate. In their petrified state they stand to attention and salute several times, resembling some lackeys who could lick the swear-dispensing machines’
boots. The slumber that possessed them a while ago is driven out, and they
stand there talking in low tone about the misfortune that has visited , and of the luck that has spared them.
Soon the vehicles can be seen crawling over the knoll
where a nineteenth century king built his palace without any
architectural consideration. Over the ruins of the palace, which are sacred to the natives,
tarpaulin sheets are thrown, poles erected to make it a perfect
barrack.
Now from the earth-coated brick bunkers heavy searching lights stream down
over the roads nearby, and anybody passing through the campus and caught by the
lights should stop to prove his innocence.
So, at a time like this no one,
living on the campus, steps out to be confronted by the macabre force which
moves like dark lords.
When the vehicle carrying the Major pulls up in front
of the cell he orders the other personnel to leave the place so that he can
interrogate the suspect with full privacy. The hierarchy is such that there is
none who can speak his conscience, besides this is not the place where one can
exercise that kind of intellectual human feeling, it’s about being foolish
to take what’s given and then to carry it out without questioning. To speak
one’s mind is to ask for wrath and that wrath comes with legal consequences.
Just as a victorious hunter would carry his hunted on his shoulder conscious of
the jealous eyes and at the same time worrying that
the nasty nature of crime would be noticed by someone, he hurries to the dark
cell to which he himself only has access at the moment. Her kicking legs happen to kick the stiff
back of the hunter, thus arousing the easy-anger and in this state he desires to seek his vengeance right away, a kind that he can seek in any
form.
To be continued.........
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