The ADC who answered the phone told me that the caller had given his name as Major Amrik Singh and had asked for me not just by designation but, unusually, also by name—Biplab Dasgupta, Deputy Station Head, India Bravo (radio code in Kashmir for the Intelligence Bureau).
I knew the fellow, not personally—I’d never set eyes on him—but by reputation. He was known as Amrik Singh “Spotter”—for his uncanny ability to spot the snake in the grass, the militant hidden among a crowd of civilians. (He’s famous now, by the way. Posthumously. He killed himself recently—shot his wife, his three young sons and put a bullet through his own head. I can’t say I’m sorry. Shame about the wife and children though.) Major Amrik Singh was a bad apple. No, let me rephrase that—he was a putrid apple, and was, at the time of that midnight phone call, at the center of a pretty putrid storm. A couple of months after I arrived in Srinagar, which was in January of 1995, Amrik Singh had, on orders quite likely, apprehended a well-known lawyer and human rights activist, Jalib Qadri, at a checkpoint. Qadri was a nuisance, a brash, abrasive man who did not know the meaning of nuance. The night he was arrested, he was due to leave for Delhi from where he was going to Oslo to depose at an international human rights conference. His arrest was only meant to prevent that silly circus from taking place. Amrik Singh apprehended Qadri publicly, in the presence of Qadri’s wife, but the arrest was not formally registered, which was not unusual. There was an outcry about Qadri’s “abduction,” a much bigger one than we expected, so after a few days we thought it prudent to release the man. But he was nowhere to be found. A great hue and cry arose. We set up a search committee and tried to calm nerves. A few days later Jalib Qadri’s body showed up in a sack floating down the Jhelum. It was in a terrible condition—skull smashed in, eyes gouged out, and so on. Even by Kashmir’s standards, this was somewhat excessive. The level of public anger went off the charts—naturally—so the local police were permitted to file a case. A high-level committee was set up to look into the whole thing. Witnesses to the abduction, people who saw Qadri in Amrik Singh’s custody in an army camp, people who witnessed the altercation between the two that sent Amrik Singh into a rage, actually came forward to give written statements, which was rare. Even Amrik Singh’s accomplices, Ikhwanis most of them, were willing to turn approvers and testify against him in court. But then one by one their bodies began to turn up. In fields, in forests, by the side of the road…he killed them all. The army and the administration had to at least pretend to do something, although they couldn’t really act against him. He knew too much and he made it clear that if he went down he would take as many people as he could down with him. He was cornered, and dangerous. It was decided the best thing to do would be to get him out of the country and find him asylum somewhere. Which is eventually what happened. But it couldn’t be done at once. Not while the spotlight was on him. There had to be a cooling-off period. As a first step he was taken off field operations and given a desk job. In the Shiraz JIC, out of trouble’s way. Or so we thought.
So this was the man who was calling me. I can’t say I was longing to speak to him. A pestilence like that is best kept quarantined.
When I answered the phone he sounded excited. He spoke so fast it took me a while to realize he was speaking English and not Punjabi. He said they had captured an A-Category Terrorist, a Commander Gulrez, a dreaded Hizb-ul-Mujahideen commander, in a massive cordon-and-search operation on a houseboat.
This was Kashmir; the Separatists spoke in slogans and our men spoke in press releases; their cordon-and-search operations were always “massive,” everybody they picked up was always “dreaded,” seldom less than “A-category,” and the recoveries they made from those they captured were always “war-like.” It wasn’t surprising, because each of those adjectives had a corresponding incentive—a cash reward, an honorable mention in their service dossier, a medal for bravery or a promotion. So, as you can imagine, that piece of information didn’t exactly get my pulse going.
He said that the terrorist had been killed while trying to escape. That didn’t do much for me either. It happened several times a day on a good day—or a bad day, depending on your perspective. So why was I being called in the middle of the night about something so routine? And what did his zealousness have to do with my department or with me?
A “ladies” had been captured along with Commander Gulrez, he said. She wasn’t Kashmiri.
Now that was unusual. Unheard of, actually.
The “ladies” had been handed over to ACP Pinky, for interrogation.
We all knew Assistant Commandant Pinky Sodhi of the peach complexion and the long black braid worn coiled under her cap. Her twin brother, Balbir Singh Sodhi, was a senior police officer who had been shot down by militants in Sopore when he was out on his morning jog. (Foolish thing for a senior officer to do, even one who prided himself on, or, as it turned out, deluded himself about, being “loved” by the locals.) ACP Pinky had been given a job in the CRPF—Central Reserve Police Force—on compassionate grounds, as compensation to the family for the death of her brother. Nobody had ever seen her out of uniform. For all her stunning looks, she was a brutal interrogator who often exceeded her brief because she was exorcizing demons of her own. She wasn’t in the Amrik Singh league, but still—God help any Kashmiri who fell into her hands. As for those who didn’t fall into her hands—many of them were busy writing love poems to her and even proposing marriage. Such was ACP Pinky’s fatal charm.
The “ladies” whom they had arrested, I was told, had refused to divulge her name. Since the captured “ladies” wasn’t a Kashmiri, I imagined ACP Pinky had exercised some restraint and had not unleashed herself completely. Had she, then neither Ladies nor Gents would have been able to withhold information. Anyway, I was getting impatient. I still could not fathom what any of it had to do with me.
Finally Amrik Singh came to the point: during the interrogation, my name had come up. The woman had asked for a message to be passed on to me. He said he couldn’t understand the message, but she said I’d understand. He read it, or rather spelled it, aloud over the phone:
G-A-R-S-O-N H-O-B-A-R-T
Rasoolan’s voice, still searching for her scattered pearls, filled my head: Kahan vaeka dhoondhoon re? Dhoondhat dhoondhat baura gaeli Rama…
—
Garson Hobart must have sounded like a secret code for a militant strike, or an acknowledgment of receipt for a weapons consignment. The mad brute on the other end of the phone was waiting for an explanation from me. I couldn’t think of how to even begin.
Could Commander Gulrez have something to do with Musa? Was he Musa? I had tried to get in touch with him several times after moving to Srinagar. I wanted to offer my condolences to him for what had happened to his family. I had never succeeded, which in those days usually meant only one thing. He was underground.
Who else could Tilo have been with? Had they killed Musa in front of her? Oh God.
—
I told Amrik Singh as curtly as I could that I would call him back.
—
My first instinct was to put as great a distance as possible between the woman I loved and myself. Does that make me a coward? If it does, at least I’m a candid one.