In the cinema lobby, busy as a bus terminal, even at that hour, Tilo was handed over to ACP Pinky, who had been summoned from her sleep to deal with this unusual prisoner. The arrest was not registered. They had not even asked the prisoner her name. ACP Pinky led her past the reception counter where nine months ago Musa had left Amrik Singh’s bottle of Red Stag whiskey, past the advertisements for Cadbury’s chocolate and Kwality ice cream and the faded posters of Chandni, Maine Pyar Kiya, Parinda and Lion of the Desert. They threaded their way through the lines of the latest batch of bound, beaten men and the cement kangaroo garbage bins, entered the theater, crossed the improvised badminton court, exited from the door closest to the screen and then took another door that opened on to a backyard. There were more than a few amused glances and mumbled lewd remarks as the women made their way to the Shiraz’s main interrogation center.
It was an independent structure—an unremarkable, long, rectangular room whose primary feature was its stench. The smell of urine and sweat was overlaid by the sicksweet smell of old blood. Though the sign on the door said Interrogation Center, it was in truth a torture center. In Kashmir, “interrogation” was not a real category. There was “questioning,” which meant a few slaps and kicks, and “interrogation,” which meant torture.
The room had only one door and no windows. ACP Pinky walked over to a desk in the corner, pulled out a few blank sheets of paper and a pen from a drawer and slapped them on the table.
“Let’s not waste each other’s time. Write. I’ll be back in ten minutes.”
She untied Tilo’s hands and left, shutting the door behind her.
—
Tilo waited for the numbness to go away and the blood to return to her fingers before she picked up the pen. Her first three attempts at writing failed. Her hands were shaking so much she could not read her own writing. She closed her eyes and remembered her breathing lessons. They worked. In clear letters she wrote:
Please call Mr. Biplab Dasgupta, Deputy Station Head India Bravo
Give him this message: G-A-R-S-O-N H-O-B-A-R-T
—
While she waited for ACP Pinky to return she inspected the room. At first glance it looked like a rudimentary tool shed, kitted out with a couple of carpenters’ worktables, hammers, screwdrivers, pliers, ropes, what seemed to be scaled-down stone or concrete pillars, pipes, a tub of filthy water, jerry cans of petrol, metal funnels, wires, electric extension boards, coils of wire, rods of all sizes, a couple of spades, crowbars.
On a shelf there was a jar of red chili powder. The floor was littered with cigarette stubs. Tilo had learned enough over the last ten days to know that those ordinary things could be put to extraordinary use.
She knew that the pillars were the instruments of the most favored form of torture in Kashmir. They were used as “rollers” on prisoners who were tied down while two men rolled the pillars over them, literally crushing their muscles. More often than not, “roller treatment” resulted in acute renal failure. The tub was for waterboarding, the pliers for extracting fingernails, the wires for applying electric shocks to men’s genitals, the chili powder was usually applied on rods that were inserted into prisoners’ anuses or mixed into water and poured down their throats. (Years later, another woman, Loveleen, Amrik Singh’s wife, would display an intimate knowledge of these methods in her application for asylum in the US. It was this very tool shed that was the site of her field research, except that she had visited it not as a victim, but as the spouse of the torturer-in-chief, who was being given a tour of her husband’s office.)
ACP Pinky returned with Major Amrik Singh. Tilo saw at once, from their body language and the intimate way in which they spoke to each other, that they were more than just colleagues. ACP Pinky picked up the sheet of paper Tilo had written on and read it aloud, slowly and with some difficulty. Clearly, reading was not her forte. Amrik Singh took the paper from her. Tilo saw his expression change.
“Who is he to you, this Dasgupta?”
“A friend.”
“A friend? How many men do you fuck at the same time?” This was ACP Pinky.
Tilo said nothing.
“I asked you a question. How many men do you fuck at the same time?”
Tilo’s silence elicited a slew of insults along predictable lines (in which Tilo recognized the words “black,” “whore” and “jihadi”) and then the question was asked again. Tilo’s continued silence had nothing to do with courage or resilience. It had to do with a lack of choice. Her blood had shut down.
ACP Pinky noticed the smirk on Amrik Singh’s face—clearly in some way he admired the defiance that was on display. She read volumes into that expression and it incensed her. Amrik Singh left with the sheet of paper. At the door he turned and said:
“Find out what you can. No injury marks. This is a senior officer, this person whose name she’s written. Let me check it out. May be nonsense. But no marks until then.”
“No marks” was a problem for the ACP. She had no experience in that field, because she was not a trained torturer, she had learned her craft on the run, in the battlefield, and “no marks” was not a courtesy that was extended to Kashmiris. She did not believe that Amrik Singh’s instructions had anything to do with a senior officer. She recognized the look in his eye, and she knew what attracted him in women. Having to constrain herself offended her dignity and that didn’t help her temper. Her slaps and kicks (which came under the category of “questioning”) drew nothing from her detainee but expressionless, dead silence.
It took Amrik Singh more than an hour to locate Biplab Dasgupta and speak to him on the hotline to the Forest Guest House in Dachigam. The fact that he was part of the Governor’s weekend entourage was cause for serious alarm. There was no question that the woman knew him. And well. The Deputy Director India Bravo seemed to know exactly what G-A-R-S-O-N H-O-B-A-R-T meant. But the predator in Amrik Singh smelled hesitation, diffidence even. He knew he could be in more trouble, big trouble, but it wasn’t too late for it to be undone if he released the woman unhurt. There was space to maneuver. He hurried back to the interrogation center to stall any further damage. He was a little late, but not too late.
ACP Pinky had found a cheap, clichéd way around her problem. She called down the primordial punishment for the Woman-Who-Must-Be-Taught-a-Lesson. Her vindictiveness had very little to do with counter-terrorism or with Kashmir—except perhaps for the fact that the place was an incubator for every kind of insanity.
Mohammed Subhan Hajam, the camp barber, was just leaving as Amrik Singh rushed into the room.
Tilo was sitting on a wooden chair with her arms strapped down. Her long hair was on the floor, the scattered curls, no longer hers, mingled with the filth and cigarette butts. While he tonsured her, Subhan Hajam had managed to whisper, “Sorry, madam, very sorry.”
Amrik Singh and ACP Pinky had a lovers’ tiff that almost came to blows. Pinky was sulky but defiant.
“Show me the law against haircuts.”
Amrik Singh untied Tilo and helped her to her feet. He made a show of dusting the hair off her shoulders. He put a huge hand protectively on her scalp—a butcher’s blessing. It would take Tilo years to get over the obscenity of that touch. He sent for a balaclava for her to cover her head. While they waited for it, he said, “Sorry about this. It shouldn’t have happened. We have decided to release you. What’s done is done. You don’t talk. I don’t talk. If you talk, I talk. And if I talk, you and your officer friend will be in a lot of trouble. Collaborating with terrorists is not a small thing.”
The balaclava arrived along with a small pink tin of Pond’s Dreamflower talc. Amrik Singh powdered Tilo’s shaved scalp. The balaclava stank worse than a dead fish. But she allowed him to put it on her head. They walked out of the interrogation center, across the yard and up a fire escape to a small office. It was empty. Amrik Singh said it was the office of Ashfaq Mir of the Special Operations Group, Deputy Commandant of the camp. He was out on an operation, but would return shortly to hand her over to the person whom Biplab Dasgupta Sir was sending.