“Still. This is one thing we must avoid,” Shockie said. “Where our illogic must not extend. We need the support of our people. Accidentally blowing them up won’t help.”
From his expression, it appeared he had done this a lot. How many people had this man killed over the course of his life? Ayub wondered. Had it achieved anything? Kashmir, where he started, was as ravaged by violence as before, with little shift in the needle of negotiation. And in this country Muslims were still killed, detained, fired, disappeared. How did this man justify his life to himself? Ayub looked again at the tipless fingers and thought, I supposed he has suffered too, having gone through immense pain—and that has hardened him.
With these preliminaries over, Shockie began to sketch out the plan.
The plan was to cause as much damage to the economy as possible—for this reason, the blast was to be set off in the week before the festival of Diwali, at the end of October. Ayub was to drop off a bag with a bomb in Sarojini Nagar, a crowded open-air market where people shopped for fake branded T-shirts and clothes. “This Logus T-shirt is from there,” Ayub said, pointing to his chest.
Shockie smiled. “So it’s a good target, then.”
“Why not one of the malls?” Ayub asked.
“There’s too much security,” Shockie said, shaking his head and looking around with an intelligent alert scanning gaze, his arms thrown over the cement bench. Ayub noticed that a heart had been carved into the rough billion-peaked concrete. How did they do it? With knives? This mania for defacing things—he had never understood it.
“But the security at these malls isn’t so good,” Ayub said. “If you look upper-class, they let you through anywhere. The Ansal Plaza in Khel Gaon, especially.” He would feel less guilty, he thought, killing the rich rather than the poor.
“It’s your first time,” Shockie said. “Next time we’ll look at the malls. First do this. It sounds easy to you, but it’s not. A million things can go wrong and they’re never the things you expect.” He put up his hands. “You see these fingers? I lost them in an explosion in Jaipur. As for the Lajpat Nagar blast, where your friend was hurt, the first time it didn’t go off. We were so worried about being seen, spent so much time putting on disguises, that we didn’t even think this could happen.” His mouth curled; he had a lost, self-pleased look on his face. “Do this first and you’ll learn yourself what your capabilities are.”
Ayub withdrew a little from Shockie on the bench. Ahead, in the park, the game of cricket was ending. An argument had broken out between teams. How could I have worried they’d notice anything? They barely notice they’re playing, they’re so busy fighting.
“Fine, boss,” Ayub said, nodding.
In the end, his role was so small, he felt foolish about the buildup, the training, the waiting—is this all it came to? Dropping off a bag at Sarojini Nagar, a market so crowded it was surprising no one had set off a bomb there? Some people will die, he thought, that’s true. But they’ll expand the market’s security after the blast. The MCD will push the encroaching shops back from the road. And the crowds will be funneled through one of those security doorways you see at cinemas and airports. No—I’m only doing the inevitable. If not me, then someone else. I’m pointing out the flaws in the system. Terror is a form of urban planning.