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Pandey was sitting with his back against the wall, his stick in his hands. Subin had no real weapon and he looked terrified, all the fun he had thought he would have during guard duty disappearing. He was sweating profusely despite the chill in the air and I could see Raju and Prashant standing dumbly by the parking lot, seemingly paralyzed by what was happening. The sound seemed closer, and for a second I thought it was several pairs of feet shuffling along on the ground. We had to do something—I didn’t want to just hide and wait to find out if someone was indeed approaching our building. I stood up, turned on the lamp, and shone it outwards.

  Standing just about a dozen feet from me were five men. I recognized two of them as the men I had seen at the police station. All of them were armed, carrying iron rods or knives, and were wearing police uniforms. One of them, the large man who had come out of the station carrying the bloodied sword, was still carrying it. The men were blinded by the sudden light shining in their eyes and I shouted out to them: ‘Go back. We are armed and we will fight. Pandeyji, get the gun here!’

  The man with the sword seemed to be looking straight at me. I’m not sure if he recognized me, or if he could even see with the light shining straight at him in the darkness, but he stood there for a few seconds. I sensed Pandey standing next to me, and he was hefting his stick in his hands. Subin was standing as well, and Prashant had come up and was waving a chair over his head. I don’t know if a half-broken plastic chair would have intimidated the men we faced, but their leader, which is what I supposed the large man to be, didn’t move. He just continued to look in my direction. Then he nodded and walked away. I heaved a sigh of relief and sat down. Pandey and Subin looked even more relieved than me and I could see that Prashant’s hands were shaking.

  I tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Thanks, that was cool.’

  ‘Man, I was shit scared.’

  ‘So was I, but being scared is okay as long as it doesn’t stop you from doing the right thing.’

  We kept the lamp on, worries about conserving the generator paling before what we had just seen. After that incident, there was little question of any of us getting much sleep. In fact, others had seen and heard the exchange from their windows or balconies and someone shouted out, ‘Have they gone?’

  Slightly irritated at people looking on from the comfort of their homes, Pandey snapped back, ‘Come down and check for yourself, and while you’re at it, bring Aadi’s imaginary gun.’

  It wasn’t all that funny but it helped to defuse the tension all of us were feeling and we broke out laughing. We kept laughing uncontrollably till we were stopped by something that sobered us up instantly.

  It was the moment when we heard the first screams.

  Six in the morning. The sun barely up over the horizon, and all of us standing near the walls, our nerves frayed, and our eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep. People were now streaming down. Many of them had seen and heard the confrontation at our gate—no TV or cars meant that our voices carried easily to every apartment and, I suspected, most people were not getting much sleep in any case.

  And then, of course, every single one of us had heard the screams. In the days that followed, I saw and heard, and indeed did, many things that still trouble me, but those screams still haunt me.

  Mrs Khatri came up to me. ‘Where do you think that came from?’

  Pandey ventured the names of a couple of buildings in the direction of where the screams had come from, but in my gut I knew it was not an apartment building the gang had attacked. Once they had realized that people in neighbouring buildings had no doubt heard us and that they no longer had the element of surprise, they would have gone for a softer target. I remembered the huddled groups of foreign tourists outside the Meluha; I remembered the female voices screaming for help in a foreign accent.

  ‘Aadi, are you okay?’

  I barely heard Mrs Khatri’s question and I barely saw that Pandey was reaching out to me, trying to steady me. My eyes were clouding over with tears; tears of anger; of regret and impotent rage. I pushed Pandey’s hand aside, grabbed a bicycle and rode out. I could hear Nitish and others call out to me, ‘Come back. It may not be safe.’

  I didn’t care anymore. I had to see what had happened. I had seen the foreigners there, I had thought about how lost and helpless they looked. I had seen the gang at the police station and seen what they were capable of. Yet I had been so focused on my own sorry ass and getting food and supplies for our building that I had not even thought about warning them. We had passed them again when we had gone to Haiko, but they had been a blind spot. I had not even noticed them, not bothered to share our supplies or homes with them. I had left them there, helpless, alone in a foreign country.

  I got off the bike at the entrance and entered the hotel lobby. There were no signs of a struggle here; indeed there were no signs of any of the guards who would normally be on duty. It looked like they had left. I saw two bodies lying behind the reception counter; both young men in the hotel uniform. Poor sods had been brave enough and conscientious enough to stay back and try and protect their guests, and had paid for it with their lives.

  The lifts were not working and I was about to take the stairs up when I heard sobbing coming from the left, from the direction of the restaurant and the kitchen beyond it. I went inside and, when I saw the scene, I collapsed to my knees and then retched, the little tea I’d had for breakfast rising up in my throat. Two young women lay dead, their skirts pulled up around their waists, their throats slit. Two men were also lying dead in a corner, perhaps killed when they had tried to resist the attackers, and six more tourists—an elderly couple, two kids of no more than six or seven and a couple of middle-aged men—sat in a corner, shell-shocked, bloodied and in handcuffs. The old woman was crying and the two kids were still sobbing for their parents. The mutilated bodies lying in front of me.

  I had let this happen. If only I had bothered to warn them. If only I had thought of something beyond my own survival. I looked at the old man, who was the only one who seemed to still retain some semblance of composure, but when he spoke, his voice broke. ‘Everyone else left yesterday. Some to find friends and relatives, some to see if things were better elsewhere. We were the only foreigners and had nowhere to go, so we thought we’d be safe here till the lights came back on. Then some men came. We thought they were policemen but then…’

  He broke down. I looked at the men, both had severe bruises on their faces and had perhaps tried to resist before being subdued, probably after seeing the two other men killed.

  ‘All of you, come with me.’

  I put the two kids on the bicycle and pushed it along, while the others walked slowly and fearfully behind me. When we reached our society, a small crowd gathered and people looked on sceptically as our new guests walked in. I called Pandey aside and told him what had happened.

  ‘Those poor people deserve a decent burial at least. Will you help me?’

  He just nodded. I introduced our guests to the people gathered there, and the old woman broke down as she was hugged by Mrs Khatri.

  I spoke to the old man. ‘Sir, can you and your wife help care for the kids? They’ve been through a lot.’

  He nodded and held out his hand.

  ‘I’m Dr Guenther and this is my wife, Marie. Thank you for taking us in.’

  I didn’t tell him that I wasn’t owed any thanks. If anything, I had let them down. I next addressed the two men, who looked tired and terrified. I gave them my apartment key and said, ‘Clean up and get some sleep.’

  I was about to set out with Pandey for the grim task of burying the bodies when I heard Suri mutter something about guests when we were already stretched for food and resources. I spun towards him; he was about to say something else, but stopped on seeing the look in my eyes.

  ‘Mrs Khatri, we’ll talk more when I get back.’

  With that, Pandey and I began our ride back to the hotel to give the poor people there the respect and decency in burial that they had been deprived
of so brutally in the last moments of their lives.

  The old couple and the kids were fast asleep in one of the apartments where someone had graciously offered up a bedroom to them, but the two men were still there in the meeting room when I returned. Both were a bit overweight, and with olive complexions. One of them came over to me and extended his hand.

  ‘My name is Ismail and this is Akif. We’re businessmen from Turkey, here on a business trip. We tried to help but we couldn’t do much. At first we thought they were cops since they were wearing uniforms, and then we were outnumbered and they had weapons. Before we knew what was happening, they had us in cuffs. After that we couldn’t resist much.’

  I looked Ismail in the eye. Here was a man whose shame was turning to rage. Something I was happy to see, though for reasons I couldn’t yet fully put my finger on.

  Akif spoke up. ‘We are old businessmen today, but we both had military training when we were young. We’ll help you when you take revenge on the gang.’

  My head snapped up and I looked at him. What made him think I was going to do any such thing? Before I could say anything, Mrs Khatri called me over. Everyone had assembled in the meeting room and while food and drinks were being passed around, the mood was sombre, unlike the celebratory mood just an evening earlier. Mrs Khatri addressed everyone, her speech slow and halting.

  ‘Things have changed. I don’t know when the lights will come back, but till they do, we cannot assume our world is the same one we knew. Last night showed us that. Thanks to Aadi and the others who stood watch, we were saved from what happened at the Meluha.’

  Everyone turned towards me and I involuntarily shrank back, neither seeking nor wanting the attention. But what Mrs Khatri said next took me totally by surprise.

  ‘I am an old woman, good at managing everyday affairs and resolving small issues of repair and maintenance. I cannot deal with the threats that lie out there. I propose that Aadi be our new leader in these difficult times.’

  I stared open-mouthed at her. I wanted no title or any mantle of leadership. None of that mattered anymore. I had spent a lifetime chasing titles and encomiums, only to realize over the last couple of nights that the business card I’d coveted and the bonuses I’d craved counted for nothing if they couldn’t save a woman from being raped and murdered in front of her child. Even as people began to clap, I stepped forward.

  ‘Mrs Khatri, you should be the leader. I want no such thing. All I want is for us to be safe till this crisis lasts and for no family in the neighbourhood to have to go through what the poor folks at the Meluha did last night.’

  Suri spoke up.

  ‘Protecting our building is one thing, but going out to try and take responsibility for others is another. Why would we do that? Why can’t we just stay safe in here?’

  I exploded in anger, regretting the words almost as soon as they came out of my mouth.

  ‘Because, Suri, people like you are content to sleep in your homes and leave the protecting to others. We should have warned the people at the Meluha, especially the foreigners who had nowhere else to go. We should have given a damn.’

  He looked at me in silence, though his eyes were burning with contempt. Then he said, ‘We have families to take care of. We can’t be heroes or take the law into our own hands. This is not an anarchy.’

  I walked up towards him and he took a step back, almost tripping over a chair.

  ‘What happened last night was anarchy, and we have to stop it before it visits us.’

  Then I turned towards Mrs Khatri. ‘Ma’am, we cannot just sit here and wait for a gang to strike us. We need to take control over at least part of our neighbourhood again. We cannot just sleep in fear and hope they don’t come for us. For that we need to talk to our neighbours and get them to help.’

  It turned out to be much harder said than done.

  The guards at the building next door refused to let us in, and while there were only two of them and we could have forced our way in if we wanted, we decided to wait till they checked with their society committee. The other complex next to us was a large one, with two towers to our one, and almost double the number of families. Having that many more eyes to keep watch and hands and legs to help us would be a huge asset, if only we could convince them that we were better off joining forces instead of staying isolated. Mrs Khatri had led our delegation, with me, Pandey and Nitish for company. As we waited, I was reminded of how medieval chieftains had formed alliances and carved out territories. It had not taken too long, or too much for us to revert to the same behaviour. Finally, a sprightly middle-aged lady walked out, flanked by several of the residents. Mrs Khatri’s eyes lit up in relief.

  ‘Anu, thank god you’re in town. I thought you were visiting the kids in the US.’

  Her friend smiled. ‘Yes, I’m here, whether that is something to be thankful for or not is not yet clear. Things have been crazy, haven’t they?’

  While Anu Bhatia, the secretary at the adjoining society and a friend of Mrs Khatri’s, was warm towards us, the reception we were getting from the others was decidedly frosty. I couldn’t really blame them, because the events of the last couple of days had made everyone jittery.

  All of a sudden, Nitish spoke up. ‘You guys are without any electricity, aren’t you? All I saw were a few candles last night.’

  Anu looked down as she answered. ‘Our generator wasn’t too well maintained to begin with and now we can’t seem to get it to work. There was nobody here who really knew how to fix it anyway—we always thought the service company was one phone call away.’

  ‘I could help.’

  She looked at Nitish sceptically, so I chipped in.

  ‘He’s the one responsible for keeping our generator working. We have a working lift and, if we want, every apartment can have lights and a fan working.’

  I studied the expressions on the faces of the residents. A few of them looked meaningfully at Anu.

  ‘That’s why we are here,’ I went on. ‘To see how we can help each other. I don’t know when the lights will be back, but till they are, the world we are living in is very different from the one we were used to. Last night’s events at the Meluha should teach us that. Security is not something we can take for granted; we can’t assume the police will take care of things.’

  I saw several heads nodding as I spoke. Finally, an elderly man nudged his way through the group and addressed me. He wore a bright blue turban, his hair and moustache were grey and he walked with a slight limp, but his eyes were bright and alert. ‘What do you need from us?’

  ‘Sir, we share a common approach road, and last night the gang came in through an alley that is impossible for us to scan, so we didn’t see them coming till it was almost too late. We need to get better security along those roads.’

  He nodded as I continued.

  ‘We can’t watch all the approach roads—one of the alleys comes in right in front of your society so we don’t have a clear view of it, and the same goes for you when it comes to the alley in front of our society. To really be secure, we literally need to watch out for each other.’

  He nodded again and as Anu started to say something, he raised his hand to ask for more time to talk.

  ‘Young man, do you have any ideas on how we could do that?’

  ‘Yes, sir. We block both alleys.’

  ‘How will you do that?’

  I waved around us at the road outside.

  ‘There are more than enough cars lying dead on the road. All we need to do is push them into place and jam the alleys. It would still be possible for someone to just climb over them, but they’d make more noise and would only be able to come through maybe one or two at a time.’

  I was talking, almost oblivious to the eyes on me, all my past training coming back to me in a rush. I had made many presentations for deals worth millions of dollars, but here I had no slides, no data tables, yet the stakes were much higher, and indeed, the conviction I felt was more intense than I had ever fel
t in a meeting room in office.

  ‘Once we do that, sir, we just need to keep patrols going, and for that as well we would need to pool resources, since we’ll need guards along the perimeters of both buildings.’

  ‘Son, were you ever in the Army?’

  His question caught me off balance.

  ‘No, sir, but I was in the NCC for six years.’

  He nodded at Anu.

  ‘What he says makes a lot of sense.’

  Then he extended his hand to me.

  ‘I’m Major General Lamba, Indian Army. Retired of course, but I’ll help to whatever extent I can.’

  And with that, we had a deal. No treaties were signed, no conditions laid down, but the informal rules of engagement were clear. Food stocks were still not on the table, and indeed there were enough people on both sides who were sceptical about the whole thing, still hoping that the lights would come back on at any moment. What we had agreed on really required us to do nothing more than watch out for our own societies, albeit with more conscious coordination, and of course to pool together to block the alleys.

  I took Subin, Prashant and a handful of young boys from the other building and it took less than an hour to have the alleys jammed close. For good measure, I had motorcycles and scooters lifted and placed on top of the cars blocking the alley, to make access to the road even more difficult. That left just the main road through which anyone could have a clear access to our buildings, but that could be watched more easily than the dark, narrow alleys the gang had come in through the previous night.

  It was about six in the evening and, normally, people would have been coming back from work, planning an evening out with friends. All of that now existed in a world that seemed distant and forgotten after just two days. I was back in my apartment and had found the kids fast asleep with Marie. Dr Guenther had helped himself to a Scotch and was sipping it when I entered. He looked at me and raised his glass.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind. After that nightmare, I needed a stiff one.’

  ‘Not at all, Doctor. Just pour me one as well.’