Chapter 2:Business as usual

Mohan Kumar Singh was a devout man. He was woken up at 4 am every morning by his wife, after which he would walk to the nearby temple to pray to Lord Ram. Afterwards he would head for the local metro station for his hour-long ride to the government office block in Chandigarh. Today, he settled down, managing to get hold of an empty seat, before the crowds surged in at other stops. The newsreader on the vidscreen in the coach droned on, something about increasing riots in Washington over shortages. It all seemed so far away, so disconnected from his cosy cocoon of life here. The work was minimal, the side income was phenomenal. How much did a junior party member and passport office employee have to do, anyway? For the most part, Mohan’s day comprised giving passports the once over with the digital scanner, and charging a little extra under the table to quicken the process, without verifying entries in the government database on passport holders.

That had been a tough one to arrange. His contact at SuryaTech, which had designed the database, had charged hell for the reverse engineering, which now enabled him to validate a passport without checking the database first. The ‘investment’ had paid off, for now the extra income came in handy. He had three daughters to marry off, after all. Besides, everyone he knew supplemented his or her income in this manner. They had to. No one asked their colleagues any questions; it was a commonly shared dirty secret.

The train had long since left Delhi and was racing across a vast, treeless wasteland. One of the many contaminated areas, where no one lived despite the fertile soil.

“I used to live somewhere here.”

“Huh?” Mohan was jolted out of his reverie. He turned to glance at the elderly, unkempt co-passenger who was addressing him. The man looked around eighty years old. It was surprising he had lived so long. Not many people lived past sixty these days.

“It was a small village, over here, before the war. When I returned, I was told I could not go near it, it was too dangerous because of the radioactivity.”

“Oh.” Mohan could think of nothing else to say.

Not seeming to notice, the old man went on. He was speaking slowly and clearly, his cracked voice carrying a faint trace of wonderment.

“I’ve seen it all. The Emergency, the terrorism in Punjab that killed my father in ’83. Lost a brother in the Indian Army sometime around the end of the last century…

But I’ve never seen anything like this, not in the last thirty five years.”

“Uh...I see….” Mohan did not have the foggiest notion about what the old man was rambling about. There was a party dedicated to rule, by divine will of Lord Ram, and he was a member to the cause, that was it. He neither knew nor cared about what had happened earlier.

“We used to stick together. We were…..one people….we lived peacefully…Everyone appears so scared and mistrustful these days. Somebody disappears without warning. Last week my neighbour’s son vanished without a trace. They must have come and taken him away. But he didn’t do anything…he was innocent…poor boy….used to go out with some other kids every evening that’s all.”

But Mohan was no longer listening. Mumbling something about his station being the next one, he rose and moved to the next compartment, the old man’s parting words echoing in his head, “ Is this what Lord Ram wanted??”

Suddenly, a rough push sent him reeling to the floor. A tall, bearded figure in a white dress stood in front of him, waving a gun.

“Nobody move! Get your money out!”

Saying this, the gun wielder moved forward into the compartment. Mohan tried to crawl behind the door, but was hauled up by the scruff of his neck. “Where do you think you’re…”

The robber never completed his sentence. His face changed into a mixture of surprise and agony, and then Mohan saw three shining points protruding through his neck. A moment later, he had crumpled down in a bloody heap, while the suddenly materialized Ramsevak behind him nonchalantly wiped his trident on the corpse’s shirt.

As casually as though it were routine, the Ramsevak punched a number on his infolink and murmured: “Took down another one in coach no. 5”.

Then he wheeled on the cowering passengers, and swaggered out after telling them there was no more danger.
It had happened so fast, Mohan had had no time to react. Now the reality was sinking in. The would-be robber lay on the floor, his head askew at an impossible angle, his eye sockets burning into eternity. The razor-sharp trident had probably severed his neck vertebrae, along with the jugular.

Mohan found himself in a cold sweat, shivering uncontrollably. He tried to tell himself that his life had been in great danger, that the bearded man would have shot him for money, that he should feel safe now. But it didn’t quite sound so convincing. He got off at his regular station, and walked mechanically towards his office. He couldn’t chase away the bearded corpse’s accusing glare. He did not even notice as a fellow colleague appeared and slapped him on the back.

“Hello Mohanji, how are you today? What’s the matter?” he proffered, noticing the tense expression on the older man’s face.

“Nothing, really. It’s… the kids; they are not concentrating on their studies.”

“Oh, yes.” The younger man agreed wholeheartedly, seeming to relish the subject.

“I have similar problems with my son. He’s got it into his head that he wants to study abroad. What’s wrong with our schools I wonder? He’s been hanging out with all sorts of people on the net, talks about patriotism and what not. These people just cannot appreciate our glorious Hindu Rashtra.” He prattled on, and Mohan was glad when they separated to go to their respective cubicles. There was already a queue beginning to form, and the people present were looking irritated at the delay. A bespectacled, dishevelled looking man stood before him. He wore a large shapeless robe that concealed his physical attributes, except the fact that he was of medium height.

“I need to renew my passport,” he said.

Mohan had been through this a million times, every day of his life, for the last twenty years. He picked up the tattered passport that was proffered to him, and waved the scanner over it.

After a longer than usual pause, the man’s personal details came up on the screen. He had been on the Sind front ten years ago, had lost his arm when his tank was destroyed by a rail gun attack.

According to rules, military veterans had to be cross-examined by senior officials before getting passport clearance.

He held out his prosthetic arm, so old that the artificial skin had come off in places, revealing the dull metal and hydraulics beneath. It whined rather loudly as he attempted to move the hand, and jerked violently sideways.

“Can’t use it much longer. Doctor said that it needs replacement; have to go to the European Union to get a better model.”

Mohan was his usual brusque self again. “I’m sorry, rules are rules. The uh…senior superintendent will see you when he gets back from….his tour on…Friday.”

It was almost like an understood signal.

The bespectacled man looked around, withdrew his prosthetic arm, to extend it again with a cash card. “This is all I have…please…”

Mohan nonchalantly took it, and swiped it on the separate card reader he kept for the purpose. He glanced at the amount on the screen. Two hundred and fifty thousand. For a moment, even he was surprised, at the shabby citizen’s ability to hustle up so much money. But then he shrugged, what did he care so long as no one found out? Like the old Hindi proverb- about concerning oneself with eating mangoes, not counting the trees they grew on…

Once the ‘transaction’ was completed, there was only his side of the bargain to be kept. For this, he invoked a small program that had already memorized the passport database access codes for his superior. In a matter of moments, the new passport was issued, and the required approval status was changed to ‘approved’. Behind the scenes, a sum of twenty five thousand rupees made its way untraceably to an anonymous bank account, after ten percent had been deducted as part of the arrangement he’d had with his contact.

Mohan felt a twinge of satisfaction as the disabled man shuffled away.

“Next, please.”