I walked down the stairs in a leisurely manner. One of the foremost reasons for that was the muddled state of my mind but there was another very important reason. I was angry, angry with myself, angry with Anita and angry with the army. I had already had one bad experience with the forces, that had left me fuming. I had not forgotten that. And here they were now for God knows what reason. Let them wait. I was not going to oblige them by running towards them quickly as if I was scared. I wanted them to cool down their heels for a while, So each step I took, was taken at a snail's pace. At the same time, i was wondering why they had come. Why had they asked for me? I had not done anything that day, nothing illegal. Well, i would soon come to know,
I reached the living room. It was empty.
"They are in the baithak" Khalid said. The main drawing room was called the baithak.We had two bhaithaks in the house, the small baithak and the big bhaitak. Visitors, who were not very close, were seated in the big one. Both the baithaks were facing each other across the corridor, the corridor which we stepped in to as soon as we entered the main building. I walked down the corridor and entered the door to my left, the entrance to the big drawing room.
There were two officers. One was the major whom i had already encountered once and the other was a captain, I had not seen him before. They were sitting on separate sofa seats,, the major looked confident and sure of himself, the captain a little diffident. Both of them were young and good looking. Did the army have some special recruiting process through which only handsome men got selected? It was just a passing thought as I took in the scene in front of me. Babuji was sitting on his favourite chair, looking a shade angry. Amma was sitting in the corner at the other side of the room. She looked worried which was only natural. Babu Ji gestured me towards a chair on his right,, which meant I was facing both the officers or they were facing me, whichever way you look at it.
" What is this all about, Babu Ji?"
" I have no idea, they have not told me anything, they will only talk to you and no one else"
I looked at the Major. We had met earlier so no need for any introductions except for the fact that I did not remember his name.
" Hello, Major," I said, trying to sound normal and confident." To what do I owe the courtesy of this visit?"
" Do you remember me, Mr,Rahul, we met a few days ago, not under very pleasant circumstances, I will have to say. My name is Sunil Tandon, Major Sunil Tandon, of course, and this gentleman here is Captain Arun Sharma", He pointed to the captain with his eyes., who looked at me with a faint smile on his face. The last time I had met the major, he had come to deliver a veiled threat to Babu Ji and me. I had been. rather rude to him at that time and justifiably so. Had he come with another threat, a more direct one this time?
"Let me come straight to the point. No need to waste time, beating around the bush. I presume, you know, a certain lady, named Miss Anita Sethi?" He was looking straight in to my eyes as he asked the question, watching me very closely. The question stunned me. How did he know about Anita? Who could have told him? None of us, I was sure of that, so who could it be? Suddenly my heart skipped a beat, had something happened to Anita? Had these people come to tell me of some kind of an accident she been in? But that was impossible. Anita was not in Srinagar so how could that have happened? All these thoughts passed through my mind in the flash of a second.
" Yes, I know her but why are you asking me about her?"
" Look, Mr. Rahul, She has disappeared" I was taken aback. I kept on looking at the major but I was unable to say a single word.
" You ever been to Chandigarh, Mr. Rahul? A beautiful city, isn't it? Well, Anita lives there with her parents, I am sure you must have met them, right?"
"Whether I have met her parents or not is totally irrelevant, Major, just tell me the reason you are asking me about her"I said, this time a little impatiently, and certainly not very politely.
" Anita has vanished in to thin air. It was supposed to be her wedding day today and this morning she seemed to have left her house and since then she has not been seen or heard from". These words were both a shock and a relief to me, a shock because Anita was obviously missing and a relief because she had kept her promise and really left her father's house which also meant she was not going to get married, not on that day, at least. But how were these two officers aware of all this and why had they come to me?
" Why are you telling me all this? I admit I know Anita, but what has her leaving her house got to do with me?" There was a slight trace of irritability in my voice.
" It has got everything to do with you"' this time the major sounded authoritative, more aggressive." You loved her, didn't you and wanted to marry her? Her parents were dead against her having anything to do with you. Her marriage was arranged, the date fixed and today happened to be that day. Obviously, you wouldn't like her to get married to someone else, would you Mr. Rahul"? He asked me the question with a very suspicious look on his face. Not waiting for my answer, he continued," So you made a plan, a plan to stop her from getting married and the only way to do that was to make her disappear from her house and that is what you did. Where is Anita, Rahul?" The courtesies were over, the polite tone had been taken over by a rude one and both the officers glared at me as if ready to pounce upon me in order to get an answer to the question.
So Anita had left her house. She had not come to Srinagar, Where had she gone? Where could she have gone? I started getting worried. But why was the army interested in all this. If it was a missing person's case, the police should have been handing it, not these officers.
" How do you expect me to know that? She is in Chandigarh, I am here so how can I know about her whereabouts? I am unable to understand why you are asking me?" I said, a little forcefully.
" We are asking you because her father has made a complaint against you. He says you asked her to come here"
" Made a complaint against me and that too to the army, how strange? He should have lodged an FIR against me in some Chandigarh police station. They would have done something about it. Why you, why the army? Locating missing people is not your job or have you started handling that department also?" I said, rather sarcastically. I was angry, I was worried, Anita had left her house, obviously to catch her flight but she had not been on the plane. Where could she have gone? What could have happened to her? So many questions were whirling around in my mind , causing havoc and here were these two army men asking me or rather accusing of having had a hand in her unexplained disappearance. How ludicrous.
" Rahul, her father has every reason to be suspicious of you. He heard her tell you on the phone that she would be coming to Srinagar" This was the captain speaking,' he had been silent all along but he seemed to have found his voice now.
" Right, She did tell me that she would come to Srinagar because she loved me and did not want to marry anyone else. Is that a crime? Her father knew she wanted to marry me, why did he try to marry her off to someone else. why? Was he not committing a crime, was he not hurting the feelings of his daughter beyond repair? If Anita decided to leave her patents, she did so because her parents forced her to do so. Why are you gentlemen blaming me, go and talk to her father. Ask him why he was cruel to his daughter? And why the heck are you interrogating me? Did i abduct Anita? Was I responsible for her leaving her home? Oh, by the way, why are you people interested in all this? What has all this got to do with the army, that too an army which is in Kashmir busy with torturing and harassing the Kashmiri people?" I had started losing my temper by now, so much so, that while speaking I almost got up from my chair.
" Rahul, you better calm down, don't be angry with us. If you behave like this, we know how to handle you?"
" Of course you know how to handle me, not an iota of doubt about it. You will handle me the way you handled Khalid the other day, almost beat up the poor chap to death, you will handle me the way you handled Babu Ji, threatening him with dire consequences if he did not stay away from his Muslim friends. I know all about your dirty tricks Major and I am not sacred of you people. You are armed bullies, that is what you are." My temper was beginning to rise with each word that i spoke.
"Bittu Ji, will you stop? They are doing their job, it is their duty, don't attribute unreasonable motives to them. Your love for Anita has blinded you to everything else. The fact is that Anita is missing, shouldn't you be worried about that rather than entering into an unnecessary argument with these gents in uniform?" Babu Ji sounded angry but I knew his real anger was directed at the two uniformed men, who were supposed to be our saviours. He had already suffered a lot at their hands. At the same time, he was concerned about me, he was aware of the fact that if I angered the army, they would make me disappear in seconds and no one would even get a whiff of it.
" Rahul, you are exceeding all limits, stop before it is too late" The major was angry now and he had every reason to be so.
"What do you mean, too late?Too late for me to save myself from your inhuman clutches?"
" Bitto Ji, enough, sit down and shut up,"
Babu Ji's booming voice resonated in the entire room.
" Major, just ignore him, he is not his normal self. Just tell me, what you want from us, in what way we can help you?" Babu Ji, said in a hurry, he wanted all this to get over, he did not want me to get into trouble, Amma had been silent all the time, she had not uttered a word, mainly because almost all the conversation was taking place in English, a language she did not understand at all, she could not speak or understand any other language except Kashmiri. but she was intelligent enough to understand that things were going wrong and I was in some kind of danger. I had totally forgotten about her presence in the room till she shouted in Kashmiri. " Bhagwan sinz dri, bittu jiyan kor na kihin, ye trevoon." ( I swear to God, Bittu Ji has not done anything, please let him go)
There were tears in her eyes. My anger took leave of me. I went up to her and hugged her tightly, whispering in her ears that all would be well, nothing would happen to me.
" Sir, we have not come here to harm your son. All we want to know where Anita is? the major was very polite now, speaking as he was to Babu Ji.
" Major Saab, how can he or any of us know where she is, it is true she had said she would come to Srinagar. My son went to the airport to receive her but she was not on the plane which means she must be in Chandigath. So why not look for her there? Moreover, my son was right in asking you about your interest in the case, such cases do not come under your domain"
" You are right Sir. Mr. Sethi is a very close friend of a very senior officer of ours. he talked to him and that is why we are here."
" So officially you are not involved in this?"
" How can we be , sir but you know this is a disturbed area and we can take anything in our hands."
" Now, that you know Anita is not here, would you please inform her father that he is barking up the wrong tree?"
" We would love to do that but she has come to Srinagar and is very much here"
" What nonsense, my son was at the airport, she was not there at all. Even her name was not on the passenger list. Why are you lying to us?" I could detect a slight trace of anger in Babu Ji's voice. I also felt my temper going up all over again. These army men were trying to get even with me. I knew Anita had not come and yet these so called army gentlemen were telling me that she was very much in Srinagar.
" I don't know which passenger list you saw or how you saw it, but let me tell you she boarded the plane at Chandigarh and the same plane landed here. Her name is very much on the list. Now, will you be honest with us and tell us where you have kept her?"
Babu Ji and I looked at each other with utter total incomprehension in our eyes.
I reached the living room. It was empty.
"They are in the baithak" Khalid said. The main drawing room was called the baithak.We had two bhaithaks in the house, the small baithak and the big bhaitak. Visitors, who were not very close, were seated in the big one. Both the baithaks were facing each other across the corridor, the corridor which we stepped in to as soon as we entered the main building. I walked down the corridor and entered the door to my left, the entrance to the big drawing room.
There were two officers. One was the major whom i had already encountered once and the other was a captain, I had not seen him before. They were sitting on separate sofa seats,, the major looked confident and sure of himself, the captain a little diffident. Both of them were young and good looking. Did the army have some special recruiting process through which only handsome men got selected? It was just a passing thought as I took in the scene in front of me. Babuji was sitting on his favourite chair, looking a shade angry. Amma was sitting in the corner at the other side of the room. She looked worried which was only natural. Babu Ji gestured me towards a chair on his right,, which meant I was facing both the officers or they were facing me, whichever way you look at it.
" What is this all about, Babu Ji?"
" I have no idea, they have not told me anything, they will only talk to you and no one else"
I looked at the Major. We had met earlier so no need for any introductions except for the fact that I did not remember his name.
" Hello, Major," I said, trying to sound normal and confident." To what do I owe the courtesy of this visit?"
" Do you remember me, Mr,Rahul, we met a few days ago, not under very pleasant circumstances, I will have to say. My name is Sunil Tandon, Major Sunil Tandon, of course, and this gentleman here is Captain Arun Sharma", He pointed to the captain with his eyes., who looked at me with a faint smile on his face. The last time I had met the major, he had come to deliver a veiled threat to Babu Ji and me. I had been. rather rude to him at that time and justifiably so. Had he come with another threat, a more direct one this time?
"Let me come straight to the point. No need to waste time, beating around the bush. I presume, you know, a certain lady, named Miss Anita Sethi?" He was looking straight in to my eyes as he asked the question, watching me very closely. The question stunned me. How did he know about Anita? Who could have told him? None of us, I was sure of that, so who could it be? Suddenly my heart skipped a beat, had something happened to Anita? Had these people come to tell me of some kind of an accident she been in? But that was impossible. Anita was not in Srinagar so how could that have happened? All these thoughts passed through my mind in the flash of a second.
" Yes, I know her but why are you asking me about her?"
" Look, Mr. Rahul, She has disappeared" I was taken aback. I kept on looking at the major but I was unable to say a single word.
" You ever been to Chandigarh, Mr. Rahul? A beautiful city, isn't it? Well, Anita lives there with her parents, I am sure you must have met them, right?"
"Whether I have met her parents or not is totally irrelevant, Major, just tell me the reason you are asking me about her"I said, this time a little impatiently, and certainly not very politely.
" Anita has vanished in to thin air. It was supposed to be her wedding day today and this morning she seemed to have left her house and since then she has not been seen or heard from". These words were both a shock and a relief to me, a shock because Anita was obviously missing and a relief because she had kept her promise and really left her father's house which also meant she was not going to get married, not on that day, at least. But how were these two officers aware of all this and why had they come to me?
" Why are you telling me all this? I admit I know Anita, but what has her leaving her house got to do with me?" There was a slight trace of irritability in my voice.
" It has got everything to do with you"' this time the major sounded authoritative, more aggressive." You loved her, didn't you and wanted to marry her? Her parents were dead against her having anything to do with you. Her marriage was arranged, the date fixed and today happened to be that day. Obviously, you wouldn't like her to get married to someone else, would you Mr. Rahul"? He asked me the question with a very suspicious look on his face. Not waiting for my answer, he continued," So you made a plan, a plan to stop her from getting married and the only way to do that was to make her disappear from her house and that is what you did. Where is Anita, Rahul?" The courtesies were over, the polite tone had been taken over by a rude one and both the officers glared at me as if ready to pounce upon me in order to get an answer to the question.
So Anita had left her house. She had not come to Srinagar, Where had she gone? Where could she have gone? I started getting worried. But why was the army interested in all this. If it was a missing person's case, the police should have been handing it, not these officers.
" How do you expect me to know that? She is in Chandigarh, I am here so how can I know about her whereabouts? I am unable to understand why you are asking me?" I said, a little forcefully.
" We are asking you because her father has made a complaint against you. He says you asked her to come here"
" Made a complaint against me and that too to the army, how strange? He should have lodged an FIR against me in some Chandigarh police station. They would have done something about it. Why you, why the army? Locating missing people is not your job or have you started handling that department also?" I said, rather sarcastically. I was angry, I was worried, Anita had left her house, obviously to catch her flight but she had not been on the plane. Where could she have gone? What could have happened to her? So many questions were whirling around in my mind , causing havoc and here were these two army men asking me or rather accusing of having had a hand in her unexplained disappearance. How ludicrous.
" Rahul, her father has every reason to be suspicious of you. He heard her tell you on the phone that she would be coming to Srinagar" This was the captain speaking,' he had been silent all along but he seemed to have found his voice now.
" Right, She did tell me that she would come to Srinagar because she loved me and did not want to marry anyone else. Is that a crime? Her father knew she wanted to marry me, why did he try to marry her off to someone else. why? Was he not committing a crime, was he not hurting the feelings of his daughter beyond repair? If Anita decided to leave her patents, she did so because her parents forced her to do so. Why are you gentlemen blaming me, go and talk to her father. Ask him why he was cruel to his daughter? And why the heck are you interrogating me? Did i abduct Anita? Was I responsible for her leaving her home? Oh, by the way, why are you people interested in all this? What has all this got to do with the army, that too an army which is in Kashmir busy with torturing and harassing the Kashmiri people?" I had started losing my temper by now, so much so, that while speaking I almost got up from my chair.
" Rahul, you better calm down, don't be angry with us. If you behave like this, we know how to handle you?"
" Of course you know how to handle me, not an iota of doubt about it. You will handle me the way you handled Khalid the other day, almost beat up the poor chap to death, you will handle me the way you handled Babu Ji, threatening him with dire consequences if he did not stay away from his Muslim friends. I know all about your dirty tricks Major and I am not sacred of you people. You are armed bullies, that is what you are." My temper was beginning to rise with each word that i spoke.
"Bittu Ji, will you stop? They are doing their job, it is their duty, don't attribute unreasonable motives to them. Your love for Anita has blinded you to everything else. The fact is that Anita is missing, shouldn't you be worried about that rather than entering into an unnecessary argument with these gents in uniform?" Babu Ji sounded angry but I knew his real anger was directed at the two uniformed men, who were supposed to be our saviours. He had already suffered a lot at their hands. At the same time, he was concerned about me, he was aware of the fact that if I angered the army, they would make me disappear in seconds and no one would even get a whiff of it.
" Rahul, you are exceeding all limits, stop before it is too late" The major was angry now and he had every reason to be so.
"What do you mean, too late?Too late for me to save myself from your inhuman clutches?"
" Bitto Ji, enough, sit down and shut up,"
Babu Ji's booming voice resonated in the entire room.
" Major, just ignore him, he is not his normal self. Just tell me, what you want from us, in what way we can help you?" Babu Ji, said in a hurry, he wanted all this to get over, he did not want me to get into trouble, Amma had been silent all the time, she had not uttered a word, mainly because almost all the conversation was taking place in English, a language she did not understand at all, she could not speak or understand any other language except Kashmiri. but she was intelligent enough to understand that things were going wrong and I was in some kind of danger. I had totally forgotten about her presence in the room till she shouted in Kashmiri. " Bhagwan sinz dri, bittu jiyan kor na kihin, ye trevoon." ( I swear to God, Bittu Ji has not done anything, please let him go)
There were tears in her eyes. My anger took leave of me. I went up to her and hugged her tightly, whispering in her ears that all would be well, nothing would happen to me.
" Sir, we have not come here to harm your son. All we want to know where Anita is? the major was very polite now, speaking as he was to Babu Ji.
" Major Saab, how can he or any of us know where she is, it is true she had said she would come to Srinagar. My son went to the airport to receive her but she was not on the plane which means she must be in Chandigath. So why not look for her there? Moreover, my son was right in asking you about your interest in the case, such cases do not come under your domain"
" You are right Sir. Mr. Sethi is a very close friend of a very senior officer of ours. he talked to him and that is why we are here."
" So officially you are not involved in this?"
" How can we be , sir but you know this is a disturbed area and we can take anything in our hands."
" Now, that you know Anita is not here, would you please inform her father that he is barking up the wrong tree?"
" We would love to do that but she has come to Srinagar and is very much here"
" What nonsense, my son was at the airport, she was not there at all. Even her name was not on the passenger list. Why are you lying to us?" I could detect a slight trace of anger in Babu Ji's voice. I also felt my temper going up all over again. These army men were trying to get even with me. I knew Anita had not come and yet these so called army gentlemen were telling me that she was very much in Srinagar.
" I don't know which passenger list you saw or how you saw it, but let me tell you she boarded the plane at Chandigarh and the same plane landed here. Her name is very much on the list. Now, will you be honest with us and tell us where you have kept her?"
Babu Ji and I looked at each other with utter total incomprehension in our eyes.
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