03:02 (11 page)

And then they came running down the street. There were five of them, four carrying swords and one carrying a .303 rifle.

It was one thing to fight in the dojo or indeed handle a single man like I had at the hospital, quite another to face an armed gang. My hands were shaking as the gang closed in, passing our neighbours and closing in on our wall. That was when Ismail and Akif stood up and threw their bottles. Neither hit the men, but they crashed at the gang’s feet, causing them to break stride. They hesitated as more bottles flew at them, many more people in our society now launching their bottles. Megha ran towards the wall and hurled her own bottle, which landed just short of the gang. Our neighbours seemed to have got the same idea and were hurling their own bottles, and I could hear the General shout to me, ‘Aadi, make it count, boy. I just wasted some great whiskey. That bottle still had some good stuff in it.’

I stood up now and aimed at the man with the gun. He was not the leader but would have to be taken down first as he was the biggest threat to us. The leader saw me and started to shout something to his friends. The last time I had fired a pistol was at a shooting range with the NCC, but I remembered quite enough. I lined up the sight with the man’s lower torso and pressed the trigger three times, the gun bucking up with its small recoil ever so slightly. The first shot hit him in the thigh, the second grazed his mid-section and the third went clear over his head. The .22 was hardly a killing weapon at long range, but at ten meters, it did more than enough damage and the man was down, screaming in pain. One of his friends tried to grab the rifle but I fired again, hitting the ground near them.

‘Stop. All of you. Stop, or I’ll shoot.’

Their leader glared me, recognition flashing in his eyes.

‘I should have cut you up that day at the station!’

He ran towards his fallen comrade and grabbed the rifle and brought it up. I fired two more times, hitting him once in the leg and missing with the other shot before my gun clicked empty. He fell to the ground and shouted as his friends scattered and ran, dragging the man I’d first shot with them. The gang leader shouted obscenities at his fleeing friends, but clearly their loyalties did not extend to facing an opponent who could shoot back.

The wounded gang leader spat at me and screamed something about cutting my throat. He was clearly not yet in a mood to give up and I knew that if we let him escape, he would be back for revenge. I was out of bullets and there was only way to end this now. I ran out of the gate and towards the man as he crawled towards the rifle.

‘Stop!’

He was about to grab the rifle when I kicked it out of his reach.

‘Stop, please. It doesn’t have to end this way. Go away and don’t bother us again.’

He glared up at me through eyes that were glazed over from either alcohol or drugs. ‘Fuckers think you own this city because you have these fancy cars and houses. This city now belongs to us as long as the lights are out. We’ll rape all your women and kill you pigs just like at the hotel. You’ll be begging me—’

He never finished his sentence. I kicked out, catching him on the chin, breaking a couple of teeth as he fell back. He tried to get back up and I kicked him in the chest, bringing him down again. Couldn’t he see that I didn’t want another man’s blood on my hands today? As much as I despised him, as much as I wanted to make him suffer for what he had done, I was not a cold-blooded killer. Why didn’t he just walk away? Even as that thought crossed my mind, I knew it was never going to happen.

I felt a hand on my shoulder.

It was Pandey.

‘Sir, you don’t have to do this. I will finish it.’

Beside Pandey were Ismail and Akif. Ismail looked at me, and I saw a fierce expression in his eyes.

‘We have a score to settle with him as well. You don’t need to have this on your conscience.’

Both were carrying kitchen knives, as was Pandey. They grabbed the gang leader and pulled him into the darkness. I stood there, tears streaming down my face as I heard slashing sounds in the darkness. In a few seconds they were back, their knives streaked with blood. They all stood before me and Pandey saluted.

‘Sir, the enemy is accounted for. The others have escaped, but they seem to have left their weapons behind. I don’t think they will be a threat without their leader, but in case they come back, we now have two guns and people who are ready to fight.’

I walked back to the society on wobbly knees, paying no attention to the many people watching me as I went to the lift. At my apartment, I didn’t even register when Megha walked in behind me. I collapsed on the sofa. She sat down beside me and buried her head against my shoulder. I could tell she was shaking as well. Neither of us said a word, and before I knew it, I was fast asleep. Sleeping well for the first time since this had all begun.

I woke up disoriented, flailing my arms. I had been dreaming of a man lying dead at my feet, and of being arrested for murder. I felt a reassuring hand on my shoulder. It was Megha. I sat still for a little while, waiting for my breathing to return to normal, and then gratefully took the glass of water Megha offered.

‘What time is it?’

‘Ten in the morning.’

That made me sit up straight. I couldn’t believe I’d slept that long. What was happening in the society? What had happened to the pilot? Had the gang come back?

I stood up, and then felt my legs give way. I sat back down on the sofa where I had fallen asleep the previous night. Megha looked at me, concern in her eyes.

‘When was the last time you had a decent meal?’

To be honest, I couldn’t remember. Things had been moving so fast that food was the last thing on my mind. Megha went to the kitchen, rummaged through my stuff, and emerged in a few minutes with a plate piled up with nuts, fruits and a few slices of the packaged cake I had picked up from Haiko.

As I dug into it, I began to feel a bit better. Megha waited till I was finished and then she broke the news to me. ‘The pilot died this morning. When you get down there, Dr Guenther has an update for all of us. The pilot spoke to him at length before he passed away.’

I rushed down to see everyone gathered around the meeting room. Guenther was there, and I could see that he had probably had little or no sleep the night before. When he saw me, he smiled weakly and took a sip of tea before he began speaking.

‘His lungs were perforated and he passed, but before he did he told me things. He said that if this was an EMP blast like he suspected, then almost everything with electronics in it is going be fried. He linked up with some policemen but they were ambushed by men with automatic weapons. That’s when he got shot. So in addition to the nuclear blast, there may be terror cells in the city taking control over key areas.’

If the residents had felt any relief at surviving the night’s events, that dissipated as word spread of what the pilot had shared. We were under attack, by an unseen enemy, one which had rendered us helpless and defenceless. Terror was something we saw on TV or online, and even when it intruded close to home, it was something that happened to someone else. And, there was always the feeling that someone else would take care of it. The police would come, or the Army. Even those who had been around during the Mumbai attacks of 2008, painful as they were, knew that at some point the Army would end it. Here we were faced with a situation where we didn’t know if anyone would be around to help or protect us.

General Lamba was standing nearby. I turned to him and said, ‘Sir, what are the chances the Armed forces would be able to cope with this kind of an attack?’

He shook his head sadly. ‘I was in the Ordnance Corps, and that too years ago, so I may not know much about combat units today, but our strategic units were hardened against WMD strikes, as was a lot of our key strategic hardware. But the supply chain would be toast as it relied on trucks, which would have stopped working. Most planes would be out of action, unless they can get ancient propeller-driven planes up and running or replace chips and circuits, which will take time. Communications will be badly disrupted, and add to that the chaos that will follow once people realize the lights are not coming back for some time—as we’ve seen, quite likely the police will panic and melt away. Net result is that any forces that are able to regroup will have to both fight an enemy
and
maintain law and order.’

I could feel panic welling up inside me. This was far worse than I had thought. I turned to Nitish, hoping he could help. ‘Any chance we can get electronics repaired soon?’ I asked.

‘The article I read made it sound like solar flares would be a huge disruption even in the context of the US, and they are probably much better prepared than we are. I wouldn’t bet on the lights coming back anytime soon.’

People were hovering all around me, panic writ large on their faces. But the one face I was looking at was Megha’s. She had been so brave the previous night, and had more than held her own in a terrifying situation. Now, her eyes were wide with concern and she was holding on to a door as if for support. That was when I realized she was also looking at me, and the panic she showed reflected what she saw on my face.

The previous night many of us had stood up to the gang, and that was because we were feeding off each other’s courage and outrage. Today, unless someone did something, we would feed off each other’s panic. That was when I caught sight of Pandey. He just nodded, stood straight and saluted.

He did not need to say a word. That someone I was looking for was me. I took a deep breath and stood in the middle of the room.

‘Folks, I do not have any answers but I do know this. If we stick together, we can make it through this longer than we will if we panic. We saw that last night. God knows I’m as scared as you are, but I come from an Army family, and the one thing I was taught from childhood is that we don’t surrender. As long as we have a fighting chance, we keep trying. And that’s the best we can do—we can try, and try together, to make it through. Till three days ago, the most important thing in my life was getting a bloody promotion and doing well at a job—neither of which mean anything today. I’m sure the same holds for many of you. But if you think about it, many of you have run large companies, managed big departments in the government and solved huge issues of resources and supplies. I’m sure all of that experience can be useful now. Let’s just put our heads together and think through this.’

I had consciously not mentioned the possibility of terror cells in the city. Chances were that they would be focusing on the central areas and the seats of government and industry such as the port. Being a bit out of the way in the suburbs would keep us safe, for the time being.

As people began to move towards me with their ideas and suggestions, I knew we had turned a corner. I didn’t know how long that would last till the next surprise caught us and threw us into panic, but for the moment, it was as good as it could get.

As was the fact that Megha was beaming at me when I looked at her.

We spent more than three hours brainstorming and it was a chaotic affair, with people throwing any and all ideas into the ring. However, it was a damn sight better than each of us panicking alone in our homes.

The lives we had lived meant that each of us had bothered about little other than our jobs, our families and our immediate circle of friends. In just a few short days, we were all being taught an important lesson: that in the real world, not the one of PowerPoints and spreadsheets, we depended on each other and it would be hard for any of us to survive for long if we struck out on our own. Even sceptics like Suri had come around, and it looked like our whole building and the neighbouring one were in it together.

Kundu was holding forth on the problem of water supplies and how our overhead tanks would soon be empty, and that we needed to find some water sources soon. Everyone was a bit lost for solutions. We had become used to a world where we didn’t really have to solve basic problems, we just had to know whom to call. Now that we had to find answers to such questions ourselves, we were all out of our depth. Then someone spoke up, a lot of hesitation obvious in her voice.

‘There is a lot of water nearby.’

It was Rani, the woman who had come with us from Haiko. When Mrs Khatri encouraged her to say more, she blurted out, ‘You people are thinking too much. Powai Lake is just a little way away, and it has more water than we will need for a long, long time.’

Many people laughed at the simplicity of her solution. Kundu roared in laughter, holding his ample belly.

‘You are so right, Rani. My god, we were overcomplicating things. We just need to find a way of getting water from there.’

Encouraged by the positive response, Rani continued. ‘Yes, and then we boil it here and we have water for drinking. We did that all the time in my village. You people won’t have your fancy showers or hot water for bathing, but in the village we always used to get water in buckets from the well. We can just do that and we should be okay.’

We were reminded, certainly not for the last time, that a lot of the skills and education the supposedly urban upper classes like us took to be critical were far less important than the basic, grassroots survival skills of people like Rani. People who did not have the luxury of speed dial on their phone to solve all the issues they faced, who did not have a retinue of maids and servants to do their tasks. People who, in the world we lived in just a few days ago, would have been considered beneath us by many of those in the room. Our world was changing, in more ways than one.

We had broken for lunch and I was sitting in a corner, nibbling on some rice, my head spinning with all the problems we would need to deal with. Water supply, food, medicines and care for people who fell sick. And I hadn’t even got as far as what we would do with law and order, children’s education and so on. My head began to hurt as I tried to take it all in—it was one thing to deal with no power for a day or even a week, or even a month, but trying to recreate our lives in an environment where not just power, but all the systems and establishments we took for granted no longer existed, was something my mind could not process. Megha came and sat next to me. At least it was good to have someone to talk to, instead of brooding by myself.