The Acquaintance Read online

  The man nodded, “Let’s say I believe you. But what about the kilogram of cocaine that my team just found in your apartment. “That’s a lie”, yelled Jogi, kicking his chair back and standing up in an outrage. The man struck him across the face. The blow cracked his neck in half and Jogi cried out in pain. A new and more terrifying realisation hit him. “You’re not a policeman are you?”, he said. The man smiled. “You are a very perceptive man Mr. Jogi, pity you didn’t apply for it sooner. My name is Dharma Harpreet Shere.” The name sent a chill through Jogi’s body. Dharma Harpreet Where was the biggest drug runner in the city. He was considered so big that it was believed that he even had ties to the CIA. A gangster was setting him up for horning in on his territory. “I’ll give up the pharmaceutical branch of commerce on my site, I’ll sell books and clothes. I won’t be a bother to you. In fact I’ll even give you a cut of my profits, please just tell me how to fix this.” He switched to a heavily lilted form of colloquial hindi. The man’s lips moved and slurped like they were swishing betel leaves between his incisors. But his words were no less threatening.

  “You think you can eat my money and walk away without consequences. Today was just the beginning. I’ll have you thrown in Tihar jail, where you will rot and no one will come looking for you. You will die in there with your hands holding the bars like the chutiya you are”, he spat. Jogi sat there petrified. The man stood up and grabbed him by the neck, his thumbs pressing into his clavicle and esophagus. Jogi gasped for air, even the sweet smelling betel breath would be welcome. He was being choked as his nostrils flared and his mouth rasped in protest. Is this how he would die? Bira manhandled him across the circle inspector’s desk and the glass of ice water hit the floor shattering with a deafening crash. The noise made the narco officer come back inside.

  “Arre bhai what are you doing? You can’t just kill him. There is a procedure to these things”, said the narco officer wrestling with the gangster’s grip on his throat. Jogi clawed at his wrists drawing blood, but the man finally let go. Jogi gulped in a deep lungful of air and collapsed to the floor. A sharp pointed heel met his kidneys and a blinding pain shot through his torso. He almost blacked out from the pain when he found himself being dragged upright by his hair. His follicles ripped painfully as she was brought to face the narco officer. “We are taking you to a special place”, he said. And that’s the last Jogi heard before his world went black.

  “My name is…”, he began but was cut off by the narco officer. I already know what your name is Pablo Escobar or do you prefer Bill Gates.

  CHAPTER 46

  Jogi woke up in darkness. He was lying on the floor, he felt his arms and tried to sit up. The floor was dirt and cement. The walls were grey and black. There was no light in the room except for one coming from the opposite wall. Jogi turned towards the light and he felt all the fears he had ever experienced pierce his lips as he let out a shrill cry and bolted upright. He was staring at bars. Vertical lines of rusted metal affixed on a hinge. He was in a jail cell. He clutched the bars and screamed again. He tried to stick his head between the bars and wiggle out. He pulled at them with all his might but they didn’t budge. He screamed again. He did not know how long he pulled at the bars trying to free himself or how long he screamed to get someone’s attention.

  But soon his legs gave out and he collapsed on the floor. He curled up in a ball and wept. He could not remember how long he stayed on that floor. He was alone in his cell. He did not feel the days pass. He felt the sunlight on his face give way to darkness. He felt the light change two more times. But he still didn’t move. He was in shock. Inert, his body protested, his stomach cried in pain. He hadn’t eaten in over two days. No one had come to check on him, he hadn’t heard any sort of activity in the time he had been here. At long last he heard footsteps reverberate on the cold stone floor. He heard keys jangle and the bars swing open. “Uthne Ka time ho gaya Bill Gates.” (It’s time to wake up Mr. Bill Gates.) said a policeman in a dark green uniform. He grabbed Jogi roughly by the arm and pulled him up. He barely registered moving, as he was shoved and prodded onwards. He was stopped outside a door darkened by soot and oil smoke. Aromas of things being fried wafted into the air and Jogi felt his body awaken. The guard pushed him forward. He passed people in black and white stripes lumbar back and forth with pots and pans like zebras in the savannah. “You must be very hungry isn’t it?”, said the guard with a smirk that was lost on Jogi. He nodded.

  He was shuffled into the kitchen where he saw a transgendered man pouring batter into a large pan filled with boiling oil. The man scratched his armpits and dipped his fingers in the batter before dropping them in the frying pan, most of them wore hairnets and gloves but they continued to scratch their crotches, their armpits and blow their noses before they handle any of the food. There was a short man with a unibrow peeling onions. Jogi wretched as he watched the onion cutter fart and scratch his bottom before handling his onions again. The steam rising from the pan made him feel light-headed and nauseous. He retched again and feared he would vomit in the kitchen. He didn’t know how the rest of the work detail compared to the kitchen but if this was a kitchen then he could only imagine how cleaning the latrines would go. But as he stepped deeper into the kitchen, he realised that these men weren’t in a rush. They were merely going through the motions. Then it hit him, these men weren’t cooking for the prison populace, they were cooking for him. All this disgusting food was meant for him. He felt a shadow pass behind him. He looked behind him and saw that the guard had disappeared, in his place stood a monolith of gargantuan flesh. Jogi did not know this inmate. It had been three days since he had been here. He had banged on the walls, rattled the cage, screamed till his throat was hoarse and voiceless and cried till he was dehydrated. And yet no one came to help. No one knew he was here. He was all alone. He would most likely die here. And why? Because he had not kept his ambition in check.

  Jogi had cried himself to sleep every night. But he never got a full night’s rest. He woke up in the middle of the night sweating and happy, that it was just a nightmare to realise that it was all real. That he was in jail for a crime that had never been committed. He didn’t know where he was, or which prison had incarcerated him. He had not been arrested or charged with a crime. As he lay awake in the night, he had finally heard them. A growing mass of inmates and lost souls had whispered into the night. Each adding to the fevered whisper that grew into a hushed crescendo in the wind. A singular moniker. Trishul. Now staring at a green mehndi tattoo on the man’s knuckles of Shiva’s trident, he could guess that the giant before him was the infamous Trishul. He looked around the room, it was a closed space, airy and ventilated with a very good chimney system, but there wasn’t a single window or shaft of light in the place. It was a sealed tomb.

  Jogi looked at the man’s face, he had a lopsided mouth with his lips drooping to the left, like he had survived a stroke, his cheeks were ruddy and hardened by the sun, he had multiple scratch marks on his face that had formed little etchings of keloid scars on his visage that gave it a frightening quality. He truly looked like a monster. He heard feet shuffling behind him. The cooks had abandoned their posts. They stood behind the giant. He raised his hands and Jogi waited for the blow to land. Instead the man gestured for him to sit down. Jogi walked towards the only seat in the room, next to the frying pan and before the pile of onions. His eyes smarted with the pungent aroma but he felt no tears form. He seemed to have cried himself out. The men who had been cooking earlier stepped forward and placed a plate in front of him. It was loaded with pakoras and samosa he had seen earlier. “Eat”, said the man shoving the plate closer to Jogi. He could see pubic hair sticking out of the pakoras and a ripe stench of sweat. The unholy concoction of smells made him gag. He retched again and pushed the plate away. The man let out a string of mother and sister related expletives and grabbed Jogi by the scruff of his neck. He gestured for those behind him to hold him by the hands and knees. Jogi felt himself being rest
rained by no less than six pair of hands. His mouth was forced open and the pakoras shoved in. Trishul clamped Jogi’s mouth shut with his massive palms. He forced Jogi to chew but his body wouldn’t let him. He felt bile rising in his throat. His body convulsed as he threw up in his mouth. Warm acidic bile dribbled onto Trishul’s fingers and he finally let go. Jogi convulsed violently and vomited the disgusting entre onto the men holding him down. There were yells of disgust. Jogi watched as Trishul bellowed with rage as he shook his hands, trying to slough off the spit, the bile and the puke dribbling along his fingers. Served him right, and as thought passed through Jogi’s mind, his muscles betrayed him as his face broke into a smile.

  The freak of nature named Trishul saw red as the blood vessels in his eyes burst. A truly devilish sight of rage. Jogi scrambled on all fours trying to get away, but a heavy foot came down on his spine and immobilised him. A sense of helpless dread washed over him as he was raised off his feet. Trishul grabbed his hand and led him to the frying pan. Jogi realised what he was about to do, he kicked and he screamed, scratching with his free hand at the marks on Trishul’s face but that hardly deterred him. “Ann ka dikhaar karna paap hai’’ (To disrespect food is a sin. I will teach you some respect), he said before plunging his fingers into the hot oil. Jogi screamed as his skin broiled into a chestnut roast of grotesqueness. He fainted again.

  CHAPTER 47

  Jogi heard traces of a heated argument. “His hands…..the one thing on his entire body that was off limits. I’m sorry….the inmates got carried away, the other voice. Jogi drifted in and out of consciousness, the fluorescent lights above flickering. He felt great, like he was invincible and could conquer the world. Quite contrary to what the two voices were saying. You better hope he recovers use of those hands. He will, we will give him the best of care, the other voice. Why were they so stressed? They needed to relax and join him in the euphoric island in the heavens. He was floating on thin fluffy air. He felt weightless.

  The morphine drip continued to flow through his body for the rest of the night.

  The next morning, he woke up smothered in pain. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t move his hands or his legs. He felt like a weight was pushing down on his chest as boiling oil sizzled over his skin. He tried to scream but his tongue wouldn’t cooperate. He was in agony. There was a tube down his throat, a tube in his nostril and his nether, he couldn’t turn his head but he could see his hands hovering at a height, held up by strings, like an ugly marionette. He felt tears form in his right eye. His hands, his hands were gone. He could remember flashes of what happened. His hands burning in bubbling oil, his skin burning up and sloughing off into angry red welts. His hands curling into themselves. A painful numbness taking over his limbs as he fought for consciousness but lost. He tried to call out for help but all that came out was a muffled gasp. His left eye was swollen shut. He could hear the rhythmic beeping of all the machines and monitors he was hooked up to.

  He began panicking and as a result he felt the monitor’s steady beep turn into a cacophony of erratic beeps and hums. A woman came running in, dressed in white, she looked him over, checking his tubes and his vitals. She looked concerned. Jogi tried to speak to her. He needed to tell her about his hands. He needed her to save his hands. They were all he had. She paged somebody and a moment later a man in a white coat entered, behind him was another man, but he couldn’t see clearly, the tears were blurring his vision, but he didn’t have a white coat on so Jogi assumed that he wasn’t a doctor. Maybe he was a policeman or a guard. He had to tell the doctor of his false imprisonment, how he had been taken against his will and dumped in a jail somewhere. But try as he might, he couldn’t speak, struggle as he might, he couldn’t move. He felt helplessness smother him. He was not going back to that place again. He would rather die.

  That’s when he saw him. The man behind the doctor approached his bedside. He was dressed in a white cassock or a kurta, Jogi couldn’t be sure but the man looked regal, ethereal even. He felt his pain fade away as the man came closer. Jogi could think clearly again. “If you can hear me, we know that you were illegally imprisoned and this horrific injury was a result of that unlawful incarceration”, said the man. Relief flooded through Jogi and he felt himself cry and smile at the same time. Somebody knew. He wouldn’t be going back. “We will take care of you, bring you back to fighting shape if you are willing.” The man’s gaze intensified and bored into Jogi’s soul. “Are you ready to mend and to fight the people who did this to you Jogi?” Jogi couldn’t move his head but he nodded nonetheless, pain shooting through his neck.

  The next six months were spent at this hospital which wasn’t really a hospital, he was all alone on that floor with nurses and physical therapists all catering to his every whim. He was making remarkable progress, his skin was far from healing but he had regained feeling in his hands and some of his old dexterity. He played Chopin’s symphony 2 for his therapy nurse who was so impressed she let him have a cheat day. Debriding the skin on his hands was the most painful ordeal he had ever experienced. They were using fish scales to heal his skin. They offered some reprieve but more often than not his body felt like it was being skinned alive. At the end of six months however, his skin looked better and his hands felt better.

  At the end of his stay at the mystery hospital, the man in the cassock came to see him again. “You seem to be recovering remarkably well”, said the man beaming. Jogi didn’t have words to express his gratitude, so he just nodded. “Are you ready to do your part now? To take back what is rightfully yours?” Jogi didn’t know what the man was talking about. He pulled out a tablet and showed him a news item that took away the last shred of his will to live. Another e-commerce site had just launched its IPO using his algorithm. “The men who did this to you are extremely powerful, and unfortunately for you, you caught their attention. You might not remember them but they had tried to recruit you earlier but you refused because you had your e-commerce funding. But now that they have successfully destroyed that, they will come calling again.” Jogi just sat there and took it all in, his insides were numb. His life had turned to ashes before him. He had no purpose anymore, except to destroy those who had wronged him. “Who are they?”, he said looking at the man. “Military Intelligence. And you my son will be their downfall.”

  “They will be here in an hour. They will be blunt. They will want to recruit you and you will agree. We will keep in touch”, the man rose to leave. “What do I call you?”, said Jogi. “The man smiled, You can call me Maerifa acquaintance in arabic.”

  CHAPTER 48

  Ten years. Ten years they had worked together and she had had no reason to suspect him. Her heart squeezed in her chest. Her legs felt leaden. The betrayal was too much for her to handle. But none of that made her waver in her stance. She still had her gun aimed straight at his head. Jogi stared at her with pure hatred in his eyes. He was holding a detonator in his bare hand. She had never truly seen his hands naked before. They were blistered and sore, like his skin had melted over his bones, red and brown covered in a sheath of wrinkled plastic. It was a grotesque sight to see. And despite her better judgment, Nargis couldn’t help but wrinkle her nose at it. “Does my disfigurement bother you, Nargis’’, said Jogi acidly. Nargis felt shame radiate through her as she faced him again. “Stop”, she said again, her trembling voice echoed around the walls of the catacombs.

  Jogi did not break eye contact. “Get on your feet and keep your hands where I can see them”, she said. Jogi grimaced in pain as he clambered to his feet, water splashing in waves around him as he struggled to get upright. Nargis’ finger quivered on the trigger.

  “Behind me is a highly unstable and volatile mixture of RDX and Azidoazide azide, so I would advise against any unwanted fireworks in here. I would hate for you to become collateral damage in all of this.”

  Nargis felt a cold sweat drench her. “All I want is for those on top to pay for their crimes that’s all”, said Jogi. “By killing innocent pe
ople. How does that work?”, she said incredulously.

  She was not going to let him rationalize his actions. Jogi was a murderer. He had to be put down. “Step away from the device slowly”, she said firmly. Finally relaxing as her limbs stopped shaking and her heart began pumping normally. This is what she did for a living. She was the director of the CTU, she was here to prevent an act of terrorism, by any means necessary. “Nargis, please don’t do this. If you just walk away no one will be the wiser. Please don’t make me hurt you.”

  Nargis assessed the device, she couldn’t risk a firefight here. But they were deep underground in the annex, it was still a ways off from the main church building where the ceremony was taking place.

  She edged closer to the bomb but she still didn’t have a clear shot. She was well out of range. There was no way she could disarm him with a handgun from this distance and in the dark. All she could hope for was to try and talk him out of it. There was no way Jogi would stand down. She knew what this was. Well if this was indeed her last stand, she might as well get a few things off her chest. Nargis felt a catch in her throat. “I am so sorry”, she said. She could feel the tears coming. “Why are you sorry Nargis, you didn’t do anything.” He was looking at her, his entire body shivering with rage. In that moment, she could see the scared young boy who had been framed for drug possession and thrown in jail without trial. She could see the boy whose radiant and astronomically bright future had been snuffed out in the span of a single evening. There had been no arrest report, no FIR, nothing. But from what she had been able to piece together, Jogi had been framed by a drug runner for interfering with his business. But she knew that wasn’t the whole story, especially the speed with which she had been sent to rescue and recruit him. It had been an unlawful detention of a citizen and she knew that the CTU and RAW had something to do with it. Because from what she had gathered, a drug runner wouldn’t have gone to so much trouble to make an example out of a kid.”