Arundhati Roy - The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

She knew that the pillars were the instruments of the most favored form of torture in Kashmir. They were used as “rollers” on prisoners who were tied down while two men rolled the pillars over them, literally crushing their muscles. More often than not, “roller treatment” resulted in acute renal failure. The tub was for waterboarding, the pliers for extracting fingernails, the wires for applying electric shocks to men’s genitals, the chili powder was usually applied on rods that were inserted into prisoners’ anuses or mixed into water and poured down their throats. (Years later, another woman, Loveleen, Amrik Singh’s wife, would display an intimate knowledge of these methods in her application for asylum in the US. It was this very tool shed that was the site of her field research, except that she had visited it not as a victim, but as the spouse of the torturer-in-chief, who was being given a tour of her husband’s office.)

ACP Pinky returned with Major Amrik Singh. Tilo saw at once, from their body language and the intimate way in which they spoke to each other, that they were more than just colleagues. ACP Pinky picked up the sheet of paper Tilo had written on and read it aloud, slowly and with some difficulty. Clearly, reading was not her forte. Amrik Singh took the paper from her. Tilo saw his expression change.

“Who is he to you, this Dasgupta?”

“A friend.”

“A friend ? How many men do you fuck at the same time?” This was ACP Pinky.

Tilo said nothing.

“I asked you a question. How many men do you fuck at the same time?”

Tilo’s silence elicited a slew of insults along predictable lines (in which Tilo recognized the words “black,” “whore” and “jihadi”) and then the question was asked again. Tilo’s continued silence had nothing to do with courage or resilience. It had to do with a lack of choice. Her blood had shut down.

ACP Pinky noticed the smirk on Amrik Singh’s face — clearly in some way he admired the defiance that was on display. She read volumes into that expression and it incensed her. Amrik Singh left with the sheet of paper. At the door he turned and said:

“Find out what you can. No injury marks. This is a senior officer, this person whose name she’s written. Let me check it out. May be nonsense. But no marks until then.”

“No marks” was a problem for the ACP. She had no experience in that field, because she was not a trained torturer, she had learned her craft on the run, in the battlefield, and “no marks” was not a courtesy that was extended to Kashmiris. She did not believe that Amrik Singh’s instructions had anything to do with a senior officer. She recognized the look in his eye, and she knew what attracted him in women. Having to constrain herself offended her dignity and that didn’t help her temper. Her slaps and kicks (which came under the category of “questioning”) drew nothing from her detainee but expressionless, dead silence.

It took Amrik Singh more than an hour to locate Biplab Dasgupta and speak to him on the hotline to the Forest Guest House in Dachigam. The fact that he was part of the Governor’s weekend entourage was cause for serious alarm. There was no question that the woman knew him. And well. The Deputy Director India Bravo seemed to know exactly what G-A-R-S-O-N H-O-B-A-R-T meant. But the predator in Amrik Singh smelled hesitation, diffidence even. He knew he could be in more trouble, big trouble, but it wasn’t too late for it to be undone if he released the woman unhurt. There was space to maneuver. He hurried back to the interrogation center to stall any further damage. He was a little late, but not too late.

ACP Pinky had found a cheap, clichéd way around her problem. She called down the primordial punishment for the Woman-Who-Must-Be-Taught-a-Lesson. Her vindictiveness had very little to do with counter-terrorism or with Kashmir — except perhaps for the fact that the place was an incubator for every kind of insanity.

Mohammed Subhan Hajam, the camp barber, was just leaving as Amrik Singh rushed into the room.

Tilo was sitting on a wooden chair with her arms strapped down. Her long hair was on the floor, the scattered curls, no longer hers, mingled with the filth and cigarette butts. While he tonsured her, Subhan Hajam had managed to whisper, “Sorry, madam, very sorry.”

Amrik Singh and ACP Pinky had a lovers’ tiff that almost came to blows. Pinky was sulky but defiant.

“Show me the law against haircuts.”

Amrik Singh untied Tilo and helped her to her feet. He made a show of dusting the hair off her shoulders. He put a huge hand protectively on her scalp — a butcher’s blessing. It would take Tilo years to get over the obscenity of that touch. He sent for a balaclava for her to cover her head. While they waited for it, he said, “Sorry about this. It shouldn’t have happened. We have decided to release you. What’s done is done. You don’t talk. I don’t talk. If you talk, I talk. And if I talk, you and your officer friend will be in a lot of trouble. Collaborating with terrorists is not a small thing.”

The balaclava arrived along with a small pink tin of Pond’s Dreamflower talc. Amrik Singh powdered Tilo’s shaved scalp. The balaclava stank worse than a dead fish. But she allowed him to put it on her head. They walked out of the interrogation center, across the yard and up a fire escape to a small office. It was empty. Amrik Singh said it was the office of Ashfaq Mir of the Special Operations Group, Deputy Commandant of the camp. He was out on an operation, but would return shortly to hand her over to the person whom Biplab Dasgupta Sir was sending.

Tilo politely refused Amrik Singh’s offers of tea and even water. He left her in the room, clearly keen for this particular chapter to end. It was the last she saw of him, until she opened the morning papers more than sixteen years later, to the news that he had shot himself and his wife and three young sons in their home in a small town in the US. She found it hard to connect the newspaper photograph of the puffy, fat-faced, clean-shaven man with frightened eyes to the same one who had murdered Gul-kak and then solicitously, almost tenderly, powdered her scalp.

She waited in the empty office, staring at the whiteboard with a list of names against which it said (killed), (killed), (killed) and a poster on the wall which said:

It was two hours before Naga walked through the door, followed by the cheerful Ashfaq Mir who was accompanied by the scent of his cologne. It took another hour for Ashfaq Mir to complete his histrionics with the wounded Lashkar militant as his prop, for the omelettes and kebabs to be served and for the “handover” to be completed. All through the meeting and the dawn ride to Ahdoos through the empty streets while Naga held her hand, all she could think of was Gul-kak’s head lolling forward in a Surya Brand Basmati Rice bag (for some reason the handles, particularly the handles, of the bag seemed demonically disrespectful) and Musa lying at the bottom of a small boat covered by empty baskets, being rowed to eternity.

Naga had very considerately booked her a room next to his in Ahdoos. He asked her whether she wanted him to stay with her (“On a purely secular basis,” as he put it). When she said no, he hugged her and gave her two sleeping pills. (“Or would you prefer a joint? I have one rolled and ready.”) He called and asked housekeeping to bring her two buckets of hot water. Tilo was touched by this caring, kind-hearted side of him. She had never encountered it before. He left her an ironed shirt and a pair of his trousers in case she wanted to change. He suggested they take the afternoon flight to Delhi. She said she’d let him know. She knew she couldn’t leave without hearing from Musa. She just couldn’t. And she knew that a message would come. Somehow it would come. She lay on her bed unable to close her eyes, almost too scared to even blink, for fear of what apparition might appear before her. A part of herself that she didn’t recognize wanted to go back to the Shiraz and have a fair fight with ACP Pinky. It was like thinking of something clever to say long after the moment has passed. She realized that it was also cheap and mean. ACP Pinky was just a violent, unhappy woman. She wasn’t Otter, the killing machine. So why the misguided revenge fantasy?