Page 69 of Mrs. Pandey
They had ambushed us three nights ago. We had been careful, too careful, but it didn't matter. The mountains hide shadows that no training can predict. We walked into a trap laced with silence. A booby-trapped ridge, timed explosives. Rawat was gone in the blast. One moment he was scanning the horizon, his face a mask of concentration; the next, there was nothing but smoke and a piece of his scarf fluttering in the wind, a lonely flag of defeat.
Sharma was shot in the leg and dragged away somewhere. I could still hear his panicked grunt as he went down, the sound swallowed by the chaos. Qureshi tried to fight back, a brave but futile gesture. I can still remember his scream, it was high, broken, and half-calling his mother's name. He didn't die then. Death would have been a mercy, a final release from the horrors that were to come.
They kept me and Major Nadeem in the same cell. We were the officers, the prizes. "They'll fetch a better message," one of the voices had said in crisp in different language, not knowing I understood every word. "Send their heads across the Line. Let them know their ghosts bleed." I was not a man to them; I was a symbol, a casualty in their twisted game of sending messages.
The door screeched open and light burst in like an explosion. It was too white, too raw, an assault on my light-deprived eyes. I winced, blinked, and tried to move my head, the rusted chain protesting with a groan. A man stepped in. He had no uniform, no badge. He was wearing black combat gear and a scarf covering half his face. Only his amber eyes were visible, unblinking, cold, and assessing.
He didn't speak at first, just walked up, slow and methodical, like a predator circling its prey. I braced myself, my body tensing in anticipation of the inevitable.
The first punch landed on my ribs. I felt a pop, a sickening shift; something inside me gave way, a sharp, searing pain that made my vision blur. But I straightened my back, a defiant gesture, and stared at him. He could break my body, but he couldn't break my honor, my patriotism, or my dignity. He could have my flesh, but he would never have my soul.
"What's your unit?" he finally asked in a calm voice that was eerily out of place in this brutal environment.
I stayed quiet, not breaking eye contact. My silence was my shield, my last line of defense.
He backhanded me across the face with his metal-gloved fist. The next moment, I tasted blood again, a metallic tang that mixed with the sweat on my tongue.
"Your commanding officer's name?"
I stared at him with defiance, challenging him. He could torture me, he could beat me until I was a pulp, but he would not get what my brothers died for. Their sacrifice would not be in vain.
"Bharat Mata Ki Jai!" I said with a twisted smile, the words a loud refusal.
He didn't like that. The calm veneer shattered. This time, they used a rod. It found my back, my thighs, my arms, each blowing a fresh explosion of agony. They just beat me, letting all their frustration and hatred out on my body. Pain flared and thennumbed me, a blessed, dissociative state. Somewhere in the distance, I heard myself gasp, a ragged, raw sound, like it was someone else's voice.
Major Nadeem was hanging across from me, his head slumped, his body unmoving. But he wasn't gone. His chest still rose faintly, a testament to his incredible will to live. They had worked on him longer. Maybe because he was older, a more seasoned veteran, or because they wanted to break him first, hoping his fall would shatter my own resolve.
They made Sharma scream the next day. I could hear it through the thick walls. His voice didn't sound like his, not the same boy who used to hum old Raj Kapoor songs during night patrols. He was begging now, not for his life, but for them to stop hurting Qureshi. They were doing it to him to force the other to speak. It was a classic tactic, psychological pressure, a cruel ballet of pain and desperation. They made one friend watch the other break.
I had read about this in training manuals, the cold, clinical descriptions of torture tactics. But I never thought I'd be inside it, a participant in this gruesome play.
We were stripped, drenched in freezing water, and beaten again, the cold amplifying the pain, the blows tearing at our already bruised skin. Then we were left in the cold, shackled, and our eyes covered. There was no day or night in that cell, only cycles of pain, silence, and waiting. We didn't even know which side of the border we were on anymore. We were lost, adrift in a sea of torment.
I was lying on the floor, drenched in my own blood and sweat. A man appeared again and slapped a white paper on the floor, the sound a sharp, unwelcome intrusion.
"Write a letter from your blood to your commanding officer," he ordered and walked off, his boots crunching on the dusty floor.
I looked at the paper, a blank slate waiting for my surrender. I closed my eyes, and Ira's beautiful face flashed across my mind. Her smile, her eyes glaring at me when I ate too fast, her touch when she wanted more of me, the subtle curve of her lips that promised a future I might never have.
I didn't realize when I started writing on the blank paper with my bleeding finger. The words weren't for my commanding officer; they were for her. A last message from a dying man.
"I'd walk through hell itself, barefoot and bleeding, if it meant I could see your smile just once more, just long enough to remember what home felt like."
_______
I gasped when something struck my body, a sharp jolt of pain that brought me back to the present. I opened my eyes and looked at black shoes near my nose. I looked up to see him hovering over me, a dark silhouette against the dim light. The man leaned in close. His breath smelled of cardamom and decay, a strange and unsettling combination.
"How long will you stay like that? Tell us what we want. You're dying for nothing."
I spat a mouthful of blood at him. "I'm not dying," I whispered, my voice a raw croak. "I'm choosing."
That night, they broke a bone in my hand, leaving it twisted, fingers swollen and useless. I bit my tongue until it bled just tostop from screaming, the taste of my own blood a bitter comfort. There were things worse than death, and I was meeting all of them now.
But still, I thought of her. Thinking about her while enduring torture was easy; it was a distraction, a refuge. I had been loved by only one man, my father, who was long gone. My mother had no affection for her children, and my sisters were too young, but I loved them all. But Ira... I loved her differently. It was the kind of love that saves your life, gives you hope, and makes you feel like you're flying. It was a love that was a shield against the darkness.
She was Ira who once sang in the rain in Kedarnath, her voice a melody against the thunder. Who once fell asleep on my shoulder during a bus ride to Rishikesh, her head a sweet weight against my neck. The Ira who, just once, whispered that I made her feel safer than anyone in her life.
I held onto that. Not because it meant hope. But because it was the last pure thing I had, the last piece of my old life that they couldn't touch.
