He was a brave, intelligent and stable man except when it came to small spaces.
In those small spaces, he always felt that he was in danger. That someone was out to get him. He was always on high alert then watching everyone and everything. He could do anything then, in those small spaces. Like in his cramped interrogation cell.
Or in the consultation chamber of this criminal psychologist that he was asked to meet after he woke up in cold sweat thrice in the middle of the night.
“I am not really a mental patient. I just need some small help,” he said before she could start.
“Happy to help, Inspector Bhat.” She silently stared at him wanting to let him speak.
“I can’t sleep at night,” he told her.
“Why?” she asked.
“I carry a heavy burden inside me, a burden of bad memories from my work,” he replied.
“Tell me about it.” She moved deep into her chair pushing the back support behind.
Inspector Bhat let his legs stretch under the table between them. He locked his palms behind his head. His lips curled in a smile. He was pleased that she had asked for more details. He was glad that she was ready to listen. That was the point of this meeting, as far as he was concerned.
“Abdul.” He wiped his dry lips with his tongue. She tapped her chin with her finger and waited.
“We nabbed Abdul from a dilapidated building.”
“I see.”
“We had received a reliable tip that he was preparing for an attack.”
“Hmm….”
Inspector Bhat looked into blank space and took a pause. A surge of emotion enveloped him.
“I had made up my mind to get him that night. These brainwashed youths are the scum of society, you know. They need to be eliminated on the field or in the cell. Else they become bigger menaces and there’s no way we can get to them later,” he said, eyes red with infuriation.
She shook her leg. She was used to the wavering emotions of patients. She let him calm down.
“Why can’t you sleep?” she asked shifting in her seat discreetly. She crossed one leg on to the other.
“Abdul. When I got him to my cell, he started giving me stories,” Bhat continued.
“What kind of stories?”
“He said he didn’t like that he was in the bomb squad but had no option. He said he realised that he was brainwashed but had no way out. I was certain he was only making things up to escape prison. I was not going to let him go so easily. If I had the chance, I would have….you know. Anyway.”
He raised his clenched fists in the air and brought them down with a bang on the table. His blood boiled at the thought, and, perhaps, the memory of that stark night.
“And then?”
“I pushed on, using all my tactics. But somewhere I realised.. Abdul was.. maybe.. different….Well, not different, all of them are the same, .. but you know.. he was.. in a sense…”
Bhat paused and went back in time. Doubts lingered in his mind. She glared at him.
“In a sense?”
“Well, he said he wanted to get out of all this. But he realised there was no way. And, I have seen enough of these radicals.. Once you are in it, who can get out of this? Isn’t it?”
She nodded without saying anything. Bhat waited for a second and then carried on.
“Abdul was afraid… The outfit was too close-knit. If anyone realised that he wasn’t fully committed, they would kill him he said. But he seemed.. you know.. I got a sense that.. maybe he is faking it.. he is giving me a story.. or maybe, he is.. real.. on to.. some kind of reform..”
“Hmm.. I see. Interesting. And so?”
“Interesting, isn’t it?” Bhat suddenly looked at her and smiled. “Didn’t he evoke your interest? He did that to me too. I fell for it too. He was good at it, wasn’t he?”
She didn’t react. He went on with his narration.
“I relaxed and kept my revolver on the table, sat back on my chair, and moved closer to him to hear him out. He said, he was going to put an end to all this, finish all of them. He had found a way out.”
“A way out?”
“Yes, a way out. I knew it wasn’t easy. I dismissed him initially. But he insisted he had a plan.”
“A plan?”
“Yes. What was the plan I interrogated him. He confessed that he was planning an attack.”
“As in a terrorist attack?”
“Well.. the tip of the attack was true. My informers weren’t useless. It was an attack, but it was only half the truth.”
“And what was the other half?”
“Well, the other half was a surprise to me.. It was that…,” Inspector Bhat stuttered.
He picked up a glass of water and took a sip while she waited.
“The other half was that the attack… was going to be a targeted attack executed on a small private house… on next Friday afternoon.”
She scratched her forehead and shook her head.
“Why? You must be wondering, isn’t it?” Inspector Bhat asked.
He stared at the floor. He crunched his lips and twirled his mouth. He sensed her heart palpitating.
“Well… he told me that… the top honchos of his terrorist outfit were going to attend a meeting there.. He had decided.. umm.. He ..actually.. wanted.. umm.. to eliminate all of them…at once..”
Bhat stopped and looked up. He paused to see her reaction. He had a crooked smile on his face. She looked away and stood up from her chair and started walking across the room.
“Exactly this. This is what even I started doing then – when I heard this. Didn’t it unsettle you?”
Bhat looked at her, but she didn’t look back.
“What nonsense, I felt.. In my own small, cramped interrogation cell, I stood up from my chair and started walking in small steps across. I wasn’t sure if I should believe him or not. Was he telling me the truth or was he just playing games with my mind? I wasn’t sure.”
He paused for a second and then asked her, “What do you think?”
She didn’t reply. She stayed silent and looked at Bhat in the eyes.
She kept on glaring at him without saying a word. She didn’t want to miss any of his expressions. He still had his smile. She knew he was fabricating at least some of this. Or maybe he was going to.
“I started pacing around the small cell. I pushed him to tell me who these honchos were. Give me the names, we will get them, I promised him. I used all tactics to get me the location. Tell me the place and we will raid it, I committed. He didn’t reply. He smiled silently. The smart-ass was getting on my nerves. My fists were raring to go. I held them back with great effort.”
“I see.”
She saw Bhat’s red, calm eyes that belied the pathological hatred he had for Abdul and his kind.
“I turned my back to him and started thinking if he was taking me for a ride. And that’s when I remembered….” Bhat said with his palm to his forehead.
“What?” she asked.
“That I had left my revolver on the table. I turned back in a hurry, but he had already jumped at it.”
“At the revolver?”
“Yes, and he pointed it to me.. ‘Sir, please stay away. Let me go. I am an extremely dangerous man,’ he shouted. I raised my hands and moved towards him. ‘Sir, I will shoot you. I have killed many people before. I will finish my job and come back,’ he yelled. ‘Keep the revolver down. Don’t use it,’ I warned him. ‘I am a police officer, you will not be able to escape,’ I howled back.”
“Oh My God!”
“Absolutely.. In the heat, I kept negotiating with him to keep the revolver back. ‘Tell me the truth, give me the location, the names of your honchos, I will save you from prison,’ I gave him an offer.”
“And then?”
“I told him take it or leave it. He didn’t give me the details. I told him he had no choice. He was in this small interrogation cell of mine in which I was the king. I was the lion of this den.”
“Did he release it?”
“I don’t believe your story. You are all the same, I told him. And in the movement, he hit the wall of my cell, and a small chit fell from his pocket.”
“Did that unsettle him?”
“I was not sure what was in it, but that unnerved him. In that split second, I got on top of him. I am not going to leave you from here, I warned him. Leave the revolver. He realised he was cornered.”
“Hmm.. I see.”
“That’s when he cried aloud in desperation, ‘Sir I am a bad man. Allah forgive me.’ Before I knew it, he had shot himself and died, splattering blood in my interrogation cell.”
Bhat stopped speaking and waited to look at her.
She was aghast, silent, trying to digest what she had heard. Bhat exhaled a sigh of relief. He relaxed in his chair and put his hands on his thighs tapping them slowly. He wiped his forehead.
She drank a cup of water from her flask. After a few silent minutes, both of them faced each other.
“Was Abdul a bad man or a good man?” she asked, staring at Bhat in his eyes. She found them not meeting hers. Inspector Bhat turned his face away. “Good and bad are relative, Madam. We see good when we want to see it, and bad when we want to. Abdul didn’t let me sleep,” he replied.
“Was Abdul telling you the truth?”
Bhat lost his bearings for a moment. In that moment, she saw that his eyes had turned red again and his face flush with blood. She stared at him as if looking through him. He didn’t like it.
“Maybe he was. Maybe he was not. Maybe he was telling the truth, but partly. We see the truth that we want to see, isn’t it? We never see the entire truth. You should know better.”
She looked at him. There was a palpable sense of calm on his face now.
She smiled and he smiled back.
“Now will you be able to sleep?” she asked.
“Yes, now I think I will be able to sleep,” he replied with a sigh of relief.
“Why? Will Abdul not come in your….?”
Bhat cut her mid-sentence.
“He will.. But I will tell him you are a liar. I will tell him you are one of them. I will tell him not to trouble me again. It is a big burden off my shoulders.”
Bhat got off his chair.
“I am not a mental patient. I just needed a small help. You have helped by listening to my story.”
“I hope your story made you feel better,” she said. “Our mind starts believing the stories we tell it.”
He nodded. The consultation session got over. She shook his hand and smiled.
“Thank you for listening.. umm.. to my, well, … truth,” he said and left.
On his way out, Bhat felt he was all set. He felt lighter. The burden of guilt was still there, but it was his burden to carry. He looked at the chit that had fallen from Abdul’s pocket. It had the list of all the terrorists and their meeting location. He felt calm now after getting rid of Abdul, both in his cell and in his mind. It was time to get rid of the rest next Friday.
***
Mind Game is excerpted from the collection ‘Melange‘ – short stories about restless minds.