Part 2 can be accessed here : http://www.sajha.com/guild/read.cfm?guildid=418

Part 3: The Twist

Tinker Village, Darchula District, Far Western Nepal
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After four days of trekking through some of the most beautiful and rugged landscapes Deepak had ever seen, the group of six incognito intelligence offices, seven porters and four mules finally reached the outskirts of Tinker village just past sunset. Across the mountain ridge from Tinker was the mighty Tibetan plateau joined to Nepal via the Tinker pass. To those who inquired, they were government employees from Kathmandu working for Khadya Sansthan, the Food Corporation, and on a project to set up strategic food depots that would house and supply grain to the local population during the harsh winters.

The journey had been long and tiring. They would set up camp each day at dusk. The porters would then prepare dinner in large aluminium cooking pots set over the roaring blue flames of a kerosene stove. When the kerosene supply ran low, as it did on the third day, the porters gathered scraps of wood and brush from the surrounding forests to light the fire. Meals were served in white aluminium bowls. Water or butter tea came in colorful aluminium tea mugs with black rims. Dinner typically comprised of a stew-like combination of rice, millet, potatoes and pulses. On the first day, there was even a slice of dried-mutton sukuti to go with it. After dinner they would gaze at the magnificent night sky and stare in awe at the stars above them and the worlds that lay beyond those twinkling lights. Bhimsen thought the the stars were gods peering down grandiosely from the heavens on mankind. Sarla suggested they must be dead souls who had done good deeds in their lives and received a place in the sky as a reward.

Their conversations were the only source of entertainment between dinner time and bedtime and would cover everything under the stars. The team had bonded quite well during the four day trek. The initial thrill of the scenic landscape had worn out after a day or two and with little else to talk about, the soldiers slowly opened up about their personal lives. Deepak got an insight into a whole new world as the group shared stories about the places, people and experiences in their lives.

He learnt many things about the lives of others than he would never have known under the normal circumstances of his job. Between gazing into the starry nights and walking the rocky trails during the day, Deepak listened with rapt attention as his subordinates recounted some of the happy and not so happy moments in their lives. He learnt about their families and loved ones, the blissful moments of their childhood and adolescence and even the story of Bhimsen's failed first love which was told with great trepidation so as not to cast Bhimsen in the wrong light. Officers often got married as per the wishes of their parents to a girl their parents chose and it could be considered quite cheeky ,if not outright damaging, for lower ranking soldiers to talk about love and romance in front of the higher ranks.

Deepak also learnt about their hardships and financial difficulties. Things he took for granted in the comforts of Kathmandu like a nice bath, satiating meals, filtered water and electricity were not always available to many of the people he met. He had heard about such hardships from others and read about them in the papers and books in Kathmandu and had always felt sympathetically towards the people who faced them. However, coming from his own men and women and seeing it for himself first-hand in the hamlets along the route to Tinker was an unexpected and moving experience.

Emotions rarely overwhelmed Deepak. He was an intelligence officer trained to think dispassionately. In his business there was little room for feelings. Emotions blurred your mind, clouded your judgments and muddied your thoughts. A successful intelligence operative was one who could build a Chinese wall between his thoughts and feelings. If he felt so much as a tinge of emotion, he would nip it right in the bud; usually by changing the topic or passing a light hearted comment about the subject at hand. That's exactly what he did when he saw 10-year girls in tattered clothes lifting heavy pots of water that a grown and fit man like him might have struggled to get off the ground. Why weren't they playing with pots-and-pans toys with their tiny hands like the children he knew of their age back in Kathmandu? Much to his amusement they even managed to laugh at one another and smile at the visitors. Those sights stirred something deep within Deepak but he didn't want to dwell on it. Poverty was the problem of planners and politicians not that of a military intelligence office he told himself as he scraped and threw out the stillborn emotions forming inside him.

Yet the sights and sounds of the journey kept nagging him for days. On the second night, they could not setup up camp because of strong winds gusting down the mountain side. Instead they had sought lodging with a local family who owned a large two-room hut furnished with only bare necessities like sleeping mats and sheets in the rooms and a bare minimum of utensils in the kitchen. On the outside was a roofed area where the intelligence operatives setup their bedding. That was after Deepak declined the family's offer to sleep inside. The porters slept in tents erected in the front yard which stood besides a vegetable garden that boasted of a few potato and chilli plants and an animal shed at the edge of the garden.

Deepak marvelled at the how much hospitality came out of so much scarcity. When they paid for their stay, Deepak added a few extra hundred rupees to the total. He felt if he were to put a price tag on his stay, all the cash in his wallet would not cover the costs. For a person trained to suppress emotions, Deepak was confronted with a host of confusing feelings when he said goodbye to the family of five seven -- three boys, two girls and their parents. He felt immense gratitude towards his hosts for being so kind. He felt great pride in being a citizen of a country where people took so kindly to strangers. Where else in the world would people shower such genuine hospitality on guests? He also felt a sense of injustice that such nice people could be so poor. Or that poor people could be so nice.

The hell with it, he immediately dismissed his thoughts and shut the emotional trap door that had seen the light of day for the first time in a very long time. Service to King and country came first and he would not let anything get in the way. Least of all the misery of others. He was incapable of solving poverty in Nepal and he would only be wasting his time trying to. Besides, he had more pressing issues at hand to deal with.

However, there was one emotion an intelligence office was sometimes allowed to show and an army officer sometimes expected to show. That was anger. He found himself snapping at Sarla, Gopal, Tanka, Hem and Bhimsen along the journey after they had bid good bye to their hosts. Why did his subordinates have to be different from him? They reminded him of those hosts in many ways. They had the same carefree attitude, the ability to laugh at small things, and a general apathy towards the problems of the world. While he would think, and sometimes worry, about burning issues like Nepal's relations with its neighbors, the consequences of the communists coming to power in the next elections, the balance of power in South Asia after Pakistan's nuclear explosion, India's designs on Nepal etc, his team seemed unaffected by it all.

The frustration was starting to show in his speech and mannerism. He was short and almost nasty with the team for much of that day. Why was there such disparity and differences between good people? His conscience kept gnawing at him. If there was an answer to that question, he didn't know it. He was boiling with rage at those around him simply because they were who they were. He was secretly angry that those brought up in such humble circumstances could still smile and laugh and enjoy life, yet he, in spite of his semi-aristocratic lineage and immense family wealth, could not be as happy as they were. Ignorance is bliss and knowledge misery he reasoned. They don't know therefore they are happy. Ignoramuses.

Yet, somewhere deep within, he envied their happiness.

He had to do something about these new found emotions before they consumed him. Deliberately being mean to others was the easiest way to divert his attention from those unfathomable feelings. In fact, it was the only way he knew how to do so. Meanness scoops out very bit of kindness hidden in the nooks and crannies of one's heart. Its the best and most lasting cure for kindness.

He yelled at Bhimsen for being five minutes late in transmitting their daily coordinates and status to the command center. "The Army does not run on your clock, you lazy bum" he bellowed out at a visibly startled Bhimsen. He felt better. He did not care how Bhimsen felt.

Likewise Sarla was got the fat end of the stick for the static in the communication device which was really the fault of the device makers. Subedar Major was rebuked for not keeping his men walking in a straight line on a curvy trail that tore across a ravenous mountainside.

"They have lost all sense of discipline" he warned the Subedar Major."The Army cannot function when officers don't have a sense of strict discipline in them"


***

Command Post 193A, overlooking Tinker Pass
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A week after setting up camp near Tinker and establishing a sentry post on the Nepalese side of the border pass, the men were getting bored. His men were expecting some action in the form of enemy activity but besides a herd of mountain goats and a caravan of local women returning from a pilgrimage to Lake Mansarovar in Tibet, the men hadn't observed any activity in the pass -- friendly, suspicious or hostile. It was then that they heard the story, from the pilgrims, about Wangdu Gyatosang, the legendary Khamba, and the gold he was supposed to have hidden in the forests before he died. One of the pilgrims had told the story to Sarla during the brief questioning that the pilgrim party had been subjected to and she relayed a spiced-up version of it to the men that night over dinner. Deepak was aware it was of those urban legends that re-emerged every couple of years with a new twist, but he let his men believe it.

He could see how excited they got when they talked about it. At nearly 18,000 feet in terrain that was harsh and unwelcoming, they needed something to keep their spirits high. When you interact with same people day in and day out and everyone has shared every story about their lives that they can share publicly, even a myth like that can serve a catalyst for ideas and motivation.

Deepak decided to humor his men. He allowed them to use the metal detector they had bought for possible surveillance of buried arms and ammunition. He taught Bhimsen, who by now had become guilt-ridden Deepak's confidant, how to use the device. Bhimsen secretly believed the metal detector would be his ticket out of the penury of military service and onto wealth, fame and glory. He never missed an opportunity to take the metal detector on any surveillance mission he was assigned. Deepak was happy to see Bhimsen in high spirits and visibly happy even though the source of that happiness was an elusive myth.

***


It was a bright and sunny afternoon. The sky above was an unbroken clear blue. Deepak sat outside his post in his synthetic outdoor chair going trough some papers and working on the report that Colonel would be expecting upon their return. He was beginning to count the remaining days of the mission. He could hear the sounds of what he thought must be a local lark circling a nest full of chicks on a nearby tree. There was a beehive a few hundred meters from the outpost and the occasional bee would buzz past the camp usually indifferent to what was going on in there. Those bees are harmless unless they think you are trying to harm them he had told Subedar Tanka. Tanka greatly feared and detested those bees after one of them stung him in the forehead. Tanka wouldn't admit it but Subedar Major Gopal told Deepak that Tanka initially thought it was a fly and had tried to swat it with his vest.

"He's lucky it didn't sting him on his nipples" Deepak told a giggling Subedar Major Gopal.

Subedar Major Gopal was out that morning leading the other three men on a reconnaissance mission to the two villages down the mountainside. They were to inquire about the pilgrims they had encountered the other day. Second Lieutenant Sarla was dusting off and re-positioning the radio transmitters and receivers.

Deepak had never looked at Sarla lustfully. He was not attracted to women like her. His idea of appealing women were those who came well dressed, wore sweet smelling perfume, spoke in graceful manner and carried themselves about elegantly. The average man thinks of sex sixty times a day and for a brief second he thought about it too. He quickly dismissed such impure thoughts and decided to stroll around the camp area. A brisk walk is a better and safer way to channel one's libido.

A loud crackle on the radio interrupted his walk.

"Alpha six six nine, alpha six six nine" it was Bhismsen's voice on the other end. There was a clear tone of panic in that voice. Alpha six six nine was the distress signal, the equivalent of a "Mayday" in standard military voice procedure.

Deepak rushed towards the communications post as Sarla worked the equipment and sent a message back to the team.

"Alpha one to Bravo three, come in " she kept repeating into the handset but got no response from the other side.

The receiver was completely silent barring the occasional static that emanated from Sarla holding the handset too close to the antennae. For the next thirty minutes, Sarla kept sending out messages that came back only with silence or static.

"Are you sure your equipment is working properly?" he asked her for the third time

Deepak was worried. His men had been told to observe radio silence except in case of an emergency. What might have happened? They were not armed. He was the only officer on the team carrying and authorized to use a firearm on the mission.

Last radio contact with his men had been at 1139 hours NST he noted anxiously into this mission log.

***