Author's Note: I am posting the rest of Yesterday: Forgiveness in two parts--because the 2 final parts are almost 6000 words long, I cant post it together, apologies for any inconvenience!
One additional note--I have commented a few times on the pages between part 2 and Part 3, because of some amazing arguments and discussions about the darkness of RR, and why I wrote this part the way I did. If you are interested in seeing the thought process behind the story-arc, and reading some amazing, brilliant observations from some well read women, check that out.
Please comment and like --Part 3 (the final portion for Yesterday: Forgiveness) has been linked on the post just below. Enjoy!
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YESTERDAY (PART 2): The massacre happened without any warning, and it happened between the midnight blue and purple hours of dawn and sunrise. Fifteen BSD jawans dead. Their wives, their little children. Dead. The deaths happened before the sun rose to see for itself the evil actions of evil men. The remote BSD camp was in the Naagpar Border area, a place with little activity, where the BSD camp was more of an ordinary sentry outpost than on any active mission. The Thakur's men had so swiftly and silently managed the attack, they had burnt the tent encampment to the ground without alerting even one sentry. This was the Thakur's sly, intelligent retribution to the BSD baraat massacre---planned in an area that actually had nothing to do with the Chandigarth BSD camp. This had been a master-stroke. While the border camps all around Rajasthan had been on high alert since the Major's raid, these smaller, more remote areas of the BSD were staffed with junior officers and jawans, and were softer targets for the terrorists since they were not involved with the main investigation.
The news of the deaths reached Rudra and his men in the early afternoon, and he was there at Naagpur just in time to see the funeral pyres for his comrades reach for the eastern sky with billowing black clouds of despair. The entire camp had been razed to the ground, nothing but broken cloth tents, gashes on the scorched earth and a few scattered belongings remained of the place that had housed fifteen families just hours before.
Picking up a charred red toy car lying on the ground before him, Rudra took a position in the very back of the funeral site, away from the 22 fires burning with white light. No one spoke, no one had any words to express their grief. All the more terrible for its very silence, the entire camp seemed to be wrapped in a cloak of pent up rage, unexpressed and deadlier because of its very calm. Rudra watched as relatives of the dead started to arrive, brought here by BSD comrades who's own eyes were as red and inflamed as those of the mourners.
Rudra stood without a single tear, without any expression on his face. His hand crushed the little toy it held, mangling the already half-destroyed plastic into an unformed lump of red. His eyes, hidden behind aviators took in the funerals, but his silence and bearing had such a quality of leashed violence, even his brother officers gave the Major a wide berth.
At dusk, the funeral fires died out, and the relatives left with the detritus of their dead. Rudra finally moved from his position, and walked over to the entrance gate, the only remaining structure that had not been set on fire. The area had been cordoned off, because the First-Responders to the site had seen that there was a message left on it for Major Rudra Pratap Ranawat. Scrolled across the wooden door, written in the dark blood scooped from the flesh of the dead BSD sentry were the words "Badla--Parvati Ke Liye---Revenge For Parvati."
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BSD Medical's psychological profile on Corporal Jasheem Khan made for fascinating reading for anyone who had any interest in psychopathy. The Corporal , tall, handsome and built on the lines of a bear, was a loving family man with a young wife and three children. He was smiling, good humored and could even be a poster for Army recruiting. He had joined the army at a young age, trained in the field, and was an exemplary combat officer. He was also, without doubt, a full blown psychopath. His natural drive towards aggression and total lack of any fear and morals meant he was deadly in the battlefield.
But killing---even for one's country---the act that was the source of every soldier's psychological and emotional torment was as normal to Jasheem Khan as breathing. He did it because he enjoyed it. And he enjoyed pain and torment even more. So Corporal Jasheem Khan had spent hours training and becoming expert at the art and detail of "enhanced interrogation methods" (according to modern jargon) and "torture" (as known by people familiar with its true name). Every Army has such men, held in its reserves. Not one Army of any country likes using men like him. But the dirty secret was that Jasheem Khan existed, and he was now here, in Chandigath, at Rudra Pratap Ranawat's personal orders.
Being expert in assassination does not mean being amoral, evil or without conscience. Being a man who was born to serve, Rudra of all people, knew this well. His instinct was to protect, to defend and to honor. In this, he knew he was no different from the fellow comrades he served with. Brothers who knew that they were the first and final line of defense between evil and the innocents of their country. The Army, particularly is created out of men who will do that which others will not do, take onto themselves the pain and horror and torment of war so the people they serve and protect can be safe. Civilians sleep safely at night, knowing that the decisions of life and death have been taken on their behalf, by men who have devoted themselves to staying awake till dawn.
But like every organization that is created out of violence, and trained to do violence precisely to prevent violence, the Army attracts both patriots and perverts. Jasheem Khan was such a pervert. And he was the man Rudra Pratap Ranawat had transferred in to handle Parvati Vader's interrogation. That decision, made on the blood soaked shamshan field of dead soldiers, now stood before Rudra Pratap Rawat's desk. A six foot two inch bear of a man, with a mild face and a depraved imagination for torture and hurt. But the psych file on Rudra's table said that he was also a man who got results. He never lasted long at any one post, but that was because his fellow officers could not long tolerate having a man seeping with cruelty among them. He responded well to orders, and if he was kept under control, he got results.
His death toll was in the grim double digits, but the Major, who's own kill numbers were higher, did not stop to think about the difference between his and Jasheem Khan's death toll numbers. Rudra had fought traitors and enemies on the battle field, coming through wars with a reputation for fairness, for valor and with distinguished honors. Jasheem Khan had killed his captives. Still, with the red lump of twisted plastic on his desk to remind him of the depths of Parvati's involvement in the Thakur's game, Rudra right now, did not care. Tossing aside the file, Rudra gave orders, in his customary icy, totally detached tone, to the man he despised. The man he was giving three sessions, daily, to break, or kill, Parvati Vader.
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(Reposted from Yesterday: Prisoner Part 3)
The whip lashed through the air, hissing as it landed on pearly, tender skin. The rawhide edge scraped a weal through Paro's back, creating a ribbon of blood. The man who held the torture device lazily stretched his arm back, ready to land another blow onto the collapsed victim before him.
Paro didn't flinch, didn't move or speak a word. She no longer thought she could do anything other than just lie there, waiting for her torturer to get tired himself. But the unknown BSD officer who was holding that whip would not tire, and if he did, HE would send in another man. Two other officers had already come and gone with their questions, while this man with the whip did his work on her vulnerable body. More would come, more to act on HIS commands.
She knew this with a sick despair. For hours now, it seemed, the beatings and questions had gone on and on, hammering into her, cutting her mind as surely as this whip cut her back. Sometimes these questions would stop since she would slip into merciful darkness. But then, a mug of dirty water to the face, and it would start, again. Never-ending. As if she had been born in this hellhole, and would die, someday, right here. The arm raised again, and the whip sang through the air one more time.
The blow landed, as it always had, as it always would, until Bholenath finally decided to turn his attention to his devotee Paro and give her death. She didn't think it was possible, but she prayed, anyways. Perhaps Bholenath could not see her, here, in hell. Maybe HE had managed to take that from her too, maybe he had hidden her from Bholenath himself. If anyone could steal from her even God's mercy, she knew, it would be HIM.
She turned her face to the mirror on the wall above her. Through the mirror, she could feel the burn, HIS eyes that looked through her as if she was a butterfly, and he, a collector trying to pin her down to die. HE stood behind that mirror, watching her torture, savoring her pain, waiting for her to answer his questions, questions to which she had no response to give.
From her interrogation, she knew that 15 BSD officers had died in a dawn raid, the party led by people he suspected she was in contact with. Women had died, and children too, and she was the reason, HE had said. "Admit your part in this, tell us how they chose that Army camp, tell us who the terrorists are, how to get information on them from your murdering Thakur, and I will let you die." HE had said this to her, his voice queerly hoarse, his eyes burning with hatred and pain. The horror she felt as she was taken from Constable Ram Mohan's holding cell to this, the far more frightening "Interrogation Chamber" had made her numb.
But at this accusation, she had looked at the stony eyes of the Jallad, and had spat into HIS face. HE had smiled down at her, and left the room. Then this large man with the strangely shining eyes had come in, and Bholenath had not. She lifted her palms up in the air, in supplication or for mercy, she didn't know.
It didn't matter. None came. The whip sang.
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The bottle of amber colored whiskey shook in his hand as he poured a full three fingers worth into his glass. The extra liquid fell over Rudra's fingers, and he hissed in pain. His knuckles were bleeding, the fingers skinned and raw, and the alcohol burnt. Rudra realized, looking at the swollen, inflamed joints and gashes across his palm that he must have repeatedly punched the wall in the Observation room. As he had watched Parvati's session, this time he had also probably smashed something made out of glass, to account for the cuts and the blood on both his hands.
One more session had just ended. Two hours, five minutes. The previous session had been one hour, fifty minutes. The girl had lasted an additional fifteen minutes with Corporal Jasheem Khan this time around. Rudra's entire body trembled with some unnamed emotion as he downed his entire drink in one desperate swallow.
As he sat down in front of the security monitor, the image of her unmoving, unconscious body showed up before him as a small white splash lying against the deep grey cell floor. The monitor did not pick out the features on that lovely, tragic face. The swollen eyes, the expression of terror and despair in those fathomless dark pools of emotion. The monitor blurred the sharp jutting cheekbones, drawn tightly against parchment white skin. The hollowed cheeks that showed the hunger than had weakened the girl's already too slender body. The full lips, cracked from her protests of innocence, chewed bloody from holding in screams of pain---those lips did not show up on the screen either. It did not matter, that they didn't. All Rudra had to do, to see any of these features right down to the smallest detail, was to close his own eyes.
All day, for three days, Rudra sat here, in his office, watching the live feed of Parvati's interrogation at the hands of one of BSD's very own monsters. And all night for three nights it was he who was tortured and crucified---in this office--- as he dreamt endlessly, of Parvati's pain. There was no relief, waking, or asleep. Rudra reached for the bottle again. She had lasted an additional 15 minutes before passing out. The next session was going to start in one hour. Rudra did not think he would last one more second of this. He drank his third drink down in as many minutes, knowing that this would not give him oblivion. Because she was waiting, wasn't she? Waiting for him to dream again. Drunk, sober, exhausted from overwork, knocked out on pills---no matter how he tried to escape it--when he would dream---he would dream of her face, and then he would feel her torture.
His skin would burn with the marks of slaps and lashes. His scalp would crawl at the feel of someone's hands buried into his hair. His eyes would burn from mugfuls of dirty water. His lungs would expand, trying to gulp in air as his mouth and lips were clamped shut, to induce panic. The enhanced interrogation--- for which he had brought Jasheem, to this BSD HQ--Rudra would feel it all, when he slept. It was a kind of attack Rudra had absolutely no defense against, because he was attacking himself, and he did not know why it was happening or how to stop it.
He was feeling her torture.
Somehow, in some completely indefensible way Parvati was making him experience it-- day and night right alongside her, as she felt it. For her, the sessions stopped, at night, giving her a chance to rest. For him, it seemed--they never did. He looked at the clock. One more hour, until the next one.
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"Usko bulaiye...Ram Mohan ji...Aman Bhaiya ko bulaiye..." the stuttering voice cut through the cell door. Constable Ram Mohan, the guard sitting outside her cell, stirred uneasily. He knew, as did everyone in the BSD, possibly even everyone in the Indian Army, that Parvati Vader had been responsible indirectly for the 22 deaths that sent shock-waves through the entire armed forces community. The terrorist-sympathizer who had caused an act of domestic terrorism that India had not seen for years--that evil woman was inside Ram Mohan's jail cell. But the constable still could not believe that it was Parvati that had brought this about.
The "interrogation" of Prisoner Parvati---Ram Mohan was thankful he had nothing to do with it. For the first two days, he had even supported it. If she had answers to give, leads which the BSD could use for the capture of the monsters who had done this to his own comrades, he would have understood the need for it. But the torture was slowly killing Parvati, and not doing anything else
He knew another session with that creep Corporal Jasheem Khan was coming up, in an hour. Constable Ram Mohan truly did not think Prisoner Parvati would make it through this one. He had heard rumors of Jasheem Khan's latest toy, a whip that was embedded with razor sharp wire. Jasheem had taken particular pleasure whispering the details of what he had done to other prisoners while he had been posted at the BSD's Kashmir post. There, full grown men, hardened through years of conflict and tough living had begged this monster for mercy.
Over rotis in the canteen, Jasheem had told his disgusted comrades the fine details of what he could do, if Major Ranawat would just stop interrupting him when he was getting into his stride. The girl would not be difficult, but having the Major behind the Observation glass meant Jasheem Khan had to pull back his techniques, go soft when he could go hard. The Major's voice was in his ear, the orders delivered in an arctic voice that even Jasheem did not dare ignore. She had been given much more consideration that she could have had otherwise. Parvati holding out on giving up information, insisting she was innocent, crying for freedom and denying any terrorist links---all this was an insult to Jasheem's pride in his artistic craft. Having a time limit meant he could not really get INTO his work.
Ram Mohan, the bile rising in his throat, had abruptly left the canteen. Jasheem's words now came back to him. Tonight, Jasheem had admitted that he was planning on locking himself into the cell, and tossing away the Bluetooth earpiece through which he had had to hear Major Ranawat's orders for restraint, for control. The Major would be upset at first, but of course, results would make him happy. Parvati would break, one way or the other. Jasheem's voice had been a smooth layer of ice over crawling darkness and filth. His eyes shining , his lips wet with excitement, Jasheem had promised he would give them a show to remember. And, oblivious to the disgust surrounding him, Jasheem suggested that the BSD personnel make a party of it. If they gathered in the Observation Room, they could watch it all happen in one hour.
Even the memory of Jasheem's words gave Ram Mohan a sick sensation in his stomach. Parvati was probably guilty, and had been holding back information from the BSD. All the evidence pointed to this. Still, if she was willing to speak to Office Aman Kundra, perhaps this could all stop. If she confessed not to the Major, but to Aman, it would at least stop the "interrogation." Ram Mohan made, what was for him, the hardest decision of his life--He decided he would call Aman and not the Major, in case, at the last moment Parvati chose to stay silent in front of the Jallad. He would not let Parvati kill herself by staying silent. He dialed Officer Aman Kundra's cell phone. One hour left, before he would have to take Parvati back to Jasheem Khan's cell. Ram Mohan did not know if he would be bringing her back, this time, to his own.
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Edited by napstermonster - 11 years ago
Love Friendship Dating and Relationships
Bindi
