Raunakpur Times

Suspense Short Story – Raunakpur Times

People were easy to fool, I thought to myself. I was on my first assignment to Raunakpur. I had joined the Reckett Publications only a couple of months back and got my first independent assignment on the basis of exposing a drug mafia in Mumbai and bring to light their modus operandi of getting drugs into the country through the Extra tyres in a vehicle which would then be used in other nefarious and illegal activities. This had been going on for sometime till our editor Shanmughan called us for a meeting one day.

‘Ras*als’ he thundered. ‘These guys should be shot dead’ he said in his typical Tamil accent.

I was from Kochi, a place not too far but I kept wondering how he could have such a thick accent. He should be in a better shape when he was the editor of such a famous publication. We however knew that he was very good at his work.

‘Syed and you will be going for the next assignment’, he had told us.

While the others in the meeting he had called scorned at this and were unhappy that a person as fresh as me was getting this great opportunity, I liked the opportunity of working on something as substantial.

Syed was someone who I had liked as soon as I had come on board. He had good work ethics and gad a good dressing sense. We laid loose the network which the dreaded drug dealers had created brick by brick. Soon, the entire dealer network was in the net of the police. Their modus operandi was shocking to the cops as well. We had done their jobs. As ours was a big publication with crores of our reading material disappearing regularly, they could not ignore it. However as an undercover act and due to the threats, we had a nice and discreet ceremony to congratulate us. It was nice with good champagne and good food. Wonderful kebabs were also there made by Syed’s mother who was a wonderful cook.

Screetch!!!!! ‘What the hell’ I thought to myself. The driver of the bus, who looked like he had served a sentence himself in jail screamed out.

‘Last Stop is here. Get down all of you’.

The smile on my face faded as past was behind me and the present had a lot more dangers that lurked in this shanty and murky town.

‘No power since the last two days Sahib’ said Raliyaram in the local dialect. I was thinking to myself. ‘I just hope my life also does not end here.’ The Baba’s pictures adorned the streets that were plastered with mud.

Baba Prachandeswar had his small ashram deep in the forest in Raunakpur. I had heard about how he amassed riches by exploiting the poor. His cures were highly dubious in nature. ‘I had to get a makeover before I met the baba and also had to come up with a nice disease’ I thought to myself.

It was told that the Baba could tell you everything about the past and about your health. He looked more like a cheat from some case. I took his picture using my phone without anyone noticing me. Shady looking people stood near makeshift tea stalls sipping on the tea that even shadier stall owners had made. I was thinking to myself…Good heavens, except for Raliya everyone else looked like a crook here. It would be tough to break this Baba’s grasp. I for sure knew that the Baba was just another one of those figments of the imagination of poor people who fell for his gimmicks. The baba knew this and decided to have a field run. Even Raliya didnt know that I had come for an expose.

We finally reached Raliya’s house, which was the only house in the village that had power, thanks to the extreme heat in the village and the solar power that Raliya had. I had to be discreet I thought to myself.

‘Raliya, you have some other house here I heard as stretched out on the char pai’ I told him.

‘Yes sahib, I do…it is around 10 minutes of walk from here’ he replied.

‘I want to stay there, as I am writing a novel and I require some peace of mind’.

There was the reason conveyed by Syed to Raliya. This was Syed’s maternal uncle’s village who had since left the village for Lucknow and a life in the city.

‘Ok Sahib, but there is no power there. You can take my Lantern there’.

I had my work cut out as I had wanted to charge my laptop. I told him that I had a makeshift Solar device that could help me get power.

‘Thank god, Syed had warned me about the lack of power here’.

I met Raliya’s son Munna who was around 12 years old, had some roti and chillies and onions and then Munna dropped me to my new residence.

I decided to my begin my under cover operations the next day. I kept a few cameras hidden near the camps of the baba after night tracks to the location. On one occasion I was nearly caught, though the dense forest cover helped me escape. I used to step out after smearing mud and in a military outfit to avoid detection. I was convinced knew that I was being observed from the day that I stepped in the village. Somehow, I had managed to escape from the clutches of these people. I went up and set up cheap Chinese Solar unit to help me power a couple of lines in the house. This could help me charge the laptop and phone and camera.

The next few days had a strange schedule. Sleep during the day and work the nights. Mosquitoes were a big menace here and food was a challenge. I longed to eat some real good food. I was losing weight as well after just eating dal and roti that Munna would get for me. At times Maggi helped to kill hunger late at nights.

Finally the day came that I went to the Baba. I got Munna with me and went to the lair of the Baba. There were many people singing praises of newly created Bhajans based on popular Hindi songs. How people watch movies and still fall for these crackpots I thought to myself. I had a small pen in my pocket that was a spy pen to capture my interaction with the Baba.

‘Wait here!’ a voice thundered. A really tall and broad brash man stopped me. My chest nearly wilted under his hand. I was nearly 6 feet tall but this man would have been easily another 8 or 9 feet taller than me. Finally I got to meet the Baba.

‘So, writing a novel in a village such as Raunakpur? How interesting…’ the Baba said.

I enquired ‘Baba, how did you become a Baba?’

Then the Baba had a long and winding story of the usual Himalayan experiences that the Babas made up. Sadly, this Baba was a bad example who seemed to be making a fun of the actual Sanyasis who were there in Himalayas and who are actually trying to getting answers to eternal questions.

The Baba could not really understand my real motive here, nor did he know who I was.

‘How sad, how helpless’ I thought the Baba’s network was a waste.

‘I just wanted to meet you Baba as I have a headache time and again’.

I was desperate to get the sample of the famous medicines that the Baba doled out. Thankfully he fell for it and gave me a dose of this. I came back home and in the makeshift laboratory I had created did a chemical analysis of this using my experience as a student of Science. My doubts were quelled. The Baba was a drug scamster and using these drugs to draw people to their ashram.

The hapless ones were falling prey to his tricks. I decided to increase overnight vigil and after convincing Munna, laid a trap to capture this crook. I called up Inspector Wagmare from Mumbai who had become a friend after the drug scandal catch in Mumbai. We decide to create a covert operation.

Slowly Wagmare and I created a sleuth of aware people and laid the trap for the Baba. The Baba’s henchmen kept constant vigil on us and kept threatening Munna, but the secrets were kept a big secret. Munna moreover told them that the henchmen had a nice role in the novel I was writing. I had to cook up a story for these guys as well and gave them the roles of real life heroes. This also gave me an opportunity to click their photographs.

The Night vigils were now carried out under the Inspector’s supervision. We managed to find that there was a tunnel that the Baba had dug to bring in drugs from another side of the National Highway. Wagmare realised that he knew a few of them when I showed them the pictures. These were all local drug paddlers who had located Raunakpur as the nearby Police station was around 100 kilometers away. We alerted the police station officials and as Wagmare was a policeman too they could not refuse it.

In the dead of the night, Inspector Wagmare and I with around 50 policemen attacked the ashram and found that the Baba was actually enjoying the time with a couple of so called sanyasins. He was half naked at the time he was caught. I took picture of the ‘Ras*al’. We tied him and some of the henchmen that were captured to the trees in the panchayat and I played out a documentary of the entire tricks of the Baba to the public using the projector that I had asked Wagmare to get.

Ooh…aahs followed!!! ‘What a crook’said someone from the public, the public started pelting stones at him and the henchmen. We stopped them somehow and we took a couple of stone hits ourselves.

‘So why was the show on the projector required’, asked Wagmare. He was hit by a stone too.

‘Because of this show, we could get out of here alive’ I smiled and Wagmare got the point and we laughed while the Baba and his henchmen were carted out of there in the police van.

The police conducted combing operations in the days to come and they found a few bodies too in the forest nearby along with crores worth of drugs. The Baba could now not have it easy with all these charges, I thought and as I took the return bus from Raunakpur. Munna, Raliya and many of the other villagers came and thanked me.

I told them ‘Dont make me another Baba’.

Everyone laughed and I was on my way back to Mumbai thinking of my next assignment and some real good food.

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