The Ambush

"It's very kind of you. Now I must go."

I took her bag of vegetables from the counter and waited while she paid the old woman. She was still smiling when she held out her hand for the bag.

"Don't ask me to leave," I said. "You still need me to carry the vegetables."

"I am going to the railway station to catch the evening train to Silchar. You may walk with me if you wish."

Everything in the marketplace was bright with promise and the sun's sparkle on the little pools was a firework burst in my eyes. And not the least of my difficulties was a hangover straight out of a treatise on remorse. After nine months in the jungle, I had found myself the night before with a king among thirsts, and had indulged it. The sun whipped up a nausea and a headache. I stopped at a restaurant at the next corner, and said, "Let's drink something cool in here."

She made no objection, and we went inside. We must have looked very domestic - courtship with a burden of groceries. And no vulgar eyes questioning the propriety of a soldier and a Mizo beauty together, as would normally happen in Mizo Hills. My hangover still made me feel like Prometheus with vultures at his entrails, though the fresh lime we had ordered restored me a little.

"That was good," I said. "My name, by the way, is Amar Singh."

She ran the tip of her forefinger along the line of her cheekbone, looking straight into my eyes, in a way one tries to figure things out. I leaned forward and put my hand on her other hand on the table. She withdrew her hand after a moment, but it made no difference, and she continued analysing my face.

"Tell me your name," I said, "and I will take you to wherever you wish, and whatever you wish. I don't feel as if we have just met for nothing. Your face tells me that we can form a deeper relationship, something that will perfume a whole lifetime. I should hate it if you got up and walked away."

This time she replied. "It happens that I have nothing to do for the rest of the morning. So I will not walk away, not yet, at any rate. My name is Rinmawii, usually Rini. It is still necessary to get to the station before two."

By the side of the restaurant a footpath went down into the valley, verdant and thickly-wooded. We went along the path and we did not go to the station that day, or any other day. In the evening I discovered that she was a Catholic and I bought her a gold chain with a Cross for a pendant, and she wore it round her neck for two weeks that we were together.

She will be wearing it when we meet again ..............

When I get back. When this operation ends, or when the battalion moves and I am able to take a spot of leave. But when will this all end ? A week, a month, a year, a decade, a century? Soldiers' reputations in Mizo Hills and Naga Hills are made on the jungle track. Sooner or later, tired or in a hurry, the insurgent uses a track and you mow him down in an ambush. I have had my share of luck. But this rat-creep under a blocked out sky can get me back to Rini a week earlier. I have been assured some leave provided I can smash the gang roaming in this area. If they come down any of the tracks where my Company is in ambush and we kill them, I go back to Rini and eternal happiness. Let them come.

But aren't they Rini's people, in fact my own people through Rini? Is this the onlyway we can handle these deviants? Suppose we kill somebody dear to Rini, may be her own husband, if she one, or brother or father, before the sun is down? Will I be able to confess it to her? Anyway, let them come.