Kimi

"Kapu," she wanted to know, "why should families suffer for whatever our husbands have done?" It is thirty two years since Kimi walked into my office and registered a very reasonable protest in the fullness of feminine self-confidence.

"I've come for the ration shop in my village," she continued, while handing me an envelope. "I was disqualified on the last occasion because my husband is an underground. I have applied against the vacancy now, since the person who got it the last time has been killed by the MNA. The army have recommended my application."

"The Captain speaks well of you in the letter," I said, glancing at the note, "but it isn't necessary to route such applications through the army. Particularly in a case like yours where their views are standard. Unless, of course, this is part of some arrangement, which makes it a different matter all together."

It was unfortunate that my words served to underscore the horse-trade that usually went on in the realm of military operations, or, worse still, the irony of an insurgent's wife currying favour with the army - a reprehensible act against the self-esteem of her tribe. She looked embarrassed.

"Kapu," she explained, "I imagined a letter with army seal would serve a dual purpose. First, the ease with which I could come to see you. Then, with the freedom to tend our lands as good as taken away, there is no source of livelihood, particularly for families whose men have gone away to fight, for right or for wrong. We are poor, Kapu, and I can save my children from starvation if you help me."

The plain speaking got her what she had wanted, but I knew that such spontaneity on my part was a dubious indulgence. Before a gentler rehabilitative approach towards those who had taken to arms against the government could emerge as a workable policy, any concession to the families could be viewed as hairbrained, even audacious, by the guardians of prudence in the establishment. Deviations from the received bureaucratic wisdom could only be made with prior approval, and impulse was suspect even if the stakes were not too high. Misgivings were, therefore, natural when greenhorns like me sought deliverance through the verdict of their heart. In fact, this incident remained lodged like some kind of woodworm in my conscience. Despite the basic inwardness of my life, and a habit of indifference to consequences, I would have hated to have my instincts misfire and my decisions questioned. But I was persuaded that things had gone well when nothing of the sort happened for a number of months.

Meanwhile, the Rajputs had shot up a lair of insurgents south of Lungleh, and the Gurkhas were looking for a prestigious kill before they were hauled up by the higher command for sloth and inactivity. It was not, however, long before a regimental courier came with a message from Captain Clifton, post commander of a cluster of grouped villages at Vaihal. I had been invited to visit him, in what he had called "national interest", to address some problems of his area. I had never met this officer before, and tried to visualize the man from his rhetorical prose style while walking twenty miles through the Mat valley to his post.

Clifton had come down a few miles to welcome me to the area of his operational command. A handsome Anglo-Indian, he had the demeanour of a western movie star. Soon after arriving in the army camp - a neat bunch of huts made of bamboo and thatch - we sat down to an excellent brandy to offset, as he termed it, the effects of my long walk and his loneliness. Sitting under the starry sky on top of a hill, with mist settled like a vast sheet of water across the valley, we felt the relentless process of counterinsurgency cease for a while - until, at any rate, a Gurkha jawan clicked his boots.