An encounter with jinns

Five-year-old Azaan is warned by his grandfather to stay away from the valley of jinns, who throw balls of fire. But consumed by curiosity, Azaan and his playmate dare to venture into the dreaded territory. What awaits them there? A poignant tale by Shirshaditya Gupta

"NEVER go into the valley beyond that barfila hillock, beta." The wizened old man raised an old, wrinkled finger and pointed at the distance. "Why, dadajaan?" Five-year-old Azaan asked. He and his best friend Fareed were sitting by the cozy fire, wrapped up in the big, thick and grey blanket that had once belonged to Azaan’s dadiamma. Azaan’s dadajaan was cooking supper: this was a very simple process, which just consisted of heating up of the leftovers of lunch.

"Bad people live there, beta," dadajaan had a weird mixture of fear, hatred and insanity on his face. "Bad man-eating monsters. They have their pet jinns, who throw great balls of fire from their long black metallic arms. Those fireballs come down from the sky and burn our villages, our men, and our boys. Sometimes they send their firebirds flying into the sky, which spit down fire on us."

"How did you know this, dadajaan? I’ve never seen you go there. No one from our village has gone there, I think."

"We lived there. Every family in this village lived there before coming over here, beta. There were green hillsides, big apple trees, good food, strong and hearty men, fair and shy women, butterflies on big yellow flowers, dewdrops on chinaar leaves — anything you would want, that was there. It was heaven on earth, as the wise ones would say.

"Then one day, it all started to go wrong. We were told that our home was not our home any more, that we were foreigners! Imagine that! Foreigners in a place where my family had lived for the last 200 years! We were told to pack our belongings and walk away."

"And you just came away? But you’ve always told us to be brave and meet danger boldly rather than run away from it, dadajaan!"

"We wouldn’t go down without a fight, of course." The light from the fire was casting weird-looking shadows all over the walls. Dadajaan’s face was oddly illuminated, highlighting strange angles. "We would fight, as long as the enemy we fought was human." Azaan and Fareed shivered suddenly and snuggled up close to each other in the blanket, as if the temperature in the room had suddenly gone down.

"They came into the village all of a sudden, eating up our men and children, ravaging our women, burning our houses. Do you know why I came away, Azaan? Because I was afraid for you. They ate up your father, and your mother. They made your mother disappear."

***

"Want to go jinn-watching tomorrow?" Azaan asked Fareed. They were in the deserted village path on the way to Fareed’s home. The path was dark, save for the tiny beams of light that fell on it from the window-cinches of a house.

"Uh, I don’t know," Fareed replied nervously. "Ammi and abbu made me promise that I would never go there, but never told me why not. At least your dada told us that there are jinns over there!" "C’mon, be a man! We’ll both go there tomorrow early morning, before anyone wakes up. And tell you what, I’ll bring dadajaan’s old gun with me to scare away the jinns!"

***

Lt Pankaj Dikshit focused his binoculars on the small village beyond the barfila hillock, the village that had officially been termed ‘hostile territory’ by his superiors.

"Kept quiet for quite a long time, haven’t they? Seems finally they’ve taken heed of our LMGs." Lt Rajeev Solanki commented. "Good for them. Shooting down civilians is always a nasty business."

"Achchha hai, they’re keeping quiet. Civilians par goli chalaana, hum khudko bhi achchha nahin lagta, aur presswalle bhi shor macha detein hain."

The walkie-talkie at Solanki’s waist crackled suddenly. "Sir, two locals have been spotted climbing through the fissure half a kilometre left of the barfila hillock. Sir, what to do?" "Locals, you say. From the village?"

"Woh itna door se kaise batayenge, sir? Shawl se pura tan covered hai, thik tarah se dikhai nahi de raha hai."

"Are they young enough to be dangerous? Last time you pointed out a 80-year old man."

"Can’t say, sir. Too far out."

"You are absolutely hopeless. Are they harmless civilians or militants?"

"You idiot, what I mean is are they carrying weapons or not? Surely you can see that, can’t you?"

"Fog mein thik tarah se dikhai nahi de raha hai, sir. One of them is carrying a gun!"

"That means they are not harmless. Shoot them down." Solanki ordered calmly, in the same tone he would use to order his breakfast. Within a quarter of an hour, four jawans had carried a bloodstained, shawl-wrapped body by the arms and legs to the lieutenants. "Nailed one of them, sir. The other one got away." "Four fully trained soldiers, can’t even nab two men. Good heavens, it’s a boy!" Solanki was stunned. "It’s a baby!" Dikshit echoed.

"Sir, haathon mein bandook tha, aur hum log ko dekhte hi bandook uthake nishana lagaya, there was nothing else we could do." "Such a young kid with a gun! They are training them young these days, aren’t they, eh, Dikshit?"

"Really. I knew that the Pakis had set up militant training camps all over here, but I had no idea they took them so young." "The backstabbing swines! They are brainwashing the locals and making them think that we are their enemies. They are turning the whole state into a hostile state!" Solanki was literally spitting fire.

"And people talk of peace with them!"

Dikshit laughed mirthlessly. "Eh, Solanki?"

***

Back in the village, Fareed was talking excitedly to his friends. "They ate him up!" He exclaimed. "I saw it with my own eyes, really! They carried him away and ate him up!"

***

Lt Rehan Butt was reading the newspaper. The front page carried a huge report of a peace conference that was to be held between the Indian Prime Minister and the Pakistani President. In the ‘In Brief’ column, there was the small and unimportant report of a five-year-old boy getting shot down, mistaken as a militant by the Indian Army. "Peace with these child-butchering hypocrites? Eh, Junaid, what do you think?" Lieutenant Butt laughed mirthlessly, rolled up the paper into a ball and threw it into the snow.

***

And this went on, for centuries.

(This story on the India-Pakistan peace process won the first prize in an inter-college creative writing contest)

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