I'm walking with my hands raised and there is a countdown going in my head;
15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 09, 08, 07, 06, 05, 04, 03, 02; in a flashing move my right hand reaches the belt and presses the button...


I first set my foot on the little village of Aru about 10 days ago. I was just another backpacker trying to escape the ghosts of the past and find some meaning out of this quagmire called life. And the Himalayas were an obvious choice for me, but what brought me to this little hamlet surrounded by lakes, meadows and mountains is unclear and what drove me towards the home-stay run by Tarik is even more vague. Tarik, a tall & lanky guy in his early twenties with sparkling eyes and a bright smile that never seemed to leave his face even for a single moment. We hit it off almost immediately. My cynicism and his optimism quickly became a glue of sort for our friendship. On the very first evening he brought a full plate of dinner and when I informed him that I was barely managing to pay for the duration of my stay here and that I certainly wouldn't be able to afford the luxury of a full meal and that biscuits and tea would do fine for me, his smile didn't fade but hurt was apparent in his voice when he replied to me that a friend wouldn't even dream of charging a friend for food and if I was to decline that food, he would voluntarily go hungry that evening. We ate together for the first time that evening and after that day every lunch and every dinner we had, we had it together. He had already become a friend, but soon he became my philosopher and guide too. After learning about my losses, sorrows, trials, tribulations; he and his optimism would try to conquer my fears and cynicism as we would talk endlessly around the glow and warmth of the slowly fading fire late into the night, every night. During daytime, he would become my guide as we would go hiking and trekking in those meadows and mountains. There was hardly a trail there that we didn't walk, nor was there a single lake in whose freezing waters we didn't swim. I learned a lot about nature from him. I also learned a lot about life from him. I also came to know that his parents got killed in an exchange between militants and security forces when he was in his teens, that he was madly in love with a girl from a nearby town and his only dream was to buy an apple orchard, marry his sweetheart and live happily ever-after. He was optimistic that things would improve security wise and the resulting tourist rush would allow him to earn and save enough money to fulfill his dreams. It was on the afternoon of my penultimate day in Aru that an idea slowly started taking shape in my head. And the more I thought about it, the more attractive it became. I wanted to do something for him. I knew that there was a zero chance for him to earn enough money from his little home-stay to buy an apple orchard. I knew that he was headed towards a certain dream break and a highly likely heart break. And I didn't want that to happen. I was not going to let that happen. I had a plan.

His first and immediate reaction after hearing my plan was that I had gone crazy, and it was the stupidest thing he had ever heard, and he wasn't going to be a part of that suicidal plan. And what was my plan? I wanted to fake our kidnapping. Militants would kidnap us while we were hiking in the mountains and would ask 2.5 million from the authorities in exchange for our safe release. They would ask them to pay the amount in Bitcoins. He didn't have a clue what a Bitcoin was and how it worked, and he didn't want to know as he didn't want to have anything to do with that plan of mine. I had to do something dramatic to convince him. And it took a handful of tears with a fabricated story about some imaginary bad loan sharks and how they would seize my house if I failed to pay them the due amount finally persuaded him to join that crazy plan. I already had a place in my mind where we would hide during this fake kidnap. It was a small wooden hut on the slope of this big mountain, and it was surrounded on all sides by a dense cedar forest. He had told me earlier during one of our hikes that it was rumored to be a hiding place of militants. It was the perfect place for my plan. We would hide there for a week, then we would present ourselves at the nearest police station and would tell them that the militants freed us. Why, they would ask; Absolutely no idea, would be our reply. If they had paid the ransom by then, great; if they hadn't, hard luck, but at least we tried. I created a Bitcoin address for this purpose, collected phone numbers of local TV channels and newspapers, and everything was in place to set the wheels in motion.

We started early in the morning the next day and reached a spot that was in a completely opposite direction and about 20 kilometers away from our would be hiding place. I already had the ransom message ready as a draft, and I had it scheduled to be delivered to the local TV stations and newspapers at 18:00 that evening. I selected a cedar tree with a thick underbrush around its trunk and placed my cellphone in a way that it would stay relatively invisible but didn't look deliberately hidden at the same time. In the ransom message, I had given four days of time limit to the authorities. Once I was satisfied with my placement of the phone, we were on our way again. We circled back and skirted the village and reached the hiding place about 18:30 in the evening. We had enough food and water with us to last us for a full week, and there wasn't much to do now but lie low and wait. After stepping inside the hut, we straight away ran into a problem; locals were right; those rumors were right. That hut was definitely a militant hideout. There were boxes scattered all over the floor and every single one of them was completely full. There were guns, grenades, IEDs, suicide belts and a few other things. I knew most of those items and what they were for but lied to him about IEDs and belts, telling him that they were communication devices. He nearly fainted a few times as I opened one box after another, inspecting the items stashed in them. It took a great deal of effort in calming him down and making him understand that we were past the point of no return by that time, and there was no way out for us by then. All we could and would have to do was, wait.

And we waited and waited and waited. We would only venture out of the hut either during early in the morning or after the sunset and only for a brief period of time. Of-course we were worried, and it was very hard to stay put in that small place, especially when surrounded by arms and ammunition, and stay calm. I kept telling him and myself that it just was a matter of a couple of days and everything would be fine after that. It was clearly visible that he was very nervous and near breaking point all the time, but he not even once blamed me, confronted me or cursed me for putting him in that situation. There was no way of knowing what was happening in the outside world. Did the media get that message? Did they forward that to authorities? Did authorities buy the story? Were they paying the ransom? Where were they searching? What was on their mind? This lack of information and resulting suspense were the hardest things to take. We both found it nearly impossible to go to sleep. We had a plenty of food, but it seemed our appetite had deserted us. Time crawled as slow as it possibly could. Sleeplessness, fatigue, uncertainty were taking a toll on our minds and were making it very hard to bear the whole situation, and we had still got a couple of days to go before the end of our week in there. Something inside me was telling me that we wouldn't mentally be able to survive for two more days in that place. So I finally decided that we would wait till tomorrow afternoon and if nothing was to happen by then we would call it a day and end the plan. When I informed him of this change in my plan, I, for the first time in the past couple of days, saw a hint of a smile crossed his tired face. I made him go over the descriptions of those two imaginary militants a few times until I became sure that our versions of the story wouldn't mismatch. It was our sixth night in that hut, and maybe it was fatigue, or maybe it was the knowledge that tomorrow would be our last day in there that made us fall asleep for the first time in there.

Firecrackers! Noise of firecrackers! I slowly opened my eyes, yawning and cursing the bastard that had decided to burst firecrackers at that time of the night. But then I saw his face; it had turned ghostly pale. He was shivering and was scared to death. What? I asked him. Security forces were there, was his mumbled reply, and then he started crying. I was surprisingly calm, but I was completely confused. I heard the firecrackers bursting again, but by that time I had slowly realized that those weren't firecrackers, those were warning shots being fired in the air. Then a voice amplified by a megaphone came bursting through the silence of the night, came bursting through the wooden walls, came bursting through my bones, came bursting into my brain, informing Tarik the militant that he had been surrounded on all sides by the troops and there was no way out for him but to let go the tourist and surrender. I didn't believe what my own ears just heard! My body and my brain became completely numb! I looked momentarily into Tarik's eyes, and my brain went numb again. They had concluded that he was a militant, and nothing on this earth would now be able to prove his innocence and my guilt. He was a Kashmiri. A Kashmiri is always a militant; Indian military doctrine for the past 30 years. No amount of truth would convince them of his innocence. And this large cache of ammunition lying all around us was like the last nail in his coffin. Most probably he knew that fact too. I went to a box, opened it and took out a couple of suicide belts. I wore one and pulled my sweater over it, handed the other belt to him and told him that we were going to use those communication devices to our advantage. I took his hands into mine, embraced him and told him that everything was going to be alright and there was no need to worry. I had one last plan that would free us both. And then I told him my plan. I would open the door, step outside with my hands raised, would slowly walk towards the security guys and approximately after 15 seconds I would be standing face to face with them and would explain everything to them, I would have them talk with him via the communication device I was wearing; all he had to do was press the button on his belt after 15 seconds of my stepping out of the hut. Was he ready? He looked bewildered and confused, but he nodded in affirmation. I shook his hands, hugged him, opened the door and stepped outside.

...White light, white heat, screams; silence, luminescence, darkness.
A child cradled in a woman's arms; the child looks up, and I see my mother's face.