SAMAJ KA SACH
Chapter 8: Bheembal
## Chapter 8: Bheembal
VIVEK
The days after the house change everything and nothing.
Everything, because I know now. The basement. The crates. The military-grade infrastructure hidden beneath a whitewashed Portuguese facade. The knowledge sits inside me like a swallowed stone. Heavy, indigestible, altering my centre of gravity.
Nothing, because the routine continues. Bell. Dalia. Farm. Potatoes. Dinner. Tent. The compound doesn't know what I know. The compound farms and eats and sleeps and follows the rules, and the cameras blink, and the guards stand at the treeline, and Lakshman walks the lawn in his linen kurta and Kolhapuri chappals, smiling a smile whose secrets are safe.
Jai and I don't speak in public. We don't acknowledge each other at meals. We don't exchange glances. The cameras are everywhere, and the cameras feed somewhere; into the house, into a room where someone watches, where every look and every gesture is archived and assessed.
But we communicate. Through Esha.
It was my idea. Esha works with me on the farm, we spend hours together in the stables, in the camera-free zone, feeding horses and mucking stalls. Jai, whose assignment is construction, maintaining the huts, building new ones, has his own camera-free zone: the workshop at the camp's northern edge, where the tools are stored and the partitioning walls block the nearest camera's sightline.
Esha moves between both. She carries messages: not written, nothing that can be found or read, but spoken, memorised, relayed with the precision of someone who understands that the margin for error is zero.
"Jai kehta hai crates pe numbers hain," she tells me one morning, as we brush the chestnut mare. The dawn smelled of wet earth and the faint sweetness of neem flowers opening. "Indian Army ke standard markings. Woh kehta hai yeh Lakshman ka private stockpile nahi hai, yeh kisi supply chain ka hissa hai."
"Supply chain? Kiske liye?"
"Woh nahi jaanta. Lekin gaadiyaan raat ko jaati hain aur wapas aati hain — matlab kuch deliver ho raha hai. Ya collect ho raha hai. Regularly."
I process this while Laxmi, my name for the mare, not hers; stamps her hoof impatiently, demanding another apple.
A supply chain. Military crates moving in and out of the basement nightly. Lakshman is not just hoarding. He's distributing. Or receiving. Which means he's connected to something larger than this estate. A network. Other compounds, maybe. Other Lakshmen.
"Aur woh sealed section?" I ask. "Basement ka peeche wala hissa?"
"Uspe kuch nahi pata. Jai kehta hai woh door kabhi khula nahi tha jab woh window mein se dekh raha tha."
The sealed section. The room behind the room. The secret behind the secret. Every answer we find opens a new question, like those Russian dolls, matryoshka; that my cousin Sneha used to collect, each one containing a smaller version of itself.
"Esha."
"Haan?"
"Tujhe kya lagta hai? Honestly."
She stops brushing. Looks at me, directly, the way she does in the stables, unguarded. "Mujhe lagta hai Lakshman koi chhota aadmi nahi hai. Woh koi local goonda nahi hai jisne ek estate pe kabza kar liya. Woh — organised hai. Military connections hain. Resources hain. Log hain. Yeh sab aise hi nahi hota."
"Toh woh kaun hai?"
"Pata nahi. Lekin, Chandni se baat karte waqt: maine ek baar suna. Usne kaha, 'Sir ne yeh decide kiya.' Sir. Not Lakshman. Not Leo. Sir."
Sir. A title that implies a superior. Which means Lakshman, for all his authority, his linen kurtas, his patriarchal smile; reports to someone. Someone above him.
"Woh Sir kaun hai?"
"Ghar mein hai. Shaayad."
The sealed section. The room behind the room.
I tell Chaya that night. She listens in the dark, Dhruv asleep between us, Bholu's warmth at my feet.
"Supply chain," she repeats. "Military crates. Aur koi upar hai Lakshman se."
"Haan."
"Vivek — yeh bahut bada hai. Yeh sirf ek cult nahi hai. Yeh —"
"Organisation hai. Military level ki."
"Aur hum, chaalis kisan aur ek baby — hum iske against kya karenge?"
The question. The real question. The one that I turn over every night like a coin, looking for the side that shows hope.
"Pehle logon ko batana padega," I say. "Bharat ko. Karen ko. Sab ko."
"Aur agar woh dar jaayein?"
"Toh bhi. Unhe haq hai jaanne ka ki unke neeche kya hai. Ki woh kiske liye kaam kar rahe hain."
"Aur agar koi Lakshman ko bata de? Agar koi traitor ho?"
This is the risk. The inescapable, irreducible risk. In a group of forty-seven people, under constant surveillance, with armed guards and a man who smiles like a saint and runs a military supply chain from his basement, trust is a luxury that can kill you.
"Risk hai," I admit. "Lekin. Chaya, risk toh yahan rehne mein bhi hai. Hum kab tak yeh karenge? Kab tak aloo ugayenge aur dal khayenge aur pretend karenge ki sab theek hai?"
She doesn't answer. But her rough hand finds mine in the dark, and she holds it, and I know, from the pressure of her fingers, from the way she doesn't let go — that she agrees.
The alliance builds slowly.
First: Bharat.
I tell him in the stables. It's the safest place. No cameras, no guards within earshot, the horses providing cover noise with their chewing and stamping and the occasional snort that sounds like commentary.
Bharat listens. His face, which is usually open and expressive, a man who laughs loudly and cries without shame; goes still. The stillness of a very large man processing very large information.
"Military crates," he says. "Basement mein."
"Haan."
"Aur koi — koi upar hai Lakshman se."
"Haan."
He looks at his rough hands. The enormous, calloused hands of a farmer, or, before the virus, an actual farmer, somewhere in rural Maharashtra, with daughters who died and a wife who died and a life that was erased in a week. Those hands have held shovels and hoes and baby pigs and his niece's hand when they walked into this camp for the first time. Those hands now grip each other, the knuckles white.
"Main jaanta tha," he says. Slowly. The admission of knowing and choosing not to know, who filed the knowledge in the part of his mind labelled later and never opened the file.
"Kya jaanta tha?"
"Ki kuch galat hai. Guards. Cameras. Curfew. Ghar ke baare mein rules. Koi normal community aise nahi chalti. Lekin —" He pauses. "Esha yahan hai. Agar maine kuch kiya, agar maine sawaalen kiye, aur unhe pata chala — Esha ko kya hoga?"
The uncle's calculus. The same calculus every person in this camp makes, the weighing of truth against safety, knowledge against survival, doing the right thing against keeping your people alive.
"Bharat bhai. Agar hum kuch nahi karenge, toh Esha ko kya hoga? Tujhe lagta hai yeh jagah safe hai? Long term? Lakshman jab tak chahega tab tak hum useful hain. Jis din hum useful nahi; tab kya?"
He looks at me. And in his eyes, the burnt-chocolate eyes that are too kind for a world this cruel. I see the shift. The tectonic, geological shift of a man who has been standing on one side of a line and is now stepping across it.
"Batao," he says. "Kya karna hai."
Next: Karen.
Karen cries. Not loudly; she's too smart for that, too aware of the cameras and the ears. She cries gently, the tears running down her weathered face, her hands gripping the edge of the picnic bench as though the ground has shifted beneath her.
"Main jaanti thi," she says. The same words. The same admission. Everyone knew. Everyone chose not to.
"Haan. Lekin ab jaanke — kya karegi?"
She wipes her eyes. Looks at me with the specific fierceness of a middle-aged woman who has survived a pandemic, lost everyone she loved, and is not going to let a man in Kolhapuri chappals decide when her life ends.
"Jo karna padega," she says.
Kevin and Paul are easier. They're practical men. The kind of men who fix things, who assess problems mechanically, who don't get lost in emotion because emotion doesn't tighten bolts or straighten fences.
"Weapons kitne hain?" asks Kevin.
"Nahi pata exact. Bahut saare crates the."
"Guards ke paas kya hai?"
"Assault rifles. AK pattern. Plus tasers."
"Aur humare paas?"
"Shovels. Hoes. Kitchen knives. Aur: teen ghode."
Kevin and Paul exchange a look. The look of two men who have done the math and found the answer unsatisfying.
"Enough nahi hai," says Paul. "Direct fight mein hum harenge. Guards trained hain. Humare paas koi training nahi."
"Direct fight plan nahi hai," I say. "Plan yeh hai ki sab ko batao. Information spread karo. Aur jab sab ko pata hoga; tab decide karo. Saath mein."
"Democracy," says Kevin. The word carries the same irony it carried when Lakshman used it.
"Nahi. Survival."
The hardest conversation is with Kabir's caretaker, Debbie, a woman in her fifties whose real name is Devika but whom everyone calls Debbie because she introduced herself as Debbie and never corrected it. Devika is a retired schoolteacher from Margao who survived the virus in her flat, alone, for three weeks before the scouts found her. She adopted Kabir — not legally, because law no longer exists, but in every other way that matters.
"Main Kabir ko khatre mein nahi daal sakti," she says. Her voice is steel: a steel that has drawn a line and will kill anyone who crosses it. "Woh saat saal ka hai. Usne apne pura family khoya hai. Main uski maa hoon ab. Main usse protect karungi."
"Devika ji, main Kabir ko khatre mein daalne ko nahi keh raha. Main keh raha hoon ki Kabir already khatre mein hai. Hum sab hain. Yeh jagah, cameras, guards, basement mein weapons, yeh safe nahi hai. Aaj safe lagti hai. Kal nahi hogi."
She looks at me. The schoolteacher look: someone who has spent thirty years assessing the intelligence and sincerity of young people and who can spot a lie the way a metal detector spots a coin.
"Tum sach bol rahe ho?" she asks.
"Haan."
"Aur tumne, apni aankhon se: woh basement dekha?"
"Haan."
"Weapons dekhe?"
"Military crates dekhe. Stencilled numbers ke saath. Indian Army ke markings."
She's calm for a long time. The stillness of a teacher thinking.
"Theek hai," she says finally. "Lekin, agar kuch bhi hota hai, agar koi plan banta hai — Kabir pehle. Uski safety pehle. Yeh negotiate nahi hoga."
"Promise."
"Aur ek aur cheez." She leans forward. "Kabir ko kuch mat batana. Woh baccha hai. Bacchon ko yeh sab jaanne ki zaroorat nahi. Woh khelega, padhega, Bholu ke saath ghoomega. Uski duniya mein sab theek hai. Main chahti hoon ki theek rahe."
"Samjha."
By the end of the second week, seven people know. Me. Chaya. Jai. Esha. Bharat. Karen. Devika.
Seven people, out of forty-seven. A fraction. But a fraction that includes the farm team leader, the kitchen's most trusted worker, the construction crew's sharpest mind, and a retired schoolteacher who has survived a pandemic alone and adopted a seven-year-old and who is, in my assessment, the most dangerous person in this camp; because she has nothing to lose except Kabir, and she will burn the world to keep him safe.
We don't meet. We don't gather. We don't do anything that the cameras could interpret as a conspiracy. We communicate through the blind spots; the stables, the workshop, the moments between meals when the clearing is busy and a whispered sentence can be exchanged in the time it takes to pass a thali.
The information spreads like roots beneath soil, invisible, steady, reaching. Kevin tells a man named Arun in the construction crew. Karen tells Pushpa in the kitchen. Bharat tells two farmers he trusts, men named Suresh and Pradeep who came to the camp in its first week and who have been calm, compliant, and observant.
By the third week, fifteen people know. Then twenty. Then twenty-five.
And nobody tells Lakshman.
Not because they're brave. Not because they're loyal to me. But because the knowledge, the military crates, the basement, the sealed section, the nightly convoys, the man called "Sir" who lives behind reinforced doors — changes something in them. It breaks the spell. The spell of dal and potatoes and communal meals and Lakshman's warm voice saying parivar. The spell that said: this is hard, but it's safe. This is controlled, but it's fair. This is a prison, but at least the food is good.
The spell breaks, and what's left is the truth: they are prisoners, farming potatoes over a weapons cache, governed by a man who answers to someone they've never met, surrounded by guns they're not allowed to know about.
The truth is ugly. But it's clarifying.
And clarity, in a place like this, is the first weapon.
© 2025 Atharva Inamdar. Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Free to read and share with attribution.