Chapter 16: Operation Tantric
Next morning when Nil woke up he learnt from Shyamal that Rita had left on an important secret assignment and she could not wait for the operation. Namsell had accompanied her to the vehicle point.
Nil thought it had something to do with Doma who now looked ecstatic and there was no trace of the gloom that took possession of her the day before. Shyamal handed Nil a note from Rita. It was very brief.
‘Be happy with the hill girl. She loves you deeply and would be a good wife. Your happiness is my happiness but I hope you’d have the grace to recognize the love of this poor lady.’
Nil remained silent for a long time. Doma certainly loved him and he too loved her, but could this love be ended in marriage or they too would have to live in lifelong loneliness like Rita?
The operation took only a few hours. The tantric looked very sick and he was sent to a hospital at Siliguri under strict commando guard. All his men were arrested and these Nepalese fell at the feet of Nil and Doma, whom they believed to be incarnates of Lord Shiva and goddess Parvati, and begged for mercy. They confessed everything and this was recorded by Shyamal.
Shyamal, Nil, Doma, Namsell and Sangey reached the top of the plateau and joined a military engineer and his men. They now were led by the engineer to a spot farther to the north east. A sluice gate blocking the rivulet to the Lepcha village came to their view. The engineer explained that with this sluice gate the tantric had diverted water of the channel to a tributary of the River Tista at Sikkim.
The tantric knew well that the agriculture-dependent Lepchas would seek his help as soon as they were deprived of irrigation water and it would be easier for him to get men from the Lepcha village for child lifting at Nepal. In fact this was the secret job of the Lepcha laborers who were sent to the tantric in exchange for temporary resumption of flow of water in the rivulet.
‘But what about the extra terrestrial vehicle and the conflagration?’ Nil asked.
‘It too was a handiwork of the tantric.’ Shyamal continued, ‘the arrested Nepalese have confessed that by direction of the tantric they had exploded high power crackers on the plateau that set fire on the trees spread with petrol.’
‘But what about the other alien vehicles observed by the elderly Lepchas?’
‘I can’t say anything about them. I’ve my own ideas but it would be injudicious to make any comment that may hurt the sentiments of the simple Lepchas.’
The men of the engineer got busy fixing dynamite explosives at different corners of the sluice gate. Then a coil of electric wire was fitted into the explosive devices. Following the course of the dry channel the engineer and his men started moving downwards uncoiling the wire. Shyamal and his team followed him. Reaching a safe distance they came out of the channel bed to a level piece of land. The ends of the wires were fitted to a battery. The Nepali engineer then came to Nil and Doma, and offered them pranam which embarrassed both of them. Then he said,
‘divine beings, accept my respect and have the grace to switch on the detonator.’
He led Nil and Doma to the device and as directed by the engineer’s men they rested their right thumbs side by side and presses the button. A horrible rumbling shook the hills and flames and rains of stones were visible in the northern sky. Then the blasting sound was drowned by roaring of rushing water. All of them climbed to a higher place and soon they observed the tidal wave like downward flow of water along the rivulet. Nil and Doma grabbed each other’s arms and dived into the roaring and raging water before the bewildered eyes of everybody. Soon they looked like tiny dots bobbing up and down the raging current and then disappeared behind the hills.
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The Author
The author of this novel is a Ph.D. in economics and professionally an economist but his passion for literature occasionally robs him out of the dry arena of economics to the world of love romance and adventure. From his very childhood his favorite hobbies included swimming in turbulent rivers during the rains, small game hunting, boxing, hill trekking and adventure in wild animal infested deep forests. Later on he gave up hunting and boxing considering them to be cruel sports. In course of his hill treks and adventures in deep forests he came in contact with various tribes, in the hills, the bottom hill forests and the adjacent tea estates and he could feel the heart bits of these honest and simple people. Dr. Basu may be contacted at
[email protected].
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