I grew up in the shadow of Indian independance and a new-fangled form of nationalism. While our castes and creeds were all of course still very important, we now all lived under the same banner and the same rules, and thus we were all kin. Hindu, Sikh, Christian, Buddhist, even the Mussalmans, as long as they were loyal, it barely mattered who your family is or how much money and land you stood to inherit. We all grew up learning that we were all Indian. Jai, Jai, Hindustan.
It’s no surprise that such an environment produced so many military men. I remember–when we graduated from primary school, we each were wrapped in the Tricolor and stood up in front of our classmates to say what we wanted to be. Some first ones each said they would become doctors, lawyers, and engineers, but then one little boy said he wanted to become an Army man and protect India.
That was innocent enough. But he had let the cat out of the bag. First an Army man to protect India, then the next boy wanted to become a sailor to defend India and her honor. Then, the next boy wanted to become a pilot and beat the other pilots, and then, soon, it was a contest, you could say even an arms race, of who could say the most extreme and over-the-top violent fantasies about our neighbors, of course.
By the end, we were openly calling to bomb Pakistan, to the cheers of our peers and our bloody damned teachers! And of course, I was a part of it, this is how I was brought up and how I was raised.
That is how I joined my team, from a youth and a lifetime of brainwashing. And while the sense of nationalism we had was superficially secular and even in its treatment of all communities, that wasn’t quite true. There were few Mussalmans I ever met in my whole career, and while they were tolerated, they were also not tolerated. It’s hard to explain it. They were never beaten, or at least not beaten often, but we wouldn’t sit with them for meals, and of course they never got the greatest assignments or the greatest honors. Certainly they wore the same uniforms and at a glance weren’t treated so badly, but now that I think of it, they were with us, but also not really with us.
It was a very obvious pecking order in those days… Hindus on top, then the rest of them. Of course, it was possible to ascend a little bit. If you were a Christian or Sikh and were respectful to the Hindu ways, you’d be thought of better. Even a Mussalman might be thought of better if he was respectful. And if a Mussalman returned home to the Hindu ways, then maybe he’d find it easier to be promoted.
This is how I started my life and my career, steeped in a new form of hierarchy. So it’s no surprise what happened in the 1980s.
In hindsight, I’m not sure I blame the Sikhs for wanting their own state: as I have shown, while they may have been in the brotherhood of whatever it is to be “Indian,” they were simply not on top. And yet, by wanting their own state, they were a direct challenge and a direct threat to the concept of India. And that’s why, in the early 1980s, I found myself in the Punjab province with a rifle in my hands, and hate in my heart.
I remember. We were gathered just a few kilometers from Amritsar herself, the Mecca of Sikhism. I remember what we were told. The Sikhs are in cahoots with the Pakistanis, a thousand peaceful monks have been burned, they’ll enslave and convert Hindu women by the sword if we let them, dozens have already been dishonored. I remember. We were loaded into trucks and then driven into the heart of the city.
All was silent at that time. All the civilians had already fled. It was eerie, being somewhere with such dense urbanism and the unmistakable symbols of Sikh Punjabi culture. The colors and the architecture, the Gurdwaras and then, of course, more than a few Sikh independance flags. I remembered my hate and clutched my rifle tight.
I then looked across the truck to the fellow seated across from me. Very light skinned he was, I remember noting that. We met eyes, and he seemed to look directly into my soul.
Something about him was a bit off, though. A bit strange. He didn’t seem to blink, ever, and his face was more gray than fair. He was slender in build and yet he moved with a deft rapidity that indicated frightening strength.
Must be a Kashmiri, I thought. Or a Pathan or Rajput. Perhaps a local Punjabi. Oddly, unlike the rest of us who were armed with rifles, he carried a machinegun and his chest was draped and draped with belts of glistening brass bullets.
“Hello, fellow,” I addressed him. He looked up and I smiled and he attempted a smile too. We shook hands and I introduced myself, and then, of course, I asked him from where he came.
“I am from Rus,” he said simply, in halting Hindi, and with a rather funny accent.
“Oh? I’ve not heard of it,” I said. “Is it in the north, the south, or the far east?”
He made a wheezing sort of laugh and shook his head, and converted to English. The truck hit a bit and we all stumbled, all but him. He almost jumped up, as if eager to leap into the fray.
“No, fellow, the country, Soviet Rus. I come from near Moscow.”
That intrigued me, boy that I was. I had little knowledge of the Rus or the Soviets in general. At a point, I had a penpal from Crimea, a Mussalman… I remember, he told me one day he and his family had to move to the east, and that was the last I heard from him.
So of course I was curious about the Ruslander. I knew we had some relations with them… perhaps this fellow was here to practice, or to teach us? Or perhaps our own country was to join the Soviet family? I wanted to ask so much–but that was when a bomb went off and threw our truck into the air–and then down we came again with a terrifying crunch.
I remember. The taste of blood in my mouth. Then a haze of dust and the feeling of fire. I was on fire–I grabbed my rifle and scurried away, slapping at myself until I was extinguished. Bodies. So many bodies all around me, my fellows. Some dead, some still dying, blood and guts everywhere. The Ruslander and I were the only survivors.
I remember. I managed to get to cover. There were bullets flying everywhere, the Sikhs were on the rooftops, unloading automatics down at us. I returned fire desperately, watched one figure crumple, and that was when another took up an RPG. I aimed for him–fired–and my shot went wide.
He turned to me. Aimed for me, and then–went down in a hail of bullets.
The Ruslander. He had taken up a machinegun from the flaming truck and was standing in the street, blasting at every enemy. His bullets met their marks, cutting down the Sikhs and chopping them up into mincemeat. He was a God in combat, an embodiment of Shiva himself. I cried an oath and took his side, and together we cut them down.
At once the street was silent. But there were sounds of war everywhere, throughout the city. I reloaded my weapon and looked to the Ruslander. He was panting, grinning, licking all around his mouth and his face with a very long tongue.
We knew we had to get to the fighting, we didn’t need to share a word. So off we went. Me at a good jog, but him… he moved like lightning. So fast he was, I’ve never seen it anywhere, he easily outpaced me within a hundred meters. And his chest–it seemed to be swelling to a massive proportion, in and out, in and out, in and out, carrying so much oxygen to his lungs. He got to a town square alive with gunfire–jumped over a wall–and then there was the roar of his machinegun.
I got to the wall. Scrambled up it and hopped over, then rolled to my feet below. There, I began to pick off my targets, the distant turbaned figures on the rooftops, while the Ruslander stood in the open and sprayed gunfire.
I don’t understand how he didn’t die. I still don’t. He was taking bullets, he must have, or else he truly was blessed by Shiva himself. A target came up and he blazed away, blasting it apart in bullets. Another came up and the story was the same. I did my share too, dropping the insurgents with my rifle. We cleared the square and with cries of victory, moved to the next street, the Ruslander at our lead.
It was then that we came across a little school off the side of the road. A figure darted to the side–I raised my weapon and fired a shot. There was a squeal of pain and the Ruslander and I made our way into the alley to investigate.
A figure on the ground–the Ruslander blasted it to make sure it stayed down. But as we got closer, we saw that it wasn’t an insurgent. Couldn’t be. It was a… girl. Just a little girl.
It was at this time that I felt… something. It was as if a lifetime of propaganda was simply washed away by seeing its results in the form of that tiny innocent lifeless body. I…
Excuse me.
I vomitted. Then and now both. I remember. Perhaps I was on the verge of surrendering or deserting, but at that moment, some militants appeared from around the corner and came for me. To save my life, I dropped to a knee and hit them each. The cold wash of fear was over me–I remember. I heard the roar of gunfire from the next street down and dove for cover–but it wasn’t from the militants. It was from the Ruslander.
A part of me considered finding friendly forces. It would be easy, frankly it would be sensible. But I took another look at the tiny beti and I took up my rifle and went after him.
In a way, it was easy. Just follow the gunshots and the screaming and the trail of bodies. The man was a beast, a monster, not even sure if he was a man, or perhaps he once was but wasn’t anymore. He was fast, remarkably so, I hadn’t a hope of finding him, until he met a nest of militants and found himself pinned down.
I remember. They were on the rooftops and in the streets. A dozen rifles barked at him and when he jumped out to return fire, rocket-propelled grenades kept him at bay. I came to him from a corner of a courtyard, rifle at the ready.
He saw me and raised a weapon, but whatever part of him was human lowered it. I could see his tongue, massively swollen, leaping around his face, licking his lips and his arms and his hands. His chest was massively expanding and contracting, it was as if he was intoxicated from the fighting.
“Fellow,” he hailed me, “I’ve got them distracted. Fire slowly and carefully, and take out their RPGs. Once I’m free, we’ll go on a lovely rampage,” he said. “They’re being stubborn at the moment… there has to be something delicious nearby.”
His eyes flashed in a bizarre kaleidescope when he said that, I’ve no other words for it. I wondered, and then I saw into the next alleyway and I understood. There was the unmistakable architecture of a gurdwara, a Sikh temple nearby. Inside there were surely civilians, children, hiding from the fighting. If he got to them, it’d be a massacre, I could see it immediately.
I had to do something. But what? And then I saw a shadow–the Ruslander raised his weapon and fired at the rooftop above me. I jumped back a moment before a militant fell. Him, and the RPG he had been carrying.
I flashed a grin at the Ruslander, it must have been anything but human, but it fooled him regardless. I got down to my belly and began to aim. I told him to give me some covering fire, and that was all it took for him to leap out of cover and spray gunfire until his machinegun barrel was molten.
But instead of firing at the Sikhs, I put down my rifle. I took up the RPG and aimed it at the Ruslander, waited until he was back into cover. He saw my eyes and my intent, and then I pulled the trigger.
The RPG struck him and stuck in his chest. I watched him, his chest expanded to a massive proportion–and then the warhead exploded. And yet, the explosion was thrice as large as it ought to have been, and many times as violent. Even where I was, dozens of meters away, I was knocked from my feet and slammed into the wall.
I came to with the taste of blood in my mouth and a ringing in my ears. My rifle–I grabbed at my rifle and staggered until I was on my feet. The Sikhs were nowhere to be seen, all of the bodies that the Ruslander had dropped were simply blood and worse on the ground. But I had to know–I had to make sure. Biting back my fear I trained my rifle on where he had been and went to check that he was gone. I got closer–and recoiled at what I saw.
He was human. Something like human, no doubt about it. The cavity in his chest from the explosion and whatever had been done to him was massive, it seemed unbelievable that a human frame could even accomodate it. I examined him more closely, he was covered in muscle and his internal organs seemed strained, or overtaxed from supporting him. The state he was in, he couldn’t last in it for more than a few years, if not a few months.
And yet… he was built for combat. Built for killing, more like. His bones were thick and strong, many were still intact despite the explosion. And his head, his face…
His face–he was still alive. I snapped up my rifle and–
He grabbed at me. Clutched at my feet. The demon inside of him was dead, now, it was just a human looking at me. He was panting, or trying to, even as the last of life drained out of him. He mouthed something at me, I’ll never know what, before finally, terribly, he went.
–
Well, the rest of my life is history. I stayed a military man, of course. How couldn’t I? I was the hero of the battle, I took out dozens of militants alone, and was never even accussed of harassing civilians. Of course I wasn’t accussed of that–the civilians were gone by the time the rest of the forces got there, because I bloody well told them to go. I knew what the Ruslander was capable of because I saw it, but even the Ruslander was at least in part human. And the heat of combat, I saw, brought out the demons that live in many humans.
Even so, I had quite a career. Perhaps a decade after Blue Star, I flew with an American officer on loan to us, an Indian-descent Tam-Brahm, roaring over the skies of southern India. Years after that, I found myself participating in Operation Vijay, when we fought the Pakistanis in the austere distances of the Himalayas, and brought our nations perhaps right to the very brink of nuclear war.
More recently, however, I found myself in an interesting assignment. Again I faced the Sikh separatists, though this time, I was far from Punjab. I won’t say much more about that, the diplomatic fallout has been bad enough, so I’ll leave you with a few final thoughts.
Firstly, despite it all, I’m still a patriot and a solider. Jai, Jai, Hindustan. Secondly, while I regret some of the things that have happened in combat, I do not apologize for it, you should blame the separatists and aggressors instead of us. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly…
After doing some research, I think I understand what is going on. The information must have been traded through backchannels for decades, with each side withholding just some critical details from the other. In my case, I suspect the Soviets offered the creature to us with the appropriate bribes and promises, just to test what would happen.
But who knows? This has been going on for decades now, in several countries and hotbeds of conflict. And while we know that some of the creatures have been killed, there may be more–many more–and worse, the knowledge of how to create them, the technical background… there’s no way to know who has it.
So, I suspect that this sort of thing is fated to happen again. And again, and again, and again, until and unless the key information behind the creation of these demons is destroyed… or, even more improbably, humanity ends war itself.