Chapter 1

The wolves were through, past the thickets and jungles, past the streams, the prey in site. The bloodlust was visible and each face was palpably strained as the pack closed in. One could almost hear the last screams of the prey, defiant or submissive, screams they were after all.

But it was not in a jungle in the deeper reaches of Assam, where the wolves still-hunted in packs, it was said. The setting was more scenic and the prey was human. The look of the pack was however ruthless and the smiles wolverine.

It was the seventh floor boardroom of the flourishing NGO that I had set up during my early years in Guwahati. When I had started out, we had operated from a dingy one-room studio apartment in the same building. The building belonged to my dad and he rented it out to various business and shops, but he allowed me a room there for my use and furnished it up. He would usually sit there in the mornings and conduct his business, as it were with his tenants and I would take back possession in the afternoons and the evenings as my chamber or NGO office or whatever I chose to call my work. The relationship was not an easy one, however it sufficed, for I had my own space for a decent period of time and the address was a decent one and not too far from the courts where I used to practice.

Today, the shops and other sundry businesses were a memory; the NGO occupied the whole building. In my dad’s time, there were only two floors plus the ground. Today, the vista from the seventh floor tinted wall windows offset with the setting sun was worth easily the entire rent that the old man charged the whole lot in those times. I stood there near the side of the windows watching the setting sun hoping to drown out the muted wails and seething whispers from the large boardroom table at my back.

I dragged my eyes back to the table and looked around at the wolf pack. The faces had aged, but they still retained traces of youthful vigour and growing caresses of age, arrogance and success. Three men and two women looked back at me with the ghosts of the smiles still on their lips, asking the unasked question.

“Lets finish this. I am tired of haggling like fisherwomen at the Kachari Ghats,” I said

The smiles became more prominent as the other sitting members seemed to wilt in their chairs. Was it from relief or from loss, I wondered?

My NGO was built for aiding the poor and underprivileged classes of society. As one those things which click due to the right combination of factors, it did so, in a rather pleasant fashion. I had appointed my father the president, my aunt the treasurer and a few other relatives and friends as executive members. The Secretary was my cousin Rantu, who alongwith me were the dogsbody pair doing all the dirty work.

Well, the work paid off big, but Rantu was not around to observe the success story we made of the NGO we had started together on a motorcycle, riding around the interiors of Assam. The poor fellow succumbed to a to a family malady of heart related illness and I missed him especially today. He loved the joy of success of a well laid down deep and dirty plan. 

Gods, I missed him and his wisecracks.

Initially watching it grow in those early days, I had dreamt dreams of never leaving ever, but a torturous heartbreak and a rather lasting case of wanderlust saw me pulling up my stakes and heading off for the west. I went abroad ostensibly for the purpose of higher education, but the true cause of nursing a broken heart was rather clear to one and all.

Returning from a rather long sojourn and various misadventures, I had returned to find my NGO affairs in sad disrepair. My work demolished and fed upon by moulting vultures and other scavengers, my original board overturned and the proceeds of the funds I had accumulated lost to the four winds.

Sick at heart once again, I had set about and built up my old team and went to work, which was culminating today, this afternoon as the present board members went from mocking defiance to cowardly sniveling as the tables turned over the last six months.

“The papers are ready and the signature’s attested. We are done” said my legal chief, from the right.

I turned back and looked around the long table and the various people sitting on it, the afternoon light throwing weird and impossible abstracts across the table and people both. My people dominated the top half of the table while the idiots who ruined my organization sat in a bunch towards the lower end.

The prey to my wolves….moving off in a file, as if eager to shake loose of the roller coaster ride of tax raids, official enquiries and law suits that we had set for them in the last few months. Each and every one of them had fallen into the pit and today they were lucky to be able to walk out the office without arrests. Or so they thought….

As I look around the table, I could see faces in both triumph and defeat, except one. That one face was looking at my own instead of reflecting either joy or sorrow. P, an old school friend, was someone I had picked up to co-ordinate the NGO when I had left on my travels. She had done a good job, better than I had expected, but she was never on the board and decisions made were out of her control to do much damage containment. On my return, my greatest information came from her and her price was a seat on the board. She did not want to be over ruled again without a fighting chance and she loved the NGO a bit too much. I was only too happy to give in. And today, as she regained control and took her place on the board she had served so long, I could see an almost cold detachment on her usually expressive face.

I didn’t like that…..but I was too busy praying that everyone signed on the dotted lines and ended this sorry affair. I was too tired to really give a damn about fighting the next 20 years for the right to do some good.

The sun had set a long time back, I was in my shirtsleeves, again near the window’s. I could see the stars twinkling and the city lights blazing as a soft breeze blew the sweat dry on my bald scalp. The booze was flowing; the cigar smoke made the room uninhabitable for anyone else but us, the only topic was the future. We were invincible, unbeatable and we had finally been into a good battle after so long. It was getting late, so I tried to make a final toast to get them all moving.

Turning and raising my glass, I leaned on the sill of the bay windows and stood framed with the night at my back and the well-lit boardroom to my front, “To the best goddamned team of wolves and to the future”

A perfect cacophony of howls resounded around the room ……………and nearly drowned out the blast that shook the building to its foundations. I felt like I was hammered by a giant fist and blown along with the wind. As I was flung out I thought I saw flying debris and my conference table half out of the window where I just was leaning.

That was the last thing I remembered before everything went dark…..

As I recovered some consciousness, I saw my boardroom demolished and destruction everywhere. I couldn’t seem to open my left eye and my lower body was immovable.

“Anyone there?” I had intended it to be a ringing shout, what came out was worse than a croak. In the distance I imagined I heard sirens and klaxons of approaching aid, but as I looked around to call out again, the first thing that swam into view was P’s severed and discolored head. I could not believe my eyes and tried to reach out for it but couldn’t move my hands. 

I tried to look beyond but saw only gore and blood and dust and concrete or cement blocks everywhere and after a few moments, everything seemed to go slowly dark……