The man with a gun

I did not think that I would live to tell this story. I even wrote about it in the paper I work for, but somehow, I felt I had not done justice to an experience that left me rattled, confused and much later, even disappointed.
I had gone to Mahbubnagar district for a report on child workers in cottonseed farms. It had been a long day, given that I had started at 7 am from Hyderabad and had managed to reach our destination, a small village in Kolapur taluka, only by late noon.
After spending a few hours in three cottonseed farms and interviewing really small children, mostly girls, with sore thumbs (from the endless plucking work), I started for Hyderabad at about 7.30 pm.
I was exhausted and was almost nodding sitting in the car’s back seat. The stretch from the village to the national highway was long, deserted and wore an eerie look in the night. But, I was too tired to notice much.. not until I saw a man with a gun standing by the roadside. I was partially awake then but jolted when I saw him. ``Is he holding a gun,’’ I asked the social worker who had accompanied me to the village. ``Yes, looks like a naxalite to me,’’ Subhash, the social worker, replied.
I had barely recovered from my shock of having actually seen a naxal with a gun, when I saw this man in a white shirt holding a gun and stopping our car. I think I lost my voice then. It was too surreal for me, also `filmi’.
The man asked the driver to step out of the car and made him switch on the lights inside. Soon, the social worker was asked to alight. I remember clutching my bag, completely tongue-tied and resolute not to step out. I looked at the absolutely dark stretch of road ahead and noticed some more men standing across the road__ all holding guns. Comrades, I guessed.
Suddenly, I heard a knock on my window. It was the man in the white shirt asking me to step out. I had no choice.
Scenes from Hindi films, particularly those on police atrocities, loomed large in my mind. If he is a naxal, he will run away with the car, I panicked. How were we supposed to reach the still so far national highway? Just then, another, more disturbing thought, crossed my mind. If these are policemen on the lookout for naxals, they might just ask us to run and kill us in an encounter (thanks to Sudhir Mishra’s very real Hazaarein Khwaishein Aisi which I had watched recently)! I looked at the fields on the road side and imagined myself dead, covered with blood in the greenery.
The man checked the car and our bags and then asked us to leave. We were stopped for about ten minutes, but it was more than a lifetime for me.
We sped back to Hyderabad. It was only after I had locked myself inside my house__ after a good six hours of the ordeal__ that I managed to breathe easy.
For writing my first person account, I spoke to the police officials of Mahbubnagar to find out who had stopped my car. I was told it was a combing operation and that the police had been tipped off of naxal movement on that stretch of road. Why didn’t they bother to identify themselves? Well, they did not want to alert the naxals. But, the naxals would anyway recognize a cop even if he is in plainclothes. Well, the police cant take chances. Moreover, a journalist coming all the way from Hyderabad should not get so easily scared, I was told. Really, officer? I really do not think it was an impossible possibility for me to become statistic in the alleged encounter-friendly police data.

(I wrote this last September soon after I came back from a rather happening visit to Mahbubnagar district of Andhra Pradesh)