Open Secrets: The Explosive Memoirs of an Indian Intelligence Officer by Maloy Krishna Dhar Page B

close relation of Kanu Sanyal and I did not want him to have any peep into my personal contacts with Charu. I met him more as a student of current history to understand the workings of the minds of the people who wanted to kill for the sake of killing alone. People like Charu were no Che Guevara. He was a believer than a bigoted devotee of a jungle deity. He knew that to change the Indian social system the time wasn’t ripe and he didn’t possess any gun worth the name except the gun of Chinese communist ideology of the day. But I respected Charu for the power of his conviction and the strength of his magnetism.
    His daughter, who I believe had later obtained a degree in medicine, unlatched the door. The suave girl demurred unintelligibly but allowed me in. Charu had still not gone underground and was running his political outfit from his home. He was not a good conversationalist. He liked to deliver shrill and loud lecture on class struggle and the inevitable victory of the proletariat. He was an avid believer in violence as a tool of emancipation of the exploited.
    Seated in a wooden chair Charu’s face looked glum and sullen. I knew I wasn’t any more welcome to his home.
    “What brings you here?”
    “Just like that. I thought I’d renew the contact.”
    “The contact point between your and my classes is in the battlefield. Get ready with the guns.”
    “Can’t you reach your goal through peaceful means? Revolution doesn’t essentially mean war and bloodshed.”
    “Don’t be silly. India can only be changed by violence.”
    “We achieved independence through non-violent means.”
    “You are a fool. Had the British not gone bankrupt they would have retained the colony for another two hundred years. Thanks to Hitler that he initiated the process of decolonisation by destroying the coffers of the colonists. The British simply escaped from India.”
    Charu was like that. His political thesis wasn’t acceptable to me. But he had opened up to me, like Jagadananda Roy, new vistas to the millions of the toiling masses of India. I secretly wished that I could be a revolutionary like them. My discussions that day convinced me that the rumbling thunders of violent agrarian revolution were not very far. They were about to hit us more ferociously than the proverbial cyclones of the Bengal delta.
    As I travelled back to Kalimpong I tried to frame the contour of the report I would have to submit to the SP. I wasn’t surprised by the prophetic utterances of Cahru. I knew that behind the frail figure there existed a violent storm that was sure to usher in a new era in Indian political system. He was not irrelevant. He was a vain prophet, who did not live to see his creed succeeding and transforming Indian political and social systems. But he sure had ignited the spark, which I was confident, would transform the hollow socio-economic realities that we inherited from the British Raj and which was being run in feudalistic manner.
    But a bigger surprise waited for me at Kalimpong. As I walked into the compound of my Teesta Road residence Dhanbir rushed out to say that my cousin from Calcutta had arrived soon after I left for Siliguri.
    It was my turn to be surprised. Chandan was seated cross-legged in the veranda with piles of cigarette butts on the ashtray and a burning one between his fingers.
    “What the hell are you doing here?”
    “This is the safest place. How was your fishing expedition in Siliguri?”
    “I don’t do fishing in Siliguri. The nearby Teesta is full of rainbow trout.”
    “Trash the rhetoric. I’m here for a day. What do you want to do with me?”
    Dhanbir produced a couple of cups of tea and we talked about the golden days back in Calcutta when we chased stories and begged the city editor to give us the third page coverage. We were yet to graduate to front-page banner stories.
    “Do you think you have chosen the correct path?”
    I asked Chandan, the only son of an affluent physician of Calcutta,