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off the revolt of 1857?’
    ‘Why are you asking me all this?’ I asked, mimicking his tone and finishing his flow.
    He chuckled. ‘Because there is a trigger for everything. Even a coup. Or rather, should I say, especially a coup. There is some incident that captures the public imagination, that fires up the violence in the soul, that is a call to arms and to action. What was the trigger in your story?’
    ‘The imprisonment of a popular anti-corruption crusader,’ I replied. ‘The death of some of his staff members when he refused to stop his fight.’
    ‘Exactly.’ Menon snapped his fingers. ‘Wouldn’t you say that the mood in our country is on edge right now? Doused in fuel and waiting for someone to strike a match?’
    ‘You are getting your metaphors mixed up,’ I pointed out, perhaps unnecessarily, but his ghoulish excitement was getting to me. As a victim of mob mentality, I still feared the wanton destruction such a state of mind could unleash – and I feared how close I was to agreeing with his assessment.
    Menon, however, shrugged off my criticism. ‘You get my point, don’t you? This country – of a billion people – is just waiting for an excuse to revolt and fight for better leadership. They want a political class that’s scared of them, not the other way around. They want a system that’s fixed, not one that’s irreparable. They want to be taken care of, not be left to die by the side of the road . . . and it will take just a little spark for them to realize exactly how badly they want this.’
    ‘A spark?’ I was sure now that the so-called PR officer sitting in front of me was a certified lunatic. I was about to say something sarcastic when he spoke again.
    ‘A billion soldiers marching for a common cause. Now that’s a powerful motive for change, isn’t it?’
    My thought process snagged on his statement. A billion soldiers. A billion . . . No, not a billion. One. One soldier.
    One soldier who died before he could see justice meted out.
    ‘Major-General Iqbal Qureshi,’ I said slowly. ‘He committed suicide – or he was killed – last night. He’s your trigger. He’s your martyr.’
    Menon said nothing. But I knew from the dark flicker in his eyes that I was right.

2
    16th September 2012. New Delhi.
    ‘That’s unacceptable, Colonel. I expect you to call me back within the next ten minutes with the confirmation that all your men are back on base and at their stations. Any soldier who does not comply will face the severest consequences the Army can think of.’
    There was silence at the other end.
    ‘Well?’ an already-combative Brigadier prompted his subordinate, a Colonel in charge of one of the barracks that dotted the NCR.
    ‘Permission to speak freely, sir,’ the Colonel ventured eventually.
    ‘No,’ the Brigadier snapped. ‘I gave you an order. I expect an affirmation, Colonel. Not a goddamned permission-to-speak-freely-sir!’
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    Silence followed once again.
    ‘Well?’
    ‘Sir?’
    The brigadier held the phone away from his face, looking at it with as much malevolence as he could muster, wishing that the conversation had been face-to-face so that he could have given the colonel the tongue-lashing he deserved. Only his temporary reliance on the colonel to know what was going on in the barracks of the 21st Battalion – he would have been at the base himself, but for the meeting with his superiors that was scheduled to begin in the next few minutes – only that dependence held him on the verge of civility with his stubborn colonel.
    After all, if any of his superiors caught wind of what was happening in his command, what his men were doing . . . the consequences were simply too painful to imagine. More than anything else, the loss of face. He would never be able to look his officers in the eye if he did not recover the situation within the next few minutes.
    ‘Colonel, I am waiting for an answer.’ he finally said. Say yes, he willed his