“Before dialogue begins, we must have song,” Bappida said as he wiped his forehead with a bright red kerchief...
Well, all that bling apart, we had serious business on hand. “Should we make a film on the issue?” piped in Ramu. Understandably, everyone’s vote was against it. Anurag’s learned opinion was that we would have to address politicians as well as the separatists and it could not be done through commercial cinema. Anyway, the long and short of it was that after two hours of deliberations (with tea-samosa breaks at the police canteen) we seemed to be headed nowhere. And then...finally...I cracked it. “See, what all our leaders have been swearing by is a composite dialogue. I believe that’s where we can chip in. Now, tell me, don’t we have enough talent between us to script the talks? Can’t we write the dialogues that will usher in peace in the Valley?” We all applauded, so much so a cop passing by wondered if someone had got a promotion. “We have to put on our thinking caps,” pointed out Anurag, “once we move in, then what Omar Abdullah, Manmohan Singh, the Mirwaiz and Geelani say will be our responsibility.” Anurag sounded as excited as a TV anchor who gets a politician to confess his preference for life before death to the one after. Meanwhile, Abbas gave vent to his emotions by chanting “Bole toh, bole toh”. As for Bappida, he wasn’t one to be left out. “Before dialogue begins, we must have song,” he said as he wiped his forehead with a bright red kerchief. And then...what we all feared happened. He began to sing—“Kalpana karo/ koyee swarg nahi/aasaani se kar sakte ho/neeche koyi narak nahin....” Anurag was clearly upset by this caper. “Bappida, do something original. That lyric sounds like John Lennon’s Imagine....”
At that point, I abruptly concluded the meeting. “We will meet again at another secret location,” I said as I walked off, but not before picking up roasted peanuts from a streetside vendor on the wayside.
(As imagined by Ajith Pillai)