Free The Avatari by Raghu Srinivasan

mat in the hut, other than the chair and the torn coir mat. ‘ Maile tato pani rakhechu. I have kept hot water for you.’
    ‘Thank you,’ Ashton responded in English. Though he was fluent in Gorkhali, his sergeant had asked him to stick to English, especially with the fresh recruits, so that they could pick up the language.
    The Malayan Emergency, as it was called, was now in its eighth year. It had begun with the murder of three white settlers in 1948 and had spread insidiously through the entire country. There was talk of it soon being over; the communists had apparently had enough. But then, that had been said before. With an insurgency, Henry Ashton mused, you never knew. There were no victories, there were few contacts with an elusive enemy and success was usually measured in terms of the number of incidents – or lack thereof – depending on which side you were on. Anyway, there had been none in the three months they had spent in their fort inside the jungles of Kasek Baru, a two-day trek – in dry weather, that is – from the road to Kuala Lumpur, where the battalion headquarters was located.
    Ashton finished his tea and inhaled deeply, savouring his cigarette, well aware that it would be a long time before he smoked one again. When you were out in the jungle, smoke, even from a cigarette, was a dead giveaway. He ducked into the forty-pounder tent just outside his shed which served as a toilet, careful not to hit his head or knock the pole down. He used the hole and quickly washed from the water in the tin. He got back to his shed, where the batman was waiting with a towel, his foldable mirror and an enamel mug of hot water. Ashton shaved, donned his fatigues, slung on his carbine and was out of the shed. Squinting in the dark, he headed in the direction of the tree that stood in the middle of a clearing, where a hazy impression of movement told him the men had quietly fallen in line.
    Major Ashton had patiently worked towards this day. He had abided by what, in counter-insurgency warfare, was loosely termed the ‘fishpond’ theory. The designated target area was the ‘fishpond’ and he had ensured that his company gave it a wide berth while patrolling and operating all around it. Moreover, he had let it be known to the locals that their area of operations did not extend to the ‘fishpond’. Not wanting the ‘fishpond’ to be disturbed, he had also kept his intelligence sources there to the barest minimum. If his intelligence was reliable, the area should now be teeming with ‘fish’ and the time to harvest had come.
    As Ashton approached the assembled men, there was a quiet murmur. He saw them quickly come to order, chivvied by the ferocious whispers of the non-commissioned officers.
    Their ‘source’ was a thin boy of Malay and Chinese parentage. He spoke pidgin in an excited, high-pitched squeak, making up for his lack of vocabulary with sweeping hand gestures. A slow and well-meaning lad, he appeared to be without a family or, at least, one that bothered about him. The boy was standing to one side, looking curiously at the goings-on. He had come to the camp two days ago. It was a strange thing, the major thought, that while others of his age were playing rugby in England, this scruffy young boy was risking his life for half a bag of rice. They had kept him with them so that he could serve as a guide for the operation. Ashton’s sergeant, Durga Bahadur, or Duggy as he liked to call him, had his misgivings about the plan, one of the reasons being his conviction that their ‘source’ was a halfwit. But being the good sergeant that he was, he had gone along with the company commander’s orders. He had not, however, let the boy out of his sight for the two days that went into the planning and preparation of their mission for fear that the operation might be compromised. It was not unlikely either that the other side had got to him as well. Loyalty and reliability were luxuries one did not take for