The Hindu Business Line : ISI gadgets

AS DANGEROUS as it is to India, I am quite fascinated by the ISI. From reading newspaper reports on some of its antics, I get the feeling there is a James Bond-ish element lurking below its murderous exterior. I imagine it must have an eccentric character like Bond's `Q' dreaming up gadgets for the terrorists to carry across the border. Our security forces have discovered cricket bats hollowed out and crammed with Indian rupees. Probably, they missed the cricket balls stuffed with diamonds and footballs with narcotics. And what about pads, gloves, the box and other cricketing paraphernalia? Were they carrying a full sports bag with whites and boots? Or were they just carrying cricket bats? But it must have been very strange to discover armed terrorists strolling across the border carrying cricket bats.

ISI's `Q' must have argued that the Indians are cricket crazy and everyone walks around carrying a cricket bat. The Indian security forces would never take any notice of someone with a cricket bat, especially if the terrorist was also dressed in whites and wearing cricket boots. They would only be on the lookout for AK47s, grenades and RDX.

"So? Where are you going with your cricket bat?" I imagine a security man questioning the terrorist. "Sir, we have an inter-terrorist cricket match scheduled to be played below Kargil and, if you'll excuse me, I'll be late for the start of play."

"Test match or one-dayer?"

"One-dayer, sir. We don't have time for test matches. I am the opening bat, as you can see from this fine cricket bat I am carrying."

"And what's your batting average?" our security man asks.

"One hundred and five. Seventy-five men, twenty women and ten children. It's a very good average. When I played for the Taliban Cricket XI, I scored a double century. Not out too."

"I did not know they had an eleven."

"Oh yes sir. Very keen cricketers. They're up there in the mountains watching cricket all day. They are great fans of Sachin and Steve Waugh and Wasim."

"And after the game you'll be crossing back again, I suppose?" our man asks, suspecting something very un-cricket about this player.

"Ahh, that depends on whether we win or lose. If we win we'll have to play another terrorist eleven for the Terrorist Cricket Trophy."

"And what's the prize for the winning team?"

"It's just for the honour of the game, sir. There are no trophies. We don't believe in such rewards. We get our rewards in heaven where paradise awaits us." Our security man, being a keen cricketer himself, takes the bat to test how it feels. It's while he's tapping the ground hard, watched by a worried terrorist, that the bat cracks open and thousands of rupees fall to the ground. "So what's all this money for?"

"The match was fixed sir. That's my pay-off. I was paid a lakh to get out when I was on twenty. I hid the money in the bat so the other players wouldn't know it. Cricket, as you know sir, has become a very corrupt sport. There are bookies even among us upstanding, brave men who fix these matches." While the security man is arresting his cricketing terrorist, he notices a toy plane circling overhead. It has a wingspan of about four feet and is spluttering a bit as it is running out of battery power. From out of the bushes, pops a man wearing a schoolboy cap, with the plane's controls in his hands. He's trying to guide the toy plane over our security man's head but it keeps going off course. It slowly spirals down and lands with a crash. Both the "schoolboy" and the "cricketer" hit the ground. When nothing happens they raise their heads, looking angrily at the crashed plane. "Our `Q' doesn't get anything right. First he sends me in with a cricket bat stuffed with money without telling me how to play the game. Now he's sent you with a toy plane that's supposed to explode when it crashes, blowing up everyone with a radius of a few metres. I told the chief to sack `Q' and get a new `Q'."

"In the Bond films all the gadgets work perfectly," the cricket terrorist complained to his companion in the truck taking them to prison for further questioning. "I told `Q' I didn't want a cricket bat but an umbrella that would open up like a sten gun, and a global positioning watch so I wouldn't get lost in these stupid mountains and bump into Indian security forces."

"I asked `Q' for a BMW that could fly over the mountains and fire rockets through its headlights," the schoolboy terrorist moaned. "He said he had such a car but he gave it to Abdul instead because of favouritism. It's very unfair I had to walk behind that toy plane all the way from Islamabad."

Just then, the truck stopped to help a stalled Ambassador. Its headlights had fallen off revealing rocket launchers. The driver was desperately trying to start it but he didn't know the tricks of an Ambassador.

(The author can be contacted at: tnmurari@hotmail.com)

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