There was silence now that the gun shots had ceased. For some reason, perhaps only to cope with the fear, I started thinking of the prawn farms. No one would come to net the prawns for a long time now and they would grow and procreate in their underwater world undisturbed by any marauders. They would crowd the ponds and jostle each other as their numbers grew and soon, perhaps, they too would begin to war against one another and turn cannibalistic as the space that contained them became smaller. Then, the prawn ponds too would begin to smell of death like the landscape around them. Death has an odour and the wind carries it in waves from village to village. It would not be easy moving the bodies that lay strewn about because the roads were clogged with mud after the recent rains. The flies would be buzzing about them. The guerrillas meanwhile would have slipped away, vanished into the jungle, disappeared along the pathways and tracks that only they are aware of. And who knew how long it would take for some of those shot to die; death does not always happen instantly. But it was only a matter of time and then the women would go out. They would follow perhaps the odour of death and find the bodies, identify them, carry the news back. The death couriers.

‘Look, I’ll try to get you transport in one of the helicopters but at the moment it is difficult. I had hardly sitting space myself,’ said my friend the Superintendent.

He drove off and I realized that I would have to go and wait in the camp. I had to be patient. It would take time. The press and TV crews were using the helicopters and the search operations were still continuing. I had to have faith in my friend. I was a survivor in the eyes of the others. A survivor and a terrorist. How had I managed to escape?—was the thought uppermost in their minds. I was still not safe.

In the camp the soldiers were young boys, younger than myself. They were almost like my students. I did not want them to be the first to begin asking me questions. I would have preferred to be the one asking questions. We got talking. The soldiers were curious but wary. They wanted to know about the massacre on the prawn farm. They wanted to know how much I knew, how many deaths had taken place. They knew how many of their own men had been killed preparatory to the operation. They asked me how many had been blasted in the land mine explosion. I could not tell them all I knew. My safety lay in concealment. I had to pretend that I did not know much. I did not tell them the exact number of the dead. I said that only a few had died, five or six. I concealed my true self like a wily prawn that goes deep into the pond to escape being netted, settling itself in the silt, not letting its antennae appear above the surface of the water. I felt myself metamorphose into one of those crustacea. I felt so much safer then in my mind. My human role could only have spelt vulnerability.