Delhi — Late August 1947
Shanti learned the first rule of the camp: do not say the word missing too loudly.
It attracted listeners. Listeners attracted stories. Stories attracted hope. And hope, in a place like this, could either keep you alive or kill you slowly.
The schoolyard had become a stitched continent of cloth. Torn saris, bed-sheets, gunny sacks—anything that could be tied to bamboo and called a roof. Under the roofs, bodies lay in patterns that looked like sleep until you noticed the stillness in the wrong places. Children cried until they didn't. Men stared at the ground as if the ground might open and return what had been taken.
The monsoon air pressed down—wet, heavy, sour with sweat and boiled rice and latrines dug too close. Flies hovered with the stubbornness of survivors.
Shanti stood in the line with her son on her hip and her daughter's fingers knotted into her kurta. The queue moved by inches, and every inch was a negotiation with her own knees.
Ahead of her, a woman held a framed photograph wrapped in cloth like a wound. A man carried a tin trunk with a lock that looked more important than his face. Everyone had brought one thing to prove they had existed before they became refugees. One thing to keep them from dissolving into the camp's anonymity.
At the registration table, a clerk wrote without looking up. His pen had the dull, relentless rhythm of a machine.
"Next."
Shanti stepped forward.
"Name," the clerk said.
"Shanti."
"Husband's name."
The camp suddenly felt quieter. Or perhaps her ears had simply narrowed.
"Mahesh," she said.
"Village."
She said it. The pen scratched. The clerk's eyes lifted for the first time, and in that quick glance Shanti saw the truth: he wasn't cruel. He was emptied.
"Family with you?"
"Two children," she said, and then it came out—ugly, involuntary, like a cough. "My husband is missing."
The clerk's hand paused.
For a moment, Shanti thought she saw something soften.
Then procedure returned, firm as a wall.
He reached under the table and slid a small card toward her. A rectangle of thick paper, stamped with a crude seal so hard the ink had bled into the fibers.
"Camp number," he said. "Relief is by number. Missing-person inquiries are by number. Don't lose it. If you lose it, you become… difficult."
Difficult. Not unworthy. Not unimportant. Just administratively impossible.
Shanti stared at the stamp. The seal looked like a bruise pressed into paper.
She wanted to tear the card in half and throw it back at him. She wanted to be known by her name, not reduced to a number like livestock.
But her son's ribs were too visible.
So she took it.
Her fingers closed around the card, and she felt something settle in her chest—not comfort, not peace.
A colder thing.
A way to endure.
As she stepped away, she heard a voice behind her, sharp with accusation.
"This is your independence?" a man shouted at the clerk. "Numbers? Lines? Paper?"
The clerk didn't look up. He just kept writing, and Shanti understood why.
Paper was the only thing in this camp that didn't scream.
On the camp's edge, Constable Rafiq Khan stood with his baton untouched at his side.
He had worn a uniform under the British. Now he wore one under a new flag. The cloth was the same, but the weight on his shoulders had changed. Under the British, his job had been obedience. Under this new state, his job—at least on paper—had become legitimacy.
The circular had been read aloud at the station, then read again. The officer had made them stand at attention as if it were a prayer.
No vengeance in uniform.No collective punishment.No baton unless necessary.Arrest inciters. Protect refugees.Any violation: removal and charge.
Signed. Stamped. Witnessed.
Rafiq had watched older constables smirk when they thought the officer wasn't looking. He had watched younger ones look relieved, as if someone had finally given them permission not to become monsters.
A cluster of boys hovered near the grain sacks now, eyes sharp with hunger and something worse—direction. Boys didn't gather like this without someone older whispering behind them.
Rafiq lifted a palm. "Stop."
One boy spat. "You protect them. Who protected our people?"
The old instinct rose—answer insult with fear, establish dominance, swing first so you aren't swung at. That instinct was easy. It lived in the arm.
Restraint lived in the spine.
Rafiq swallowed the instinct and kept his voice even. "If you want protection, bring information. If you want revenge, you will be arrested."
The boy blinked, as if the words weren't supposed to exist in a policeman's mouth.
"Arrested?" the boy scoffed. "On independence?"
Rafiq didn't blink. "Especially on independence."
The boys backed away, muttering. Not because Rafiq looked terrifying—he didn't—but because five other uniforms shifted with him, quiet and synchronized. A wall without shouting.
Rafiq exhaled slowly.
He had always thought discipline meant harshness.
Tonight he learned discipline meant refusing to become the rumor the mob expected.
By midnight, the crisis desk was running like a body that refused to faint.
The same room. The same fans turning useless air. The same string-tied files multiplying like fever. But now there were maps pinned, escort schedules updated, camp lists cross-checked, and a register of arrests that wasn't about punishment—it was about proving the state wasn't acting blindly.
Patel stood over the rail map with the stillness of a man who had decided that exhaustion was irrelevant.
"Trains must become infrastructure," Patel said, finger tracing the Punjab artery. "Not events. Not tragedies we react to. Infrastructure."
Ram scanned the camp ledger. Tens of thousands recorded. Tens of thousands still moving, still unrecorded, still one rumor away from stampede.
"Infrastructure breaks when men break," Ram said.
Patel's reply was immediate. "Then rotate men. And remove the ones who enjoy breaking others."
A clerk placed a file on the table: COMMUNICATIONS.
Ram didn't touch it at first. The folder felt like a second war. A quieter one. A war that didn't burn houses—it captured switches.
"How many attempts?" Ram asked.
Sharma's voice was tight. "Four. Different offices. Same language: 'emergency access.' Each refused."
Patel's eyes narrowed. "Good. We are teaching them the state has a spine."
Raghavan from Intelligence spoke carefully, as if choosing words that could stand in court later. "We have a local intermediary facilitating the pressure. A man who understands which desks are weak. But proof is incomplete."
Patel's voice cut hard, anchoring the room to law. "Proof first. Arrest later."
Ram nodded. He knew what happened when a state began with purges. It didn't become clean—it became paranoid. Paranoia made mistakes, and mistakes made enemies.
Another slip came—this one from Delhi Station.
RUMOR SURGING AGAIN: 'DEAD TRAIN.' CROWD FORMING.
Silence fell in the room—not because there was nothing to say, but because everyone knew what came next.
Ram stood. "Tonight it becomes a procedure… or it becomes a massacre."
Patel's chair scraped back as he rose. "Then we go."
As they walked out, Kishan held out a note from Nehru—hurried, ink smudged.
WILL SPEAK AGAIN IF NEEDED. ADVISE TONE.
Ram scribbled three lines, all edges, no poetry:
RUMOR IS POISON. HELP REFUGEES. VIOLENCE WILL BE PUNISHED. RELIEF IS MOVING.
He handed it back without slowing.
Patel looked at him as they moved. "No slogans."
Ram's jaw tightened. "Slogans don't hold gates."
Outside, the city's night smelled of smoke and wet stone. The Republic was learning what it cost to stay upright.