Anurag Garg, a man in his early thirties, led a comfortable life with his mother in a posh neighborhood of Lucknow. Aradhana, his elder sister, had settled abroad after marrying an NRI doctor. During childhood, his mother’s excessive love for Aradhana had filled him with a deep resentment that shadowed him into adulthood. Perhaps the lack of a mother’s love, more imagined than real, was the reason for his frosty relationship with his sister. Luxury cars, designer clothes, expensive watches, and the latest gadgets didn’t excite him. In the last five years, he’d tried as many professions, but job satisfaction still eluded him. Now he worked as a freelance journalist in print and electronic media.

Of late, people with dubious wealth had thronged his neighborhood. His house was the largest in the area, with acres of greenery all around. It had three stories, a huge portico and back yard, a dozen rooms, and plenty of open spaces. The white exterior gave it a modest look, though inside it had lavish furnishings. The newcomers’ vulgar and brazen displays of wealth stifled the area’s architectural beauty, which still cried for attention in a few obscure corners. Taller and bigger mansions sprang up all around, and Anurag’s house lost its exclusivity.

His education, at an excellent boarding school in India and then at a foreign university, had caused his long absence from the city. After coming back, he made a few friends with whom he loved to spend his evenings. During one such gathering, they got into a discussion about public morality. When Anurag lost the argument, he yelled, “What do you guys know about honesty? Everybody knows how your fathers accumulated enough wealth to build their huge bungalows!”

His friends were enraged. One of them, the son of a senior bureaucrat, screamed, “Shut up! Stop talking about our fathers. Did you ever try to find out about yours? He was the most corrupt manager in his company’s history. He swindled them out of millions of rupees, constructed a mansion, and splurged on his daughter’s wedding. When the department ordered an inquiry against him, he disappeared. Even now, no one knows where he’s hiding. So don’t preach to us about morality. Maybe our fathers aren’t hundred percent honest, but in today’s world, who is? At least they aren’t quitters like yours.”

One by one, his friends added to his misery with acerbic gibes about his father. Stung, he sat motionless and listened to them. Their voices tormented him long after they had left. Distressed, he went for a long drive to calm his nerves. In a secluded place, he stopped the car and sat on the bonnet, his head resting on the palm. The sky was moonless and dark.

Despite his best efforts, he couldn’t forget what his friends had said about his father, for whom he’d always felt great admiration. However hard he tried to brush them aside, their words clanged in his mind. Even a bystander could tell that the house he lived in had needed a fortune to build. But his father had not inherited any wealth, nor earned enough to afford it. So some, if not all, of the money spent on its construction had been ill-gotten. The thought that his father might have stolen funds made him nauseous.

An intense debate about good and bad, moral and immoral, legal and illegal went on in his mind. Petrified, he shut his eyes in despair. Soon he seemed to descend into an abyss, which sucked him to its core and began churning. Dark liquid filled the chasm, and hundreds of repulsive creatures, with horns, huge bulging eyes, and open mouths, rushed to eat him up. He struggled to break free from their clutches but couldn’t. Terrified, he screamed, “Oh, God, please save me from this!”

Suddenly he sat up and opened his eyes. Bushes and trees gleamed in the dark. Cool light soothed his nerves, and the breeze dried up his sweat. He took a deep breath and mumbled, “Thank you, God, for saving me.” It occurred to him that there was no escape from his father’s unsavory past. Perhaps his mother and sister had turned a blind eye to it, but he must seek the truth, without which his tormented soul would never rest easy.

A moment’s realization had changed his whole life’s perspective. Their house, which before had evoked pride in him, now filled his heart with shame. He felt lonely and miserable, and wanted to run away from his home and his mother to some unknown place. But his father’s past would chase and torment him all his life unless he exorcised its ghost. Perhaps it also explained his mother’s prolonged prayers and his sister’s reluctance to come back to India. Perhaps both the women knew the secret but denied it to him. What could be their reason for doing so? He pondered these puzzles in the dark, lonesome night.

Finally he decided that he must unearth his father’s secrets at any cost. Karma would make him atone for his father’s sins. As he mulled over his course of action, a star fell in front of his eyes. He made a wish.

An hour later, he returned home, had a quiet dinner with his mother, and went to his bedroom.

For a few days, he stayed aloof and talked little with his mother. His odd behavior gave her sleepless nights, and she grew more worried when he evaded her questions. Helplessly, she prayed. She had an inkling of what might be bothering him, but was afraid to talk about it and open up her old wounds.

Then one day during dinner he asked, avoiding direct eye contact, “Mummy, do you think there’s something about Father that I need to know as his son?”

His mother put her spoon down. Her face tightened, and her eyes blinked in quick succession. She asked, “Anurag, what makes you think so? I’ve told you what you need to know about him.”

With her terse rejoinder, she made it clear that she didn’t want to talk about his father. She didn’t want to reopen a painful chapter in her life.

But he insisted on knowing the truth. “Have you really told me everything? I mean things that you and Aradhana know, and I don’t.”

She fidgeted in the chair, wiped her mouth, gulped down a glass of water, and said, “Okay. What do you want to know about him?”

“Everything.”

“Why?”

“He was my father, and as his son I deserve to know all about him. So tell me: where did he work? How much was his salary? How did he get so much money in such a short time?” Anurag tried to sound dispassionate.

“You doubt his integrity,” she replied, with pain and anger in her voice.

“Yes, Mummy. Until I find the truth, this will linger in my mind.”

“Son, I understand your feelings, but are you ready to hear the truth about your father, whom you hold in high esteem?”

“I’ll handle it.”

“All right,” she said. “Wait for me in the living room.”

He did as she told him, and she joined him after a while. Settling on the couch, she asked, “Where should I begin?”

“At the beginning, please.”

She paused to gather her thoughts. “Thirty-five years ago, I married Divakar in a simple ceremony. Ours was an arranged marriage. Coming from a family of engineers and doctors, he considered himself a loser because of his own lack of prosperity. One day, he confided in me that his cousins’ successes made him jealous. He had spent his childhood in poverty and deprivation, and that, perhaps, made him greedy. Our first three years were full of hardships, until he got a decent job. When things started looking up, Aradhana was born.”

“In 1973,” Anurag cut in.

“Yes. The same year, we moved to Digboi, where he became a manager in the oil refinery. On weekends we went to Dibrugarh, the nearest town, to collect groceries. Those were wonderful days. Aradhana filled our home with an abundance of joy. For a while, we lived a blissful life. But a year later, a storm brewed up in the countryside of Assam. The United Liberation Front of Assam, ‘ULFA’—an underground, revolutionary organization—fired up the youth. Their cadres swelled, and in no time the state was in the grip of insurgency. The rebels indulged in arson, looting, extortion, kidnapping. Outsiders like us became their targets.”

“Was Digboi affected too?” Anurag asked.

“Yes, of course. The people working at the oil refinery lived in perpetual fear. Some moved their families to safer places. When Divakar receive his first threat, he shifted us here, to Lucknow, in rented accommodation. To my surprise, he built this house within a couple of years. He told me he’d taken out a loan from the bank. I’d no reason to disbelieve him. He visited us twice a year. We were overjoyed when you were born. He’d been desperate for a son.” She gave Anurag an affectionate look.

“So I didn’t bring bad luck in your life,” he said.

“Anurag, you should never think that way! You brought so much joy and faith into my life. And I was glad Aradhana had your company. My life was blissful, though the news from Assam frightened me. Every day, I prayed for Divakar’s safety. A few years later, your father went missing. His deputy called me to give me the bad news. I rushed to Digboi, where I stayed for a month, searching, but with no success. Finally, with nothing but the hope that Divakar would come back soon, I returned home. A month later, an officer told me that the ULFA had kidnapped Divakar and were demanding a huge ransom for his release. I ran from pillar to post in Delhi, pleading with officials to pay the money and free him. But those heartless bureaucrats and politicians gave me only empty promises. All I could do I was pray for his safe return. And then, to my delight, I learned one day that he’d escaped from the insurgents.”

Unable to contain his excitement, Anurag asked, “What happened after that?”

“For a long time, I heard nothing about him. Then my world crumbled down: the refinery officials told me they had found his dead body in the forest near Dimapur. I didn’t even get to perform his last rites. Since the body had decomposed, they cremated it on the same day. They handed me his belongings and asked me to sign his pension papers.”

“Mummy, I’m so sorry you had to go through all this.”

“It was nothing compared to what awaited me. A week later, CBI officials came to our home and accused Divakar of financial embezzlement. They had a search warrant, and they ransacked the house, but found nothing incriminating. They left empty-handed. I was forced to defend his reputation in the court. My ordeal was only over when the judge, in the absence of any credible evidence, set aside the case.” She paused again. “You know whatever has happened in our lives after that.”

“But something is missing in the story,” Anurag protested.

“Who am I to judge your father, after the court cleared him? One thing I’m sure of is that he will not come back, so what’s the point in digging up his past?” She wiped away her tears.

“But how did he build this mansion, if he didn’t get any money dishonestly?”

“I never questioned him. A wife should never question her husband about how he earns his money, as long as he provides for his family.”

“Mummy, didn’t you ever feel guilty that you were raising us on money that might have been…stolen?”

A feeble smile lit up her parched lips for a moment. Then she said in a serious tone, “Son, you will never understand a woman’s inner struggles. Conscience alone doesn’t drive us. Pragmatism, I would say, is our dominant feeling.”

“Well, it might be easy for a wife to forget her husband’s sins, but not for a son.”

“Anurag, why can’t you reconcile yourself to the fact that he’s no more? Why do you want to upset our lives? Find a nice girl, get married. And if you aren’t comfortable here, we can sell this house and move to a new place,” she pleaded.

“I’m sorry. At the moment, marriage is the last thing on my mind. The mystery of my father’s disappearance is giving me sleepless nights. Maybe the crooked officials cremated another body, since they were in such a hurry to wind up the inquiry. I must go to Digboi and find out the truth! Who knows, Daddy might still be alive.”

“Is this really so important to you?” she asked.

“Yes, Mummy.”

She could see resolve in his eyes and knew it would be futile to ask him to cancel the trip. Resigning herself to her fate, she asked, “When do you plan to go?”

After a brief pause, he replied, “In a few days. I hope to come back within a fortnight, but I can’t be sure.”

“All right,” she said tearfully. Then she stood, said good night, and walked towards her bedroom.

That night sleep eluded both of them for a long time, though for different reasons. Anurag’s mother prayed. Finally, with hopes for a last-minute miracle, she went to bed.

A day before his departure, a call from Aradhana, the first one in three months, surprised Anurag. She tried to persuade him to cancel his trip to Digboi, but when she found him unrelenting, she gave up and wished him good luck.

Anurag picked up a digital camera, a diary, a checkbook, and a substantial amount of money in thousand-rupee notes. He chose comfortable clothes, then took a needle and thread and stitched the money into the seams of his shirts and the inner pockets of his trousers.

In the night, his mother took him to the puja room, where, after their prayers, she tied an amulet with a black thread around his right arm and said, “Wear it all the time. It will protect you from every evil.”

The next day, his mother and friends were present at the railway station to bid him farewell. Before boarding the train, he hugged them all, and when he came to his mother, he choked up. She held his face between her hands and said in a trembling voice, “Son, take care. I’ll pray to God to end your search soon.”

Fighting tears he said, “Mummy, I’ll be careful.” Then his embrace slackened.

A shaft of excruciating pain seemed to strike her heart. She gave up her resolve not to express her feelings. Unrestrained, tears streamed down her cheeks. Anurag’s eyes filled up with remorse.

A little later, the train rolled out of the station. Standing at the window, he watched her till she faded out of sight. Suddenly, it occurred to him that he might be leaving her for a long time. All journeys come with an element of uncertainty, and his wouldn’t be any different.

As the train picked up speed, he fought tears of self-reproach for leaving his mother alone. He flipped through a newspaper to lessen his guilt, but in vain. He replaced it on the table and lifted the window. A gust of country air filled the compartment, giving him some relief. Soot rushed in through the window and fell on the paper.

With every passing moment, the train took him more miles away from his home, towards an unknown destination. He collected himself and wrote his plans in the new diary. If everything went well, he should complete the task within a fortnight and return home. But he ought to take into account unforeseen delays. What if the search led him to the rebels? The thought sent a chill down his spine—but, if needed, he would risk that too.

In the night he ate a tasteless dinner cooked in the pantry car and went to bed. He tossed and turned on the narrow berth. The next morning, when the train halted, he woke up and found the compartment empty. The talkative co-passengers who had traveled with him from Lucknow had alighted at this station. A sigh of relief escaped his lips. But just as the train was about to move again, a middle-aged passenger rushed into the compartment.

After putting his luggage on the upper berth, the man gave Anurag a suspicious look and sat in the opposite seat. For a second, Anurag felt scared. Then the passenger extended his hand and said, “I’m Ripun Bora.”

“Call me Anurag. I’m from Lucknow, going to Digboi.”

Ripun was a lecturer at a college in Guwahati and had gone to Bongaigaon to look up his old parents. He offered to provide Anurag with information about Digboi, as he’d lived there once.  “Thank God you’re not from Delhi,” he added.

“Why?” Anurag gave him a surprised look.

“Delhi brings back terrible memories to most folks in this region. Thousands of boys and girls from the northeast go to Delhi for a college education and for jobs in call centers, hotels, malls, and restaurants. But once they get there, they face taunts, lewd gestures, and social isolation. Delhi-ites call us ‘chinkies’ and behave as if we were foreigners from Korea, China, Japan, or Mongolia. Our folks have to be on constant guard against ruffians, landlords, employers, even the police.”

“That’s sad and shameful,” Anurag said. “Do you have any personal experience of such behavior?”

“Yes. I stayed in Delhi for four months, looking for a decent job. Prejudice against the people of the northeast is deep-rooted among the Delhi population. The men claim that our girls are of easy virtue because of their modern dress and Mongoloid features. Parents advise their kids to stay away from us. Finding accommodation is difficult. Often the landlords ask us humiliating questions: whether we eat snakes, or if our folks wear leaves back home.”

“I’m shocked to hear this,” Anurag said.

“That’s why you must avoid talking about Delhi with anyone here,” Ripun warned him. “You will invite hostile reactions.”

“Thank you for telling me. I’ll keep it in mind.”

Ripun fell into thought. Hurt and alienation filled his eyes. Anurag had read in the newspapers about the physical isolation of the northeast from the rest of India, but until now he hadn’t realized that the emotional alienation ran so deep. It occurred to him that his task would be even more difficult than he had expected.

Finally Ripun turned to him and asked, “What are you thinking about?”

“I’m trying to imagine what you went through in Delhi.”

“It’s in our destiny,” Ripun said, shrugging. “In ancient times, the Han Chinese drove our tribe out of our homeland in China. Our ancestors traveled for countless years, over thousands of miles, in search of a new motherland. Finally they landed in the Brahmaputra Valley and lived a life of peace and freedom there for many centuries—until the British caged us, and handed the cage to India. Earlier the Hans persecuted us; now it’s the mainland Indians. Nothing has changed in our lives in two thousand years.”

Perhaps no outsider could ever fathom the resentment that Ripun carried in his heart. Anurag could only sympathize with him.

Changing the subject, Ripun asked, “Where do you plan to stay in Digboi?”

“I’ll find some lodging.”

“It’s a small town. You might want to check into a hotel at Dibrugarh and hire a taxi to commute to Digboi,” Ripun suggested.

“Okay, I’ll see.”

Before reaching Guwahati, they had hot tea. Anurag was still grappling with what Ripun had told him about the racial bias against people from that region. He wondered how the youth there endured the discrimination. It no longer seemed strange that many young men had taken up arms to wage a war against India. He was curious to know what the ordinary man thought of the ULFA and their cause. And who could tell him better than Ripun?

“What does an average Assamese think of the ULFA?” he asked.

Ripun burst into laughter. In the past, he’d faced that question several times and felt like strangling the questioners, but now he didn’t suffer from such a strong feeling. Anurag was clearly well-meaning, though naive. “I can be honest with you,” Ripun said. “Every Assamese heart beats for freedom. But some of us have buried it so deep within ourselves, we’ve forgotten it exists.”

“I understand,” Anurag said.

“Don’t think too much about the ULFA,” Ripun went on. “Take a few precautions. Be normal, avoid secluded places and night-time travel, hide your affluence and your fear. If you can do all that, you’ll face no problems. And now I’d better pack up my things. We’re about to reach Guwahati.”

He replaced his papers, books, and gamchha in his suitcase, and locked it. Outside, it was pitch dark. Looking at his watch, he grumbled, “The train is late by three hours. It’s never on time.”

“How far is Guwahati?”

“In half an hour, we’ll be there.” Ripun was still gazing out into the blackness.

“Ripun, may I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Do you think the Assamese will ever realize their dream?”

This brought a smile to the native’s face. He replied, “My grandpa once told me that a single dream was like a spring breeze, but a thousand dreams together had the force of a storm, capable of changing the course of history. Nobody has seen the future, and nobody can predict it. Who knows, my grandpa’s words might come true someday.”

The train screeched to a halt. Ripun got up and lifted his luggage.

Anurag gave him a warm handshake. “You were great company. Thank you for telling me so much about this place.”

“I’ve had a wonderful time with you. Drop in at my home on your return journey. Here’s my card.” Ripun wished him good luck and got down.

Anurag alighted as well, to get something to eat, and Ripun yelled back at him, “Hey, mind your luggage!”

Anurag thanked him. After buying puri and sabzi, he returned to his compartment. When the train moved out, he ate his food and then glanced at his watch. Tired, he went to sleep.

The next morning, he awoke when the train stopped at Dibrugarh. He disembarked, walked through the station, and checked into the nearest hotel that boasted clean rooms and tolerable amenities. Then he ordered hot tea.

The first leg of his journey had concluded, with no major hassle. He scanned the headlines of the local English daily. The front page, reporting a bomb blast in the Sibsagar district, caught his attention, and he read the article between sips. The ULFA had taken responsibility for the explosion. Beads of sweat trickled down his temples.

After freshening up, he hired a taxi for Digboi. The driver, who would also serve as his guide and interpreter, was named Hemant Gogoi—a quintessential Assamese whose stubborn old Ambassador at first refused to budge. It started only after he hurled abuses at it in Assamese. Once its wheels began to turn, a smile flashed across his face, and they set out.

A perpetual mist veiled the mountains. The wind was fresh and the weather pleasant. The bamboo huts dotting the countryside added a soothing contrast to the overbearing green of the paddy fields and hills. Farmers wearing large bamboo hats worked in the fields.

After some time, Hemant looked into the rear-view mirror and asked, “Sir, what brings you to Digboi?”

Anurag’s first instinct was to lie, but then he decided to tell the truth. “I’m going to look for my missing father. He was a manager in the oil refinery there.”

Hemant whispered in a mysterious voice, “Sir, many outsiders come here in search of something left behind by their fathers and grandfathers.”

“It seems you know a lot about the outsiders,” Anurag said.

“Yes sir. Many people from India visit this place.”

IN THE SHADOW OF THE RAINBOW is a novel in which a laid-back son, shaken by accusations of corruption against his missing father, embarks upon an arduous journey to strange lands, searching for his father but in the end almost losing his own life.

During my military service, I spent many years in remote regions and interacted with the local people. Their daily struggle for a normal life, against a backdrop of neverending insurgency and the resultant violence, moved me. Corruption, a curse in most Asian societies, affects the average person the most. I knitted these two important issues into my novel.

Anurag, a young man in his thirties, leads a comfortable life in Lucknow. Though the police have declared his missing father dead, he thinks otherwise. Then his friends tell him that his father was the most corrupt manager in the oil refinery at Digboi. This allegation against his father, his hero, shakes Anurag from within. He confronts his mother, but she is evasive and pleads with him not to dig up his father’s past and unsettle their lives.

Distressed, he embarks upon a journey to Digboi to unearth the truth of his father’s disappearance and disproportionate wealth. There he comes across a woman, his father’s mistress, who tells him that the United Liberation Front of Assam—regional insurgents—have abducted his father and taken him to Dimapur in Nagaland. This clue leads him to a Naga man, who informs him that his father escaped from the ULFA’s clutches only to be picked up by more insurgents and taken to a forest near the Imphal Valley.

Anurag journeys to Imphal, where he meets Leima, a Meitei girl whose father and lone brother were killed in crossfire between the insurgents and security forces. Thereafter, they meet several more times, and Anurag falls in love with her. With the help of an underground friend, Leima finds out that Anurag’s father died years ago in a remote camp.

His quest over, Anurag plans to marry Leima and settle in Imphal. But a week before their wedding day, some insurgents kidnap him on suspicion of being an army informer and take him to their main camp, deep in the forest. There he faces a trial, after which they sentence him to death by hanging. Leima undertakes a long, arduous journey and reaches the camp in the nick of time. With deftness and courage, she convinces the insurgent leader of Anurag’s innocence. Finally, she rescues her lover from the claws of death.