Aap sab ghoomi ghoomi karne gaye the?

@javedkhananimoneylaunderer @miriqbalpaglu

YESSS WAS SO FUN

This is a fan theory written in appreciation of the Dhurandhar films and Gaurav Gera's performance, which wrecked me. All historical context is documented and sourced: RAW's founding mandate and the Bangladesh operation are a matter of public record per former RAW official B. Raman's writings; the Balochistan insurgency of 1973-77 is extensively documented; inland groundwater salinity in UP and the broader Indo-Gangetic belt is covered in peer-reviewed hydrochemical studies. The interpretation of Mohammed Alam is entirely mine, and Aditya Dhar probably did not intend all of this, but I choose to believe he did.

I need to talk about Alam Bhai.

Specifically, I need to talk about two details that the Dhurandhar films throw at you almost in passing — details that, on the surface, seem totally unconnected, and that some people on the internet have actually flagged as a continuity error. I want to make the case that they are not a continuity error.

I want to make the case that they are, in fact, the most carefully constructed piece of characterisation in both films, and that if you sit with them long enough against the actual documented history of what RAW was doing in the 1970s, an entire life assembles itself.

The two details:

One:Alam Bhai drinks salty tea. In Dhurandhar, he tells Hamza that hamare yahan khara pani aata hai — the water where he comes from has always tasted like this. Hamza tries the tea and nearly chokes.

Two:Dhurandhar: The Revenge tells us, almost as an aside, that before he was an Indian spy handler in Karachi, Alam Bhai was a pickpocket from Bareilly.

Someone on X pointed out the obvious problem: "If Aalam was a pickpocket from Bareilly, then why did he say 'hamare yahan khara pani aata hai'? I don't think there is any saltwater river/lake in or around Bareilly." They tagged it #peakdetailing missed and moved on.

I went and looked this up. I went and looked a lot of things up. And I think what's actually happening here is something much more interesting than a writing oversight.

Bear with me.

So the X post assumes that hamare yahan means Bareilly. But does it? Alam says where I come from, not where I grew up working as a pickpocket. These are potentially two very different places. And here's the thing about Bareilly it's a city, it's a major railway junction, it's exactly the kind of transit hub where a young man who grew up somewhere else entirely might end up running pockets on the platforms.

The wallets were in Bareilly. That doesn't mean Bareilly was home.

So where is home? Where in India do people actually grow up drinking brackish, mineral-heavy groundwater?

Okay, this is where I fell down a research hole for an embarrassing amount of time. It turns out that inland groundwater salinity — the kind that makes borewell and handpump water taste mineral and slightly salty — is extensively documented across UP, Haryana, Rajasthan, and the broader Indo-Gangetic belt.

A 2020 study published in the Journal of the Geological Society of India on the Ramganga aquifer specifically (which covers Bareilly district, for what it's worth) found that nearly half of all groundwater samples in the region fall under "poor" or "very poor" quality categories, with high TDS and salinity flagged at multiple sites. A broader review in Environmental Science & Technology documents inland salinity as a "growing problem" across UP, Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, and Bihar — not from seawater, but from rock weathering, irrigation overextraction, and the simple geological composition of the aquifer.

What this means practically: in the 1960s and 1970s, before RO systems, before water trucking reached rural areas, before any state intervention got to these communities, poor villages across a very wide stretch of northern India were simply drinking whatever the ground gave them. And what the ground gave them was, in many places, mineral-heavy and vaguely saline. Rich families found alternatives. Poor families drank from handpumps and their palates adapted.

So when Alam says hamare yahan khara pani aata hai, I don't think he's describing a saltwater lake. I think he's describing the specific, ordinary, invisible poverty of a village where nobody ever fixed the water supply.

He left that village at some point ,we don't know when, we don't know why, the film never names it and ended up in Bareilly. Already displaced once. Already operating somewhere he wasn't from. Already practised, in other words, in being somewhere he didn't belong.

Now: The Pickpocket Question

Why Bareilly specifically?

Bareilly Junction is one of the most important railway stations in UP. It sits on the trunk line connecting Delhi to the hills — which means it has historically been a transit point for pilgrims going to Haridwar and Rishikesh, soldiers rotating to northern postings, traders, students, and everyone moving between the plains and the mountains. Constant crowds. Constant distraction. Constant opportunity for someone with quick hands and a talent for reading people to make a living.

Rohilkhand — the region Bareilly is the capital of — also has one of the largest Muslim populations in UP. Bareilly itself is home to the Dargah Ala Hazrat and is one of the most significant centres of the Barelvi tradition in South Asia. A youn man growing up in the mixed neighbourhoods around the station, or coming in from a village in the region, would have been code-switching between Hindi, Urdu, and the particular Bareillvi inflection of both before he was a teenager. He would have known how to talk to everyone. How to blend into any crowd on that platform — pilgrims, traders, soldiers, students, all of them.

This is not irrelevant. This is, I would argue, exactly the profile that RAW was looking for.

What RAW Was Actually Built to Do

A key member of the Indian Intelligence Community, R&AW's mandate includes surveillance of foreign politico-military developments that directly affect India's foreign policy, counterproliferation and counterterrorism.[5][6]

this is the part where the history gets genuinely fascinating and I cannot stress enough that all of this is documented.

RAW was founded in September 1968 under its first chief, Rameshwar Nath Kao, with Indira Gandhi's direct patronage. Kao laid out two founding priorities explicitly. The first was conventional: collect intelligence on Pakistan and China. The second was something else entirely: conduct covert action in East Pakistan.

What that meant, in practice, was that India's external intelligence agency was built from the ground up with a mandate to break Pakistan apart. And it worked. By 1971, RAW was training Mukti Bahini guerrillas in Indian refugee camps, providing intelligence and equipment support, facilitating the political conditions — and in December of that year, East Pakistan became Bangladesh.

The operation is now openly discussed by former RAW officials including B. Raman, who served as head of the Counter-Terrorism division, who has written about it frankly.

Here is the thing. After 1971, Indira Gandhi and Kao looked at what they had just accomplished and then looked west.

West Pakistan — the Pakistan that remained — was already fracturing. The Balochistan insurgency began in 1973 when Bhutto dismissed the elected provincial government and sent 80,000 soldiers in. It ran until 1977, killed thousands, and eventually pushed around 30,000 Baloch fighters into Afghanistan. Sindh had its own simmering discontents.

And Karachi — the country's great port city, its commercial capital — was a pressure cooker. Baloch, Sindhi, Mohajir, Pashtun communities, all competing for the same political oxygen, the same economic resources, in the same dense urban space. The fractures were real. They were deep. And from the then Prime Minister's strategic perspective, post-Bangladesh, they were opportunity.

It is now documented — including in academic research on RAW's historical operations — that during the 1970s, India began building human assets inside Baloch and Sindhi separatist-adjacent communities in Pakistan. Not soldiers. Not diplomats. People who could disappear into the fabric of Karachi. People who could build relationships across years, decades, feeding intelligence back to India and, where useful, quietly feeding the fires of discontent that Indira Gandhi needed kept burning at a manageable temperature.

This is, I believe, the mission Mohammed Alam was originally recruited for. Not to handle Indian spies. That came much, much later.

The Arrest That Wasn't

Here's what I think happened to a young Alam Bhai, and I want to be clear that this is my inference from the historical context — the film doesn't spell this out — but I think it fits the evidence better than anything else.

He was picked up at Bareilly station. Maybe arrested, maybe just detained, maybe just taken for a conversation in a room that wasn't quite a police station by a man who wasn't quite a police officer. This would have been the late 1970s — let's say around 1978-1980, given that Gaurav Gera was born in 1973 and Alam reads as being in his early-to-mid sixties during the events of the film, which places his birth around 1960 and his early twenties in that window.

And what RAW was looking for in this era. Not soldiers. Not graduates. Not anyone with a file, a record of government service, a traceable identity. What Kao's RAW needed for long-term deep cover in Pakistan were people who were already invisible — people who had learned, by necessity, to move through crowds unnoticed, to read strangers quickly, to be trusted without being remembered.

People whose lives had not left a paper trail because the state had never been interested enough in them to create one. People, in other words, exactly like a young man from a poor UP village, with no formal education on record, no employment history, no family connections to any institution — who had been surviving for years by reading people at a railway junction and taking things they would not notice were gone until he was already somewhere else.

The profile was not incidental. It was the point.

The man across the table from him would have explained, with the particular efficiency of someone who has done this before, that there was an option. The option involved going somewhere far from Bareilly. It involved becoming someone else. It involved work that could not be discussed, in service of objectives that would not be explained to him in full.

Now think about what Alam was weighing against that offer. He was in his early twenties. He had left — or been pushed from — a village that couldn't give him a future. He had no trade, no patron, no education, no land. He had been lifting wallets at a train station, which meant every day was one bad moment away from the kind of arrest that didn't end in a quiet conversation but in the system swallowing him whole. He had no one to call. Nowhere to go back to that wasn't, in some fundamental way, already a dead end.

He said yes. Of course he said yes. Not because the offer was good. Because the alternative — the one where he stayed, kept running pockets, kept waiting for the arrest that didn't come with an option attached — was not a life. It was just a slow version of the same ending.

The state was not doing him a favour. The state was recognising, with cold-eyed practicality, that a certain kind of person only becomes available for this work when desperation has already done most of the recruitment for you. RAW didn't find Alam in spite of who he was. It found him because of it. Because the village with the salty water and the years at the station had already stripped away every other option.

All RAW had to do was show up and offer one more.

Pickpocketing at a busy railway station already teaches you: Surveillance and counter-surveillance: you are constantly reading who is watching, where the plainclothes police are, who is paying attention to you and who isn't. You develop a paranoia that is actually just hypervigilance. RAW trains this deliberately. Alam already had it as muscle memory. Crowd psychology:you know exactly how to engineer the moment of distraction. You understand how people's attention works, where it goes under stress, what makes a person look left while you're on their right. This is the core of any field operative's toolkit. Physical composure : a pickpocket who looks nervous is a caught pickpocket. You learn to keep your face, your walk, your hands completely calm while doing something that should make your heart race. This is what intelligence training calls "legend maintenance" — holding your cover under pressure. Reading people in seconds: who is distracted, who is alert, who is carrying what where, who is alone, who is in a group. Alam could profile a mark in thirty seconds at a railway platform. In Lyari that becomes: who is ISI-adjacent, who is safe to talk to, who is being watched. Exit planning :every pickpocket knows three ways out of every situation before they move. Standard tradecraft. Operating without leaving traces:no records, no witnesses, no evidence. His whole livelihood depended on this.

What He Was Sent to Do in Lyari

Lyari, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, was not yet the full-blown gang war zone it would become. It was a dense, working-class, predominantly Baloch and Makrani neighbourhood — Karachi's oldest — with deep cultural roots and genuine political grievances. Exactly the kind of community where a patient, trusted insider could do the slow work of intelligence cultivation that RAW's post-Bangladesh strategy required.

A small business was the obvious cover. Cash, foot traffic, legitimate reason to be present in conversations across all social strata of the neighbourhood. Labourers, political workers, low-level criminals, police contacts — everyone needed somewhere to sit and drink something and talk. And the man behind the counter would have been, over years and then decades, simply there. Unremarkable. Trusted. Forgotten the moment you left, remembered warmly the next time you arrived.

I want to stress what "decades" means here. If Alam was deployed around 1980 and the events of Dhurandhar take place in the early-to-mid 2010s (consistent with the Operation Lyari timeline, which ran from 2012-2023), then Alam was in Karachi for thirty-something years before Hamza walked through his door. He arrived with a mission that was, in the strategic terms of Indira Gandhi's RAW, about cultivating Baloch and Sindhi separatist networks.

He would have still been operating under that mandate when Indira Gandhi was assassinated in 1984. When Rajiv Gandhi came and went. When the Khalistan crisis consumed RAW's bandwidth through the 1980s. When the Cold War ended. When the nuclear tests happened. When Kargil happened. When the whole geopolitical context of his original mission had quietly ceased to exist.

Nobody flew to Karachi to tell him it was over. He received new instructions as they came. He adapted as directed. The juice shop stayed open.

He became, over time, a general-purpose asset. A courier. A facilitator. A handler. Roles that accreted onto him across thirty years because he was there and he was trusted and institutional memory in any intelligence organisation is a kind of gravity — you use what you have, what you know works, what has survived.

The Tea, Again

And here is the thing about the salty tea that I keep coming back to.

In Karachi, it would have needed no explanation whatsoever. Pakistan has its own robust salted tea tradition — noon chai, the Kashmiri pink tea made with gunpowder leaves, milk, baking soda, and salt, is consumed several times daily across Kashmir and the mountain communities and carries associations of highland, of cold weather, of a certain kind of rootedness in a particular geography. In a port city built from migrant communities from every corner of the subcontinent, an older man with a preference for salt in his tea would have read as regional. As particular. As himself and nothing more.

But what it actually was — and this is the piece that I think is quietly devastating if you read it this way — is a habit so old that it predates his cover identity by decades. It is older than Hamza. It is older than Lyari. It is the taste of water from a nameless village in UP that the film never identifies because it never needed to, because Alam himself probably stopped saying its name at some point in the 1980s when it became clear that saying it was a form of risk he couldn't afford.

He is in his sixties. He has been someone else for longer than he was ever himself. And the one thing that survived all of it, the one habit that thirty years of being Mohammed Alam the Karachi juice shop owner never overrode, is the way he makes his tea.

Hamare yahan khara pani aata hai.

He was never really from Bareilly. He was never really from Lyari. He was from wherever the water tastes like that — a village that policy forgot, that the state never fixed, that he was taken from when he was young and brought back from only in the way you carry a flavour in your body long after the place that made it has become something you can no longer afford to remember.

Nobody interrogates old habits in old men. This is probably the only honest thing Alam ever got to say out loud, in a life that contained almost nothing else that was honest.

DISCLAIMER: disclaimer: this is not political propaganda. i am 17 years old. my prefrontal cortex is still under construction and i just think morally questionable men with guns and unresolved trauma make for compelling fiction.

The comments:

Bengali au! UZAIR inspo?? 👅

With respect, sir(disrespectfully) you CAN get it. I SAID WHAT I SAID👅✌️

He looks so bonedi barir boro chele with a shit ton of responsibilities, but dhunuchi naach taye phatiye debe coded💅

can your Hamza fight?😭💥

(na mane eta kobe keno kibhabe holo, have i been living under a fucking rock or sum? NOT COMPLAINING THO 😛🤞)

Tagsss:

Major Iqbal x Spy! Fem! Reader. [Part XI]

Synopsis Forced into a life built on lies, she takes on a new identity and enters a world where nothing is what it seems. And at the center of it all is him-Major labal. Calm, unreadable, and feared by everyone around him, he is nothing like she imagined... and yet, somehow worse.

Cws age gap, flashbacks, guns, violence, blood, betrayal, sexual tension, slowburn etc etc [wc 6.4k]

Masterlist [Previous Part] [Next Part]

The next morning felt wrong from the very beginning. Not because of what he did. Because of what he didn't. Iqbal was normal. Completely. Painfully.

The dining table looked the same as every other morning. Tea steaming quietly. Toast untouched beside Jahangir's plate. Laiba half-asleep in her chair, rubbing at her eyes while i reached to fix her braid again because it had already come loose. And Iqbal—

Iqbal sat there like nothing had happened the night before. Like he hadn't nearly broken the wardrobe with his fist. Like his voice hadn't turned terrifyingly calm when he said: Jawab toh dena hoga.

"School nahi jaana aaj?" he asked Laiba casually while stirring sugar into his tea.

Laiba blinked slowly. "Neend aa rahi hai..."

A faint smile appeared on his face. "Toh mat jao."

She looked up immediately. "Sachi?"

"Hm." I stared at him for a second too long. He noticed. Of course he noticed. His gaze shifted toward me briefly, softening almost instantly. "Kya hua?"

"Kuch nhi," I answered too quickly.

For a moment, he simply watched me. Then his hand moved across the table slowly until his fingers rested over mine. Warm. Steady. Natural.

Like this was something he had always done. My breath caught slightly. He only smiled faintly before taking another sip of tea. And somehow that frightened me more than anger would have. Because if he knew— why was he acting like this? When he finally stood to leave, I expected distance, coldness, and suspicion. Instead—

he paused beside my chair, one hand brushing lightly against my shoulder before leaning down just enough to press a brief kiss against my forehead.

Soft. Unhurried.

"Khayaal rakhna," he murmured. And then he left. The second the front door closed behind him, the air in the house changed. Or maybe it was just me. I paced the room for nearly twenty minutes afterward.

Back and forth.

Back and forth.

My thoughts refusing to settle. Idiot. The word repeated endlessly in my head.

Why did I tell him? Why did I give the information? Why did I think this would help anything?

Every passing second felt heavier now, like I was waiting for something inevitable to happen. For someone to come upstairs. For a door to open. For my name to finally be called. But nothing happened. And somehow that was worse.

———

Meanwhile miles away from the quietness of the house his office looked nothing like calm. Files lay scattered across the table. Voices sharper. More restless.

Iqbal sat near the desk while Rashid Kareem flipped angrily through papers again. "Sirf teen logon ke paas kagazat hai," Rashid snapped. "Tum, main... aur daftar mein rakhe kagzat."

Another officer spoke carefully. "Toh leak andar se hi hua hai." Silence followed, heavy and ugly.

Then Rashid scoffed suddenly. "Ya phir ghar se." The room stilled. Iqbal looked up slowly. Rashid leaned back slightly, arms crossed. "Kashmir ki hai," he said carefully now. "Nayi hai. Hum uske baare mein abhi itna jaante bhi nahi—"

"Bas." The word came cold enough to cut through the room instantly. Iqbal's expression didn't change. That somehow made it worse. "Meri biwi ka naam dobara iss baat mein mat lana."

Rashid exhaled sharply. "Iqbal, main sirf yeh keh raha hoon—"

"Main bata rha hu," he interrupted quietly, stepping closer now, "hamara rishta aitmaad par bana hai."

The room fell silent again.

"Agar aadmi apne hi ghar ke logon par aitmaad na kar sake... toh phir kisi par bhi karne ka faida kya hai?" he continued evenly, "toh phir kisi par bhi yakeen karne ka faida nahi." Rashid looked away first. But Iqbal still didn't move. "Ek hor gal veere," he added softly. "Eh soch nu ehthe muka je aago meri rann- ja parivar da naa laya tan-." The warning sat heavily in the room. [ ek aur baat es baat ko edhar finish kar agar meri wife ya meri family ko beech mein laaya toh-]

———

By afternoon, the fear had twisted itself into restlessness. Part of me considered leaving again. Going back. Finding the darzi. Demanding answers. But the thought disappeared almost as quickly as it came. No excuse. No reason. And even if there was- Iqbal definitely would've warned the driver by now. He wasn't careless.

So I stayed.  And waited.

The strange part was I expected him to come home late. Expected more calls. More tension. More distance. Instead, he returned earlier than usual. I heard his car outside just as evening light began fading from the windows. My stomach tightened instantly. Why was he back already? Didn't he have work? Wasn't this important?

But when he walked inside, he looked calm again. Tired. But calm. His sleeves were folded neatly to his elbows, watch loose around his wrist, expression unreadable except for the faint exhaustion beneath his eyes. "Khana kha liya?" was the first thing he asked after seeing me.

I blinked slightly. "Hm."

"Jhoot bol rhi hain?"

Before I could answer, he loosened his watch and placed it on the table. "Rehne do," he said quietly. "Main chai bana deta hoon." And then he walked toward the kitchen like this was an ordinary evening. Like the world around us wasn't quietly collapsing somewhere beyond these walls.

The dread sat inside me like something rotten. Every small gesture from him made it worse. The way his hand rested briefly against my back while passing behind me. The way he asked whether I ate. The way he looked at me like nothing had changed. Maybe he knows. The thought returned again. Maybe this is what waiting looks like. While he stepped away to make tea, his phone remained on the bed beside me.

Unattended.

My chest tightened instantly. The urge came so suddenly it almost startled me. Check it. Just once.

It reminded me of childhood in the worst way possible. Like standing outside my parents' room knowing I shouldn't enter. Like secretly opening teacher's locked drawer searching for items taken by teachers before anyone else could catch you. That same horrible feeling of doing something wrong while convincing yourself you had no choice. Slowly, I reached for the phone. My fingers felt cold against it. The screen lit up instantly. And for a moment I forgot to breathe. It was a picture.

Us.

The day we dropped Laiba to school together. Iqbal in the driver's seat, smiling faintly toward the camera. Me beside him, caught mid-laugh. And Laiba leaning forward from the backseat between us, both her hands hooked over the seats, grinning brightly with her neatly tied braids slightly crooked already.

For a second the image didn't even feel real. It looked too normal. Too happy. Too much like a family. My throat tightened. Then quickly, I entered Laiba's birthday. Wrong password. The screen locked again immediately. A sharp wave of panic rushed through me. I placed it back exactly where it had been just seconds before footsteps approached again.

Iqbal walked back inside carrying two cups of tea. I straightened almost instantly. Too instantly. His eyes lingered on me for a second longer than usual. Then slowly he handed me the cup. "Sab theek?" he asked quietly. And somehow I didn't know how to answer that anymore. "Haan," I replied after a moment, wrapping both hands around the cup. "Main theek hoon." He stayed silent for a second. Then he sat down beside me on the bed.

Close.

Not enough to overwhelm me. Just enough for me to feel his presence beside mine. I stared down into the tea, watching the faint ripples move across the surface.

"You ajeeb si lag rahi ho," he said after a while. My fingers paused slightly. "Jaise..." he looked at me properly then, brows faintly pulling together, "kahin khoi hui ho."

I forced a small shake of my head. "Nahi."

But even I could hear how unconvincing it sounded. A quiet silence settled again before he spoke. "Dar lag raha hai?"

My eyes lifted immediately.

"Kya?" I let out a small breath. "Mujhe kyun darr lagega?"

"Jo hua..." he said calmly. "Confidential baat bahar nikal jaana. India tak khabar pahunch jaana." His gaze softened slightly. "Aise mahaul mein darr lagna aam baat hai." For a second, I forgot how to breathe properly. Because he still thought— He thought I was afraid for my safety. Not because I had anything to do with it.

"Samajh sakta hu," he continued quietly. "Tumhare liye yeh sab naya hai." Then more softly—"Lekin tumhein kisi cheez ki fikr karne ki zarurat nahi." His hand moved then, covering mine where it rested against the cup.

Warm.

Steady.

"Main tumhein... ya apni family ko kabhi koi nuksaan nahi hone dunga."

Something in my chest tightened painfully. His thumb brushed faintly against my knuckles before his hand slipped away again. Only for his arm to settle around my shoulders a second later, pulling me gently closer against him. Instinctive. Protective. My body stiffened for the briefest moment before slowly easing again. And maybe he felt it. Maybe he didn't. But he said nothing. Just held me there quietly while the tea cooled between my hands. Then after a moment, I felt his lips press softly against the top of my head. A small kiss lingering, and careful. And somehow that hurt more than suspicion ever could. I slowly pulled away under the excuse of fixing my dupatta. Just a small movement. A small distance. But he noticed it immediately. Of course he did. Still, he said nothing. Never asked why. Never held tighter. Never forced closeness where I hesitated. And somehow that only made it harder to hate him.

For a few moments, silence settled between us again. The tea in my hands had already begun cooling. Then, almost like he was trying to ease whatever tension he sensed in me, he spoke casually— "Aaj Kasur wali massi ka call aaya tha." I looked up slightly. "Badhaiyan de rahi thi shaadi ki," he added, the faintest smile touching his face. "Keh rahi thi ghar jaake tumse baat karwaun."

I blinked softly. I barely knew anything about his relatives. Everything had happened too fast. "Woh shaadi mein nahi aayi thi?" I asked quietly.

He shook his head once. "Shaadi bohot achanak hui thi," he said. "Aur Kasur se itna safar..." A small breath left him. "Ghutton ka masla hai unhein." I nodded slowly. And suddenly— the reality of it hit me again. Just a month before, they had merely been preparing for the possibility of this marriage. Training. Studying him. Waiting.

If he had refused the proposal— it would have been someone else. Another officer. Another house. Another life. And maybe that would have been easier. Easier to lie to. Easier to betray. Easier to hate. The thought came so suddenly it made my chest tighten. I mentally cursed myself almost instantly. This is a mission. Nothing else.

Beside me, Iqbal had already pulled out his phone. My eyes shifted unconsciously toward the screen—I stared for half a second. "0000" Such a ridiculous password for someone in his position. Before I could think more about it, he had already pressed the call button. "Kasur Massi" flashed across the screen. The call connected quickly.

"Assalamualaikum, massi," his tone softened immediately, slipping naturally into Punjabi. "Tagde jehe?" [theek ho?]

A loud affectionate voice answered from the other side. "Waalaikumassalam! Oye hoye, hun cheta aaya massi da?" [ab yaad aayi massi?]

A faint smile appeared on his face. "Aho ho jo pher shuru"

"Chup-chap ladi viah lyaaya te saanu suneha ghallya vi khund pisho!" [chap chap shaadi karli fir bataya bhi itna late]

I found myself quietly watching him. The ease in his expression. The softness. It felt strange seeing this version of him. Not Major Iqbal. Just—someone's nephew. Then suddenly he held the phone out toward me "Massi."

My breath caught almost instantly. "Kya—?"

"Massi naal gal kar," he repeated calmly. [massi se baat karo]

I took the phone hesitantly, fingers tightening slightly around it before bringing it to my ear. "Assalamualaikum..."

"Ohooo!" the older woman sounded delighted instantly. "Nooh raniye?" [bahu ? Also people use raniye after nooh here sounds good in punjabi but in hindi idky]

Heat rose awkwardly into my face. "Ji..."

"Rabb dovan jeeva di jodi nu salamat rakhan," Massi continued warmly. "Iqbal te akhen ton hi deer si. Tu hi aitki matha lao." [rabb dono ki jodi samlat rakhe. Iqbal bachpan se ziddi tha ab tu sambhal esko]

My eyes lifted toward him instinctively. He was leaning back against the headboard now, quietly sipping his tea, watching me with an unreadable softness in his eyes.

"Pher kadon pauna pehra massi ghare?" Massi asked. "apni nooh rani naal milan nu jee karda." Before I could answer—"Hun te saanu nayanea da sukh suneha vi khale dine dena." [fir kab aaoge massi ke ghar? Mera abhi bahu ko dekhne ka jee kar rha hai. Ab toh jaldi bacho ki khuh kabhri do]

My entire body stiffened slightly. Slowly, my gaze flickered toward Iqbal again. And I found him already looking at me.

For a second, I forgot how to respond.

Children.

The word settled somewhere awkwardly inside my chest. "Oh..." I let out a small nervous laugh. "Humne abhi us baare mein socha nahi."

"Hayee," Massi laughed warmly from the other side. "Koi na." Heat crept further into my face. Before I could embarrass myself more, she spoke again— "Chal noohae rakhni aa tera masad aaon aala." [chalo rakhti hu tera masad aane wala hai]

I glanced up instinctively. Iqbal was already looking down into his tea, the faintest smile resting near the corner of his mouth.

He had heard.

Of course he had.

Even without the speaker on, Massi's voice had been loud enough. After a few more goodbyes, the call ended. I handed him the phone back carefully, avoiding his gaze altogether. He took it without saying anything at first. Then—

"Massi ne kya kaha?" he asked casually, though there was something amused hidden beneath it.

"Kuch nahi," I muttered almost instantly.

That only seemed to amuse him more. A quiet breath of laughter left him before he shook his head slightly. "Mujhe itni jaldi nahi hai." My eyes lifted toward him then despite myself. He looked calm. Certain. "Rishta waqt se banta hai," he said quietly. "Zabardasti se nahi." For some reason, the words settled heavily inside me. Not because they were intense. Because he meant them.

He reached forward then, taking the empty cups from beside us before standing up. "Main zara rakh kar aaya," he said simply. And then he left the room. The door remained slightly open behind him. For the first time in what felt like hours, I was alone. The silence felt strange after his presence. I sat there for a long moment, staring at nothing. I didn't understand him. I didn't understand why he was like this.

Why he was gentle when he had every reason not to be. Why he trusted so easily. Why every soft thing he did seemed to loosen something inside me I had spent months trying to harden. And worst of all— why it felt good. That was the part I hated most. Because somehow, after everything tonight, the fear inside me had eased instead of growing. A dangerous kind of ease. The kind that almost made this house feel safe. My fingers tightened slowly against the fabric of my dupatta.

No.

I couldn't afford that. This was still a mission. And now more than ever, I needed to continue it properly. Because the information had already reached India, Iqbal would eventually find whoever was responsible. Knowing him— he wouldn't stop until he did. I just hoped my mission wouldn't end before I managed to do something that actually mattered for my country.

A few more days passed after that. Quietly normally. Or at least, as normal as things could become in that house. Iqbal had started settling into routines without even realizing it. He would bring fruits home sometimes while returning from work, placing them on the kitchen counter absentmindedly before washing his hands. He helped Laiba study at the dining table now too, even when she whined dramatically about maths or Urdu dictation.

"Sirf do sawaal aur," he would say calmly while she groaned like her entire life was ending. And somehow— those small moments had started feeling dangerously ordinary. Tonight, he had brought files home again. Not unusual. Not entirely rare either. He sat on the couch in our room, glasses resting low on his nose while flipping through pages carefully. The lamp beside him cast a dim golden light across his face, sharpening the tiredness hidden beneath his calm expression. Meanwhile, I stood nearby ironing his kurta for tomorrow. Every now and then my eyes drifted toward him unconsciously. Trying to read him. Trying to understand whether he knew something. Anything. But his expressions remained impossible to decipher.

Calm.

Controlled.

Unreadable.

Eventually, sometime later, he placed the file down on the table and moved toward the bed with his phone still in hand. I stayed behind a little longer. First hanging his freshly ironed kurta properly in the cupboard. Then taking Laiba's neatly pressed uniform to her room.

After that, almost out of habit, I made my way toward the kitchen. A habit I had picked up from mother when i was little. She never slept before making sure every dish was cleaned, every container covered, every light switched off properly. No matter how tired she was. So I checked everything once before finally returning upstairs. By the time I entered the room again— Iqbal was asleep. His glasses still rested crookedly on his face. For a moment, I simply stood there watching him.

The room was quiet except for the quiet buzz of lamp and his slow breathing. Carefully, I stepped closer and removed his glasses gently, folding them before placing them on the side table. He didn't wake. My fingers moved almost unconsciously afterward, brushing lightly through his hair. Soft. Messy from sleep. He looked different like this. Younger somehow. Peaceful. Vulnerable in a way I had never seen him before.

And for one dangerous moment— I simply admired him. Then my eyes shifted.

His phone still lay beside him on the bed. The files remained on the table. The thought came instantly. I need information. I need to know his next move. Slowly, I picked up his phone before quietly slipping into the washroom. The moment the door clicked shut behind me, my pulse quickened. I unlocked the phone easily. Still. I began searching quickly.

Messages.

Calls.

Gallery.

Candy crush-? [he fs plays candy crush]

Anything.

But there was nothing useful. No confidential texts. No suspicious chats. Honestly, the only vocabulary he seemed capable of using over text was:

"OK👍🏼"

"No."

"Sure dear."

I almost stared at the screen in disbelief.

Then my eyes drifted toward the gallery again. Laiba. Mostly Laiba. Random pictures of her eating, studying, sleeping. Then— me. I froze slightly. Pictures I didn't even know he had taken.

One while I was cutting vegetables in the kitchen.

One sitting beside Laiba half asleep.

One blurry picture where I was laughing at something outside frame.

Mixed between them were countless brightly colored "Good Morning" images clearly forwarded by elderly relatives.

And then random selfies of himself— all with the exact same serious expression. For some reason, despite everything, it made me smile faintly. Before I quickly forced myself back to reality. Focus. There's nothing useful here. And then suddenly— the files. My breath caught slightly. It was risky. Very risky. But I needed something.

Anything.

Quietly, I stepped out of the washroom, carefully avoiding making any sound. Iqbal still hadn't moved. I walked toward the table slowly before opening the file with extreme care. The papers inside weren't what I had expected. Not locations. Not operations. Blueprints. Weapon models.

Detailed structures of guns printed across pages alongside specifications, qualities, manufacturing notes, and organization names attached to them.

Important.

Still important. My eyes widened slightly. I need pictures. I turned quickly, searching for my phone before spotting it charging near the lamp.

Damn.

I walked toward it carefully, unplugging it as slowly as possible. Then I returned to the table. Opened the camera.

Focused.

Click.

The sound echoed sharply through the silence. My entire body froze instantly.

Damn this phone. I forgot to put it on silent. A sharp little click. Too loud. Way too loud. For one horrifying second, I forgot how to breathe. Idiot. I should have silenced it first. The phone trembled slightly in my hands as I stared toward the bed. Iqbal hadn't moved. Not even slightly. I stayed still anyway.

Listening.

The silent buzz of lamp. My own heartbeat. The soft rustle of curtains shifting from the night breeze slipping in through the balcony door. Nothing else.

Slowly— slowly- I let out the breath trapped in my lungs. But my pulse still refused to settle. I glanced back down at the file spread open across the table.

Not what I had expected honestly. Not location reports. Not movement details. Still important. Still useful. I quickly lowered the phone again, forcing my shaking hands to steady before taking another picture— this time with the sound off.

Then another.

And another.

Fast. Careful. Every second felt borrowed. My eyes kept flickering back toward him unconsciously. Still asleep.

One arm loosely bent near his head. Glasses missing now because I had taken them off. Hair slightly messy from where my fingers had brushed through it minutes earlier. The memory hit me so suddenly it made something twist painfully inside my chest. I looked away immediately. Focus. This is why you're here. I swallowed hard and continued flipping through the papers carefully. Some pages had handwritten notes in the margins.

Some names. Codes. Shipment markings. Then— a familiar name made my fingers stop.

Rashid.

My brows pulled together slightly. Before I could process it properly— movement. Very slight. The mattress shifted softly behind me. Every nerve in my body went rigid. I turned instantly.

Iqbal had moved onto his side now, one hand dragging tiredly across the empty space beside him like he was searching for something in his sleep. For me. My throat tightened unexpectedly.

"..." A faint breath left him, barely audible.

BNot awake. Just half asleep. Still searching. And somehow that felt worse.

I quickly locked the phone, placing the file back exactly how it had been before walking toward the bed as quietly as possible. The moment I lay down beside him again, his arm moved instinctively around my waist. Like his body recognized mine even in sleep. My chest tightened so painfully I thought it might actually hurt. Because while I lay there in his arms— the stolen pictures were still saved inside my phone.

I slept with my phone hidden beneath my pillow that night. Not deeply. Not peacefully. Every few hours, I would jolt awake, my hand immediately reaching beneath the pillow to make sure it was still there. Still safe. Still hidden.

Only after feeling its familiar shape beneath my fingers would I allow myself to relax again. Then I would close my eyes and drift back to sleep, my mind already turning over the same problem. How was I supposed to get the information to the darzi? The market was the obvious answer. But it wasn't that simple.Iqbal's schedule was unpredictable. He could return at any moment. One wrong move, one poorly timed absence, and everything could unravel.

So I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

The next morning seemed to stretch endlessly. By the time afternoon arrived, Laiba was already dressed and ready to go out. Sakina had changed too and was waiting downstairs. Meanwhile, I stood in front of the mirror, finishing my hair. I had just secured the last pin when the bedroom door opened. Iqbal walked in. His gaze immediately landed on me. Then on the handbag resting nearby. One eyebrow lifted.

"Oh ho," he said, amusement slipping into his voice. "Aaj kahan jaane ki taiyari ho rahi hai?"

I turned toward him. "Bas market tak," I replied casually. "Kuch cheezen leni hain."

His eyes narrowed slightly. "Akeli?"

"Nahi. Sakina aur Laiba bhi saath ja rahi hain."

At the mention of her name, Laiba appeared in the doorway as if summoned. "Main taiyaar hu!" she announced proudly.

Iqbal smiled instantly. "Achha ji?"

She nodded enthusiastically. I adjusted my dupatta. "Laiba bhi bahar jaana chahti thi."

"Hmm."

He considered that for a second. Then— "Main bhi chalta hoon."

My heart nearly stopped- his reply was honestly expected not too suprising. "Kya?"

He looked entirely innocent. "Market hi toh ja rahe ho."

"No," I said perhaps a little too quickly before forcing a laugh. "Aap saath honge toh maza hi nahi aayega."

His eyebrows rose. "Maza?"

"Haan."

I folded my arms. "Aap gaadi mein baithe rahenge. Hum log aaram se ghoom bhi nahi payenge."

Laiba immediately sided with me. "Bilkul!"

Iqbal looked between the two of us before shaking his head with a small smile. "Acha. Toh meri hi burai ho rahi hai." Laiba giggled.

I felt some of the tension leave my shoulders. Thankfully, he seemed amused rather than suspicious. "Theek hai," he said finally. "Main tum logon ko drop kar deta hoon." I opened my mouth to protest. But he spoke first. "Aur jab wapas aana ho toh mujhe call kar lena." Then, after a brief pause, he added, "Main pick kar lunga."

My fingers tightened slightly around my handbag. The phone inside suddenly felt much heavier than before. Still— I forced a smile. "Theek hai."

A few minutes later, we were walking toward the car together. And all I could think about was how I was going to get away from them long enough to pass on the information sitting inside my phone.

At some point during the afternoon, Laiba had grown sleepy and hungry. Thankfully. It gave me the excuse I needed. We were standing inside a cloth shop while Sakina examined fabric for what felt like the hundredth time that day. Laiba sat beside her, rubbing her eyes and leaning against her shoulder.

"Main eske liye kuch khane ka laati hu," I said, adjusting my dupatta. "Ap dekh lein itne ."

Sakina barely glanced up. "Haan, haan. Hum yahin hain." I was already walking away.

When I reached the darzi's shop, I found him sitting at the front counter. He wasn't alone. He was laughing at something another man had said. The moment he saw me, the smile disappeared. He immediately stood. "Ek minute," he told the man beside him. "Customer hai." Then, as if he actually worked there and wasn't secretly handling intelligence, he added,

"Woh jo fabric hai na, kal tak ready chahiye. Allah hafiz." The man nodded and left. The darzi turned toward me. "Kya hua?"

Without wasting a second, I pulled out my phone and opened the photographs. "Zyada is wakht nhi hai," I said quietly. "Mujhe ye mile."

His eyes narrowed. He took the phone from me. For several moments, he scrolled silently through the pictures. Blueprints. Specifications. Manufacturing notes. Then his expression hardened. "Yeh tumhe kahan se mile?"

"Ghar lekar aaye the file."

His eyes lifted. "Aur?"

"Woh sone se pehle files wahin locker ke bahar bhul gye the."

For a second he simply stared at me. Then he shut his eyes. The way people do when they're trying very hard not to lose their patience. "Tumhara dimagh kharab ho gaya hai kya?"

I frowned. "Kya?"

"Tumhein ehsaas bhi hai ke yeh ek jaal ho sakta tha?"

I stiffened. "Vo soo gye the."

"Ho sakta hai woh yahi chahta ho ke tum samjho woh so gaya ha."

"Aisa nahi tha."

"Tum yeh nahi janti." His voice sharpened. "Tumhein andaaza bhi nahi ke kitni baatein tumhari samajh se bahar hain."

I could feel my frustration rising. "Woh mujh par shak nahi karte."

"Tumhein yeh kaise pata ho sakta?"

"Aur aap jante hai?"

The words came out harsher than intended. He stared. I stared back. Then finally he shook his head. "Hadd hai." His jaw tightened. "Kisi kaam ki na."

Something inside me snapped. Maybe it was the lack of sleep. Maybe the stress. Maybe the fear I had been carrying for weeks. But suddenly I was furious. "Kisi kaam ki nahi?" My voice came out sharper than I intended. "Main itna bada khatra utha kar yeh sab aap tak layi hoon, aur aap mujhe nikammi keh rahe hain?." The darzi looked surprised. I wasn't finished. "Aapko lagta hai aasan hai ye?"

My throat tightened. To my horror, I felt tears burn behind my eyes "Maine saalon yeh soch kar guzare hain ke meri zindagi ka aakhir maqsad kya." The first tear slipped free. I wiped it away angrily. "Aap ko andaza bhi nahi hai ke zindagi mein pehli baar kisi maqsad ka milna kaisa lagta ha." He went completely silent. I took a shaky breath. "Mujhe kabhi mehsoos hi nahi hua ke meri zindagi ka koi maqsad hai." Another tear escaped. "Yeh pehli cheez hai jo mujhe mehsoos hui ke yeh meri apni h."

The first thing that felt important.

The first thing that felt bigger than myself.

The first thing that felt like I could actually serve my country.

The darzi's expression softened immediately. Regret flashed across his face. For a moment he looked genuinely guilty. Without another word, he forwarded the photographs to himself. Then handed the phone back. His voice was noticeably gentler when he spoke again. "Agar kuch aur maloomat mile..." He paused. "...Har dafa yahan mat aaya karo." I looked up. He pulled out a small piece of paper and wrote something down. "Email."

I blinked. "Kya?"

"Agar mujhse rabta karne ki zaroorat pade, toh email kar dena." He slid the paper toward me. "Wohi code alfaaz istemal karna jo humne pehle tay kiye the." That was probably safer. For both of us. I folded the paper carefully.

Just as I turned to leave, the bell above the shop door rang. A boy entered. Twelve years old at most. Barefoot. Thin. Wearing worn-out clothes. In one hand he carried a disposable tea cup covered with aluminium foil. In the other was a small packet of biscuits. "Ustad ji," he said cheerfully. The darzi immediately reached for the tea. My eyes dropped to the biscuits. Then I thought about Laiba. Hungry. Half asleep. Waiting. Without thinking much about it, I picked up the packet. The darzi looked down. Then at me. Then sighed. "Le jao." I did. My daughter being hungry mattered more than his tea-time snack.

When I returned to the cloth shop, Sakina was still arguing. Exactly where I had left her. One hand planted on her hip. The shopkeeper looked seconds away from surrender. "Arey bibi, aath soo ka final hai."

"Nahi."

"Satso panja."[750]

"Mera koi faida nahi hai phir!"

The entire thing reminded me painfully of shopping trips with mummy and Nani. They had bargained over everything. Everything. I almost smiled. Eventually we left. Stopped for food. Fed Laiba. Bought a few more things. And finally, around six in the evening, I called Iqbal. As promised, he came. No complaints. No questions. Just quietly helping a sleepy Laiba into the car.

We had left the house around 2:20 PM. By the time we returned, it was nearly 6:45 PM. Winter darkness had already settled outside. Sakina headed toward her quarters. Jahangir was nowhere to be seen. Most likely in his room. Laiba, exhausted from the day's adventures, fell asleep almost immediately after coming home. And before long—it was just me and Iqbal.

We sat side by side on the couch in the living room. My feet were propped up on the table. The television played quietly in front of us. For a while, neither of us paid much attention. Then Iqbal changed the channel. An Indian news channel appeared. I barely looked up. Until a red banner flashed across the screen.

BREAKING NEWS

The anchor's voice cut sharply through the room.

"Ab hi Delhi se khabar aa rhi hai Delhi ke itihaasik Lal Qile par aatankwadi hamla hua hai...mana ja rha hai ki Lashkar-e-Taiba"

My attention snapped to the television. The footage was chaotic. Flashing police lights. Security personnel running. Crowds being pushed back. Reporters speaking over one another. Another headline appeared.

RED FORT ATTACK

3 DEAD — 1 INJURED

Beside me, I felt Iqbal sit straighter. The relaxed posture vanished instantly. The anchor continued. "Prarambhik jaankari ke mutabik hamlawaron ne suraksha karmiyon par firing ki..."

More footage appeared. Sirens. Armed personnel. The historic red walls illuminated by emergency lights. Then another line appeared at the bottom of the screen.

SUSPECTED CROSS-BORDER MILITANT INVOLVEMENT

Without saying a word, Iqbal reached for the remote and increased the volume. His eyes never left the screen. Not once. And suddenly— the peacefulness of the last few days felt very, very far away.

The news continued playing in the background long after the first reports appeared. Analysts came and went. The same footage played repeatedly. The same headlines flashed across the screen. Yet Iqbal never once looked away.

The longer he watched, the lighter he seemed to become. For days there had been tension hanging over him. The late-night calls. The restless pacing. The frustration he tried to hide behind calm expressions.

Now it was gone. Completely gone. His phone started ringing almost immediately. One call after another. I tried not to listen, but it was impossible when we were sitting so close together. Every conversation sounded similar.

Congratulations.

Good news.

A successful development. People sounded relieved. Pleased. Even excited. And with every call, the smile on Iqbal's face grew wider. By the time he ended the fourth one, he looked years younger. I had never seen him like this before. Not this unguarded. Not this openly happy. He placed the phone down on the table and leaned back into the couch, rubbing a hand over his face. For a moment he simply sat there smiling to himself. Then he looked at me. I frowned slightly. "Kya?"

Instead of answering, he laughed. A genuine laugh. The kind that reached his eyes. Before I could react, his hand came up and cupped my cheek.

Warm.

Gentle.

My breath caught. His thumb brushed against my skin as he continued looking at me for a second that felt strangely long. Then he leaned forward and pressed a kiss to my forehead. I froze. The smile never left his face. Before I could even process the first kiss, he leaned in again. This time his lips brushed mine.

Soft.

Brief.

Gone almost as quickly as it happened. Yet somehow it felt longer.

The first kiss was gentle. Almost absent-minded. A brief press of his lips against mine born entirely from relief and happiness. But when I looked up at him in shock, something shifted in his expression. His smile faded into something softer, deeper. Before I could say anything, he leaned in again, this time with far less hesitation. His hand came up to my cheek and he kissed me properly, enough to steal the breath from my lungs and leave my thoughts hopelessly tangled. When he finally pulled away, there was still that unmistakable happiness in his eyes, as though he'd forgotten the entire world for a moment. Meanwhile, I sat frozen beside him, trying to remember how to think at all. My entire body locked up. I don't think he even noticed. Or perhaps he did and simply mistook my shock for shyness. Because he looked absurdly happy. Like a man whose burdens had suddenly become lighter. His forehead rested against mine for a brief moment before he pulled away. I could still feel the warmth of the kiss. Still feel my heart pounding against my ribs.

Still feel the way his fingers lingered against my cheek before finally dropping. And then— his phone rang again. I had never been so grateful for a phone call in my life. Iqbal sighed with amusement and reached for it. The moment he saw the caller's name, his smile returned. "Assalamwalikum." The voice on the other side must have said something good because he immediately laughed. "Ji, mubarakan thanu vi."

Another congratulations.

Another colleague.

Another successful outcome.

He stood and began pacing slowly through the living room while talking, his voice carrying bits and pieces of the conversation back to me. I wasn't listening anymore. At least not properly. Because while he spoke happily into the phone, I remained exactly where I was. Staring at nothing. One hand unconsciously touching my lips. Trying to understand what had just happened.Trying to understand why that kiss felt far more dangerous than any file I had ever stolen.

The mission.

My country.

The photographs hidden inside my phone. The information I had passed on. The lies I told every day.

And then there was Iqbal. The man who trusted me completely. The man who had just kissed me because he was happy. The man I was supposed to betray. As another burst of laughter came from where he stood speaking on the phone, I lowered my eyes.

Since this mission began, I found myself wishing things were simpler but not like this. Wishing he were easier to hate. Because if he had been cruel, suspicious, or unkind, none of this would have mattered. Instead, he smiled when he looked at me. Trusted me when he shouldn't. And somehow that made everything infinitely worse.

As another burst of laughter came from where he stood speaking on the phone, I lowered my eyes.

Three dead.

One injured.

The numbers had flashed across the television screen so quickly. A headline. A report. A success for some. A tragedy for others.

Somewhere across the border, families were receiving news that would divide their lives into a before and an after. Somewhere, a mother would wait for a son who would never return. Somewhere, a wife would stare at an empty chair. Somewhere, a child would ask when their father was coming home.

And here, in this house, men were congratulating each other.

I should have felt proud. This was why I had joined. Why I had taken the risk. Why I had lied, stolen, and crossed every line I once thought I never would.

Yet as I sat there with the memory of his lips still lingering and his laughter carrying through the room, pride felt strangely complicated. Because the attack was no longer a headline on a television screen. It had a face now.

And that face belonged to the man standing a few feet away from me, smiling into his phone, completely unaware that the woman he trusted most was quietly coming apart beside him.

my phone is on one percent only and its 4:16 am good njfvf bue bur

everyone is a lesbian

yes even u

abbu kya yeh sach hai? @majoriqbalahmedisi

Miru abbu dekhiye na @miriqbalpaglu

abbu kya yeh sach hai? @majoriqbalahmedisi

Miru abbu dekhiye na @miriqbalpaglu