Bangladesh, Namibia (4)

Antara's childhood was unlike most people's. Her school Asansol AG Church had settled down with the three term-exams-a-year system, these were full-fledged exams, no teaching classes when they were on. As it happened, on the last day of the exams, there would be one paper to write in the morning and not much to do after the lunch break.

Antara's mother, if she could, never let her stay if there was neither an exam to write nor classes to attend.

 "If there was nothing to do, why do you want to stay in school?"

"Because we'd give over only at 3 pm, they won't let us go home before that."

"Why not? If classes have not resumed, why were they holding everyone back?"

"Because the colliery buses wouldn't come before 3 pm, they don't change their schedules because of our exams."

"Leave it to us, we'd get you out of school. You don't have to worry."

Antara would be furious but she didn't have any choice. Everyone would have loads of fun, play around once the exams were over and the teachers slack over discipline. Not her. Antara's father would send a note to the school, saying her mother was unwell, the note would be sent to class during the exam. 'You were going home early', the teacher would tell her.

It would seem that Antara had grown up with wrongful deportation, mistaken-identity deportation and various other kinds of deportations in which the Trump-Vance administration seemed to have such expertise.

When Antara's parents were around, such threats were recognised. They'd take necessary steps so that no Vance family thought itself too clever.

When Antara's parents were no longer around, when she got a journalism job at The Hindu in New Delhi in summer 2019 but couldn't join because of outrageous medical scrutiny demands, when no one connected it to overall threats against her or took necessary actions, then the world would become a dangerous place. 

A year after Antara couldn't join The Hindu in May 2019, Alexander Lukashenko started deporting Belarusian dissidents from May 2020. Such was our world, systematic deportations in Russia-adjoining areas didn't make news, and disproved the theory that all Caucasians outrage when white people were targeted. 

The Vance family or their predecessor, the Harris-Emhoff family, stayed close to the US Navy because that was the US VPs privilege. No one made any noise that consistently, either by hook or by crook, a woman from South India was grabbing the privileges of the US Vice President's office and thereby dictating terms to the US Navy. 

Harris was chosen by Biden to be his running mate, Vance married Chilukuri. Just some coincidences. 

In circumstances such as these, there were two possibilities: either the constant south Indian presence in the US VP's office was about some military blackmail. Or it was indicating some criminal activity of the past, no one knew about it and hence the ability to do as one pleased. 

Antara's research threw up the possibility of the Belarusian Open Source Intelligence project called Hajun. It was started in January 2022, to report on Russian and Belarusian troop movements, just before the war broke out, it was assumed it sourced its information from TikTok. 

Really? Wasn't TikTok allegedly controlled from within the US Navy, why the United States Govt repeatedly banned its use? 

So the US Navy gave out classified military information for use by Belarusian wastrels?

Did the Vances and Emhoff-Harris duo know about it?

'Hajun' was named after a mythical forest spirit in Belarusian lore. Antara was often called a 'forest spirit', she knew these related terms, woodland, sylvan. In recent years, she had learnt of the Bocage, a woodland area beyond Normandy important during WWII.

Was that what TikTok ran on, the blackmails around the Bocage against the US Navy? Which infantry group landed at which part of Omaha beach? Who were immediately felled, who were not? Accordingly, Hajun soared, as did rumours around deportation for Antara?

All of us knew how the blame game would proceed. The topmost Mumbai tycoon would immediately claim credit for the above. So would Asansol AG teachers, in order to protect Wool and their close proximity with him through the 1990s. 

Hajun was not so easy to dismiss. Antara had watched an investigative documentary on lack of freedom in Belarus, how the slightest dissent was punished. Men sat drinking at a tavern, the cameras were floor-level and focussed bottom-up. "Why were you asking this, do you know what would happen, who were you?" the Belarusians kept asking the reporter. 

You see, Hajun accepted messages through a chatbot. Antara had first come across a chatbot messaging service in 2011, when working at HT, when a colleague introduced her to it. "Ask a question, it would reply, such fun." No one had heard of AI or Chat GPT back then. 

If you ask a question about lack of employment or Aadhaar or freedom to move about, the Vances come to visit? What happened after they left?

You see, it was also at HT that an administration side colleague had told Antara, "Don't know how to take screenshots? Wait, I'll show you."

Didn't the Joint Chiefs know that of all people, Sean Penn of Hollywood couldn't have gone to Ukraine for reporting right at the start of the Russia-Ukraine War?

That the Vances wouldn't like it and Bocage us all?

April 12, 2025.