Chapter 13: Haldhar (The Drug)

2001

The world changed on September 11, and then the world changed again on September 12, and the second change was the one that mattered for Leela because the second change was: the world stopped looking at domestic violence.

Not that the world had been looking before — the world's looking had always been the peripheral-looking, the looking that saw without engaging, the looking that registered without responding. But after September 11, even the peripheral-looking stopped. The world's attention pivoted — pivoted to terror, to borders, to the particular geopolitics of fear that the twenty-first century opened with and that consumed the attention that had been, in the 1990s, slowly turning toward the domestic, toward the gender, toward the particular violence that happened inside houses rather than between nations.

Leela was thirty-five. Thirty-five and — Leela was, by 2001, the person that Bharati had built her to be. The person who had been the intelligence-operative at seventeen and the extractor at eighteen and who was now, at thirty-five, the network's operational leader — not by title (the network still did not have titles) but by function: Leela ran the operations. Bharati ran the strategy. Keshav ran the logistics. Chinmay ran the communications (the coded film-song system had evolved into a more sophisticated system that used multiple channels and that was, by 2001, incorporating the new technologies: the mobile phone, the SMS, the particular revolution that mobile communication was bringing to India and that the network was adapting for its purposes).

The network had extracted, by 2001, forty-seven children. Forty-seven children over twenty-three years. Forty-seven children who were alive because the network had done the thing that the law called criminal and that the children called rescue. Twenty-nine of the forty-seven had grown up and were living independently. Eleven were still in the network's care — distributed across safe houses in six states. Seven had — seven had not survived. Not because of the network. Because of what had happened before the network. The particular damage that abuse inflicted on young bodies and young minds, the damage that was sometimes too severe for the rescue to repair, the damage that produced: two suicides (fifteen and seventeen years old, the suicides being the network's darkest hours, the hours that Bharati carried like scars on the inside), three deaths from medical conditions that the abuse had caused or exacerbated (the untreated infections, the internal injuries, the particular medical neglect that accompanied the violence), and two who had disappeared — walked away from the safe houses into the world and who had not been found, the not-finding being the particular failure that Leela could not accept and that she had spent years trying to rectify and that remained unrectified.

But the new threat was not violence. The new threat was chemical.

*

Haldhar arrived in Mumbai's slums in 2001. Not with a label — Haldhar was not a branded drug, Haldhar was not pharmaceutical. Haldhar was the street name for a synthetic compound that combined methamphetamine precursors with something else, the something-else being the chemical signature that distinguished Haldhar from ordinary meth: the something-else was a psychotropic additive that the manufacturer had developed (or stumbled upon — the distinction between development and accident being unclear in the underground pharmaceutical economy) and that produced, in the user, the particular combination of euphoria and aggression that made Haldhar the most dangerous drug Mumbai had seen.

Euphoria and aggression. The combination that was — the combination was the weapon. The euphoria said: everything is possible, everything is permitted, the world is mine. The aggression said: and if the world disagrees, the world will be destroyed. The combination producing: users who were simultaneously blissful and violent, the bliss making the violence feel righteous and the righteousness making the violence escalable, the escalation being the thing that the families experienced, the families being: the wives, the children, the particular collateral damage of a drug that turned men (always men — Haldhar's user base was almost exclusively male, the male being the market that the manufacturer targeted because the male market was the largest and the most profitable and the most destructive) into versions of themselves that were amplified and distorted, the amplification being: the violent man became more violent, the controlling man became more controlling, the unpredictable man became entirely unpredictable.

Leela encountered Haldhar through the network. Through Sunita — the KEM nurse who had survived the notebook destruction and the Deshpande investigation and who was still operating, sixteen years later, still seeing the bruises, still documenting the cases that the system did not address. Sunita's message to Bharati was: "Naya drug. Haldhar. Slum areas mein. Isse jo maarte hain — woh zyada maarte hain. Cases badh rahe hain. Bohot zyada." New drug. Haldhar. In slum areas. The men who use it hit harder. Cases are increasing. A lot.

Leela went to Mumbai. To investigate — not the drug (the drug was the police's problem, or should have been the police's problem, or would have been the police's problem if the police had been interested, the interest being the thing that the police did not have because the slums were the slums and the slums' problems were the slums' problems and the slums' problems were not the police's priority). To investigate the families. The families that Haldhar was destroying.

What Leela found was — what Leela found was worse than the intelligence suggested. The intelligence had said: cases increasing. The reality was: cases exploding. The particular exponential growth that a new drug produced in a population that was already vulnerable — the slum population, the population that was economically stressed and socially marginalized and that lived in the particular density of Mumbai's slums, the density that meant: the violence was not private, the violence was communal, the violence spreading through the chawl walls the way sound spread and the spreading being the normalization, the normalization being the particular horror that Leela identified: the Haldhar violence was becoming normal.

Normal. The word that was the enemy. The word that said: this happens, this is how things are, the how-things-are being the acceptance that the system relied on and that the system maintained, the maintaining being: if the violence is normal, the violence does not require response. If the violence does not require response, the system is not responsible. If the system is not responsible, the system continues unchanged. The circle that was the system's design and the design's perfection: the perfect system was the system that maintained itself by normalizing the things that should not be normal.

Leela reported to Bharati. The report: "Yeh drug — Haldhar — yeh sirf violence ka problem nahi hai. Yeh scale ka problem hai. Hum ek-ek bacche ko nahi nikal sakte jab hazaaron bacche danger mein hain. Network itna bada nahi hai." This drug — Haldhar — this isn't just a violence problem. It's a scale problem. We can't extract one child at a time when thousands of children are in danger. The network isn't big enough.

"Toh?" Bharati's word. The word that meant: what is the response?

"Toh — drug ko rokna padega. Bacchon ko nikalte raho, lekin — source ko rokna padega." So — we need to stop the drug. Keep extracting children, but — we need to stop the source.

The source. The source that was — the source was the manufacturer. The manufacturer that the police did not know (or knew and did not address, the not-addressing being the particular corruption that protected drug manufacturers in exchange for the particular payments that drug manufacturers made to the particular officers who received the particular payments). The manufacturer that the network would need to identify, understand, and — what? What did the network do with a drug manufacturer? The network's skill was extraction — taking children from dangerous homes. The network's skill was not counter-narcotics. The network's skill was not law enforcement. The network was, by design and by necessity, a rescue operation, not a military operation.

But Haldhar was changing the design. Haldhar was changing the necessity. Haldhar was — Haldhar was the thing that required the network to evolve or to fail, the evolution being: expand beyond extraction into intervention, the intervention being: stop the drug before the drug creates the families that require the extraction.

*

Keshav's response was military. Of course Keshav's response was military — Keshav's response to every problem was military, the military being Keshav's language the way the harmonium was Chinmay's language, the language that the person thought in and that the thinking produced the particular solutions that the language made possible.

"Source identify karo. Supply chain samjho. Chain tod do." Identify the source. Understand the supply chain. Break the chain.

"Yeh army nahi hai, Keshav-bhai," Leela said. This isn't the army.

"Nahi. Lekin principles same hain. Enemy ko samjho. Supply ko tod do. Enemy bina supply ke lad nahi sakta." No. But the principles are the same. Understand the enemy. Cut the supply. The enemy can't fight without supply.

The principle was — the principle was correct. The principle was also dangerous. Because the drug manufacturer was not a violent father in a house on a gali. The drug manufacturer was — the intelligence that Leela gathered over the following months said — the drug manufacturer was a pharma company. Not a major pharma company — a second-tier company, the company that operated in the grey zone between legitimate pharmaceutical manufacturing and illegitimate chemical production, the grey zone that India's pharmaceutical industry contained in abundance because India's pharmaceutical regulation was under-resourced and the under-resourcing was the gap and the gap was where the Haldhar manufacturer operated.

The company was registered in Hyderabad. The company's name was Prerna Pharmaceuticals. The company's legitimate product line was: generic painkillers, cough syrups, the particular low-cost medications that India's public health system purchased in bulk and that the purchasing provided the cover for the illicit manufacturing, the cover being: the factory that produced the legitimate drugs also produced the illegitimate drugs, the producing being done in the same facility with the same equipment and the only distinction being the shift schedule (day shift: legitimate, night shift: illegitimate, the night being the time when the Haldhar precursors were synthesized and the synthesis produced the compound that was destroying Mumbai's slums).

"Prerna Pharmaceuticals," Leela reported. "Hyderabad. Factory Medchal district mein hai. Raat ko Haldhar banate hain. Din ko legitimate drugs. Owner ka naam: Dinesh Rao. Rao politically connected hai — MLA ke saath business partnership hai. Police touch nahi karegi." Hyderabad. Factory in Medchal district. They make Haldhar at night. Legitimate drugs during the day. Owner's name: Dinesh Rao. Rao is politically connected — business partnership with an MLA. Police won't touch him.

"Toh hum touch karenge," Bharati said. Then we will.

The sentence that changed the network. The sentence that was the evolution — the evolution from rescue-organization to intervention-organization, the intervention being: the network would now not only extract children from the violence but would address the cause of the violence, the cause being the drug and the drug's manufacturer and the manufacturer's political protection.

The war was expanding. The war that had been Bharati-versus-violent-fathers was now Bharati-versus-the-system-that-produced-violent-fathers. The system that included: the law that did not protect, the police that did not investigate, the pharmaceutical company that manufactured the destruction, the politician who protected the manufacturer.

The banyan tree was growing new roots. The roots dropping from branches. The branches reaching further.