Gunshot Victims Unit

By Vaibhav Mukim

"Culture was untouchable. Their mixing would, and had in the past, proved to be extremely detrimental to peace and quiet.' a world in which people have no regional affiliations. Where culture itself has gone mobile. Where the President, the man with the most power, has little to do but swim and play golf. Where ordinary people like GRE and. Ronan care little about where they come from and where they are headed – and this whole system is balanced on just two simple laws. In this dystopian world, The only equalising factor is gunshots. Will the gunshot victims Unit, the last line of defence, be enough?".

• Language: English
• Publisher: One Point Six Technologies Pvt Ltd
• Release date: Aug 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9789352015030

Vaibhav Mukim

Vaibhav Mukim quit his corporate career at the age of 29 and has since written and published one science fiction novel, a couple of poems and this monumental endeavour which he claims took him seven years of near madness and despair.

Book preview

Part 1:

Rude Beginnings

Chapter 1

He watched in horror as blood squirted out of his shoulder. The Bengali had looked mean, but Ronan had not pulled out his gun. ‘If we can’t live without yanking out our guns every other second, life isn’t worth a damn anyway,’ Ronan constantly thought. This is also the reason why Ronan never carried a knife; he didn’t want to pack an arsenal each time he stepped out. There was something about being free of weapons, which other people didn’t seem to understand.

The Bengali had attacked unprovoked. All of Ronan’s theories came crashing down the moment he had heard the gunshot. His last thought before he lost consciousness was that he was still alive.

The Bengali stood over Ronan’s prone form. Upstart, he sneered, though no one was around to hear him. The Bengali wondered briefly whether he should rob Ronan, but there were too many people around. He dropped a red flare and walked away. Wrong man. Let the central units do the dirty work. Life was way too short, and the Bengali had other things on his mind.

The call was placed by the Gujarati inspector. Male, Delhiite, 31 years, he reported. Flesh wound, he added disdainfully as he walked away.

The Van arrived in minutes. They loaded Ronan’s limp form into the van and were off. The entire procedure took only a few seconds. Inside, the doctor on duty gave Ronan a cursory examination, stopped the bleeding and then sat back. No one said a word; no one needed to.

There were close to a thousand vans on the street in West Bengal at the moment, all reporting back to the GVU in Delhi. The van arrived at the Carter Road division. Ronan was unloaded and taken straight to a small room, where a surgeon attended to his wound. The GVU at Carter Road acted as one large emergency centre. People came in and out faster than they would at a McDonald’s outlet.

The doctor who had supervised Ronan’s transfer was now smoking a cigarette. He was a Bengali himself.

The only leeway the system made in its rigid inflexibility towards cultural uniformity was the GVU—the only way anyone could make a difference in the state that they were born in. But Tirat was not making the sort of headway he wanted to, and the older he grew, the harder he tried.

He finished his cigarette and walked inside. He was on call that day, which meant long hours between breaks; less time to think and too much to do.

Prithzi passed by, her head buried in the file in her hands. Prithzi was from UP, but she had chosen the GVU in West Bengal; the ideal citizen.

‘Don’t mess with the system.’

As Tirat climbed into the ambulance once more that day, he felt a sense of wonder. Wonder at how large the country was, and the number of things that happened in it simultaneously. The call was from Brigade Road. Inspector Bhole had rung in. The ambulance entered a side street.

On foot from here, announced the driver. Tirat and three attendants got off with some medical equipment and a collapsible stretcher. A few seconds later, they were in front of a middle-aged man who was clearly dead. He had been shot in the stomach and had bled out. Damn! said Tirat; he meant it. The man was from Delhi. ‘Twice in a row,’ wondered Tirat. ‘Was it a sign of things to come?’

Chapter 2

Two hundred rooms in the Carter Road unit and they were all occupied. Each room held five people, with the possibility of holding ten if called for. Work would go on morning, noon and night, saving lives. Shard had worked there for two years and had no complaints. He was ambitious by nature, but too young to realise that ambition was not an end in itself. He was married to a Delhiite, which was common amongst people from UP. He hailed from a small town called Azamgarh in the Eastern belt of UP, where his accomplishments were considered close to godliness.

His wife had a hair salon, which catered exclusively to people from Delhi. All establishments were divided along these lines. It was not that people from Delhi minded people from Bengal or vice versa, but this system was just considered to be more efficient. The police consisted of people from almost every region of the country except Bengal itself. The only way to keep the culture intact, the world had realised after much communal strife, was to ensure that no particular region was given any freedom to spread. Keeping the regional population out of administration was a key feature, whereas the division of all restaurants, movie theatres and the likes along cultural lines was to ensure that a culture would not die out either. Communal violence had all but dissipated. Unfortunately, violence in general still continued.

Shard had been answering pages the whole day. He had picked up more languages in his two years at the GVU than he cared to remember; not that there was any need, but pride can often be a useless thing. His pager rang again.

Room 34. Now.

He climbed the stairs, grateful for the exercise. A woman walked past him as he entered the third floor corridor. She held her head up high. She was trying hard not to cry. Shard spared her a cursory glance, his mind on other things. He swung open the door to Room 34 and walked in.

The room wasn’t arranged in the normal way. The beds had been removed, and a conference table sat in the middle. There were five other people in the room, three of them doctors like him. The other two wore quiet, black suits and stood slightly in the background. Dr. Stephens approached Shard. Come in. There’s a little matter we would like to discuss, he said. Shard entered and stood awkwardly next to the table.

Let’s all sit down, said one of the guys in the business suits. The six of them took seats at the conference table, slightly apart from each other, as if they were afraid the other person was contagious.

We have a mandate, continued Stephens, addressing Shard. Shard nodded his head, wishing he had brought a pen and pad with him. What is it? he finally asked. We have been tasked with collecting data. Sensitive data.

On what? asked Shard immediately.

On deaths categorised by regional affiliation.

The answer came too fast for it to be a trap. ‘This was real work,’ thought Shard. ‘And it was illegal and extremely dangerous.’

Why now? asked one of the guys in the business suits.

Stephens turned to him with a look of disgust. Listen, Mr. Roberts. The less you know the better. We will ask for your help when required.

This remark led Shard to believe that the guys in suits were merely business muscle. He relaxed a little. So, he said, addressing one of the doctors in the room, Dr. Pushpea, How far along are we?

Pushpea remained silent. The remaining doctor in the room, Dr. Sunita, looked around awkwardly.

Listen, Shard, said Dr. Stephens, We’ll give you the details as they come. For now, start keeping a record of who you operate on and where they are from.

Shard looked around, but it seemed that everyone was waiting for him to leave.

Chapter 3

Tirat got his by pager.

Mandate. Data on deaths by regional affiliation. Start now.

‘Who was fiddling with the country’s democratic machinery?’ he wondered. Obviously, all the GVUs across the country must have been informed. Someone high up. His personal opinion was that the task would be risky, but it would also provide him with a much needed change. And finally, it would be up to him to decide if he wanted to hand over the jotted down figures. Keeping the names in his notebook for his own personal use—that he could do. Dangerous, yes; but at least not immoral.

He looked out the window. They were passing the suburbs. Salt Lake City. Three in the same day. He made a note in his pad. This time too, the victim was from Delhi. A woman, aged 45. ‘Could this be happening all over the country?’ wondered Tirat. ‘But then, how could it?’

They entered a narrow driveway and in seconds, they were out with their tools. The woman had been shot and robbed inside her house. She was bleeding profusely and shouting at the GVU squad. Hurry! Move your lards!

They ignored her shouts and strapped her to the gurney. She was going to make it, thought Tirat.

Back when they reached the GVU, it was business as usual. The attending surgeon took a quick look at the woman and started his work. Tirat hung around a few minutes, unsure of what to do next. He decided he would head home early. It had been a busier day than usual.

His family lived in Mumbai, so Tirat was used to doing things alone. He sat on his third floor balcony and ate his dinner, watching Bengal slow down as the lights dwindled out. He had a good team at the hospital. Two others from his team had been shifted around for ambulance duties, just like him. He bit hard into his samosa, a Punjabi dish. The only way to get it was to make friends with a Punjabi. The alternative was the Bengali version of the Punjabi samosa, cooked in mustard oil; and even those were only available at the Bengali-only restaurants, which Tirat could enter as a matter of birthright. Any other place, and Tirat would need to be accompanied by a friend of that respective region.

Culture was untouchable. Their mixing would and had in the past proved to be extremely detrimental to peace and quiet. The GVU was the only release; a place where people turned a blind eye to culture.

He smoked another cigarette after dinner, wondering how a government so keen on warning people about the dangers of smoking and its uselessness didn’t have the power to ban